Parterre Box
The musical virtues of Anna Moffo have heretofore eluded me.
Tell us: What was the best of 2025?
Parterre Box concludes the thrilling first year of Talk of the Town by inviting your lightning rod opinions on several more categories of operatic argumentation.
With the 2025 Bayreuth Festival beginning next week, Grand Tier Grab Bag spotlights the Eva of its opening Meistersinger: Christina Nilsson
It’s like making love with someone whose rap never ceases—and includes “helpful suggestions” about how you can be improving your game.
Despite having endured premiers at the Santa Fe Opera, including Cold Mountain, Oscar, and The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, all of which were disappointing on every level, Santa Fe Opera’s 2011 production of Menotti‘s The Last Savage is an opera I never care to see or listen to again.
A performance of Cavalli‘s opera recorded last week at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence
Joan Sutherland as Norma is something I’ve never been able to get.
A live video broadcast from Zurich starring Saimir Pirgu in the title role
A live broadcast from the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence
The opening of Teatro Nuovo’s Macbeth next week is the first of two opportunities this year to hear the opera in its original 1847 Version
I don’t understand the booing of singers, whether it’s booing bad characters, or booing singers who don’t live up to the booer’s expectations.
I so don’t get why any company in the Anglophone world ever bothers to perform Continental operetta in English.
The opening of the Santa Fe Opera’s season is the perfect occasion to highlight its Susanna, American soprano Liv Redpath
When I first encountered Joyce DiDonato in the early 2000s, I found her to be the case of an extraordinary technique and intelligent artistry supporting a rather ordinary voice.
A performance recorded last month and reviewed here featuring Véronique Gens, Niamh O’Sullivan, Regula Mühlemann, and Peter Rose
My contention here is more general than just a critique of an opera, a composer, or a singer. I argue that one cannot be a truly legendary artist unless one sings NEW MUSIC.
Mere days remain to make your voice heard for this summer’s The Talk of the Town!
What better a way to honor Independence Day than with a bit of French-American partnering?
Parsifal just gives me the creeps – a muddy maundery concoction that wallows in faux religiosity, a creepy view of sin, and naïve redemption.
parterre box serves up an amuse-bouche of Natalie Dessay as Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd in Strasbourg!
I just don’t get why anyone takes Mario Lanza seriously as “the tenor of the century” and so forth.
