Patrick Clement James is a writer and teacher based in New York City. His love of opera began in high school, leading to studies in vocal performance at the Manhattan School of Music. He currently studies English literature as a Ph.D. student at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and he teaches at Brooklyn College. As a writer, he is particularly interested in the ways that opera participates in the larger contexts of history and culture.
It was quite a pleasure—a privilege, really—to see John Dexter’s legendary production of Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites last night at the Metropolitan Opera. In light of the parade of tiresome, soft-minded ideas that have become de rigueur at the house, Dexter’s razor-sharp direction is a reminder of how imagination and creativity still trump extravagance. Read more »
Friday night’s Rigoletto at the Metropolitan Opera revealed once again a predictable dissonance between the performances on stage and Michael Mayer’s production. Read more »
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Michael Grandage’s production of Don Giovanni for the Metropolitan Opera is possibly the worst production I’ve ever seen at the house. It represents the very nadir of conservatism. Neither rudely provocative nor richly traditional, its listless laziness snuffs out the opera’s incendiary potential. It is startlingly unimaginative, managing, in its ineptitude, the rare achievement of insulting western culture. Read more »
The Metropolitan Opera delivers on the promise of Wagner’s Gesamtkunswerk in a revival of Robert Lepage’s Ring.
UrbanArias’ recording of Paul’s Case is an antidote to the intellectual pretensions that regularly drag contemporary opera performance toward tediousness and boredom.
Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta and Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle both use themes of vision and revelation to ask compelling questions about knowledge, responsibility, and gender.
Roberto Alagna’s physical and vocal embodiment of Don José lent his particular narrative a complication I hadn’t anticipated.
Cher Public