Ivy Lin
Ivy Lin teaches science as her day job, and in her spare time reviews dance for Bachtrack. She also obsesses over her 20-year-old cat Pumpkin. Ivy is excited to be back in this wonderful, vibrant opera community after a long hiatus. If she were singing opera, she'd still be cast as Despina until she was in a wheelchair. You can follow Ivy on insta as poisonivy326. Although she's mellowed from her "poisonivy" days she still had a discussion recently with her editor about being "too harsh" in her reviews.
I still don’t think Sunset Boulevard is a top-tier musical but it was by far the most memorable vocal performance I saw in 2025.
Ivy Lin searches for a slam dunk version of Elvira’s Mad Scene from I puritani in the latest “Perspectives on an Aria.”
I never made it through more than a few chapters of any Tolstoy work. And I never made it through Chapter One, Volume One of War and Peace. Yeah, I know. I suck. Turns out I was just not using the left side of my brain, because War and Peace can actually be a fun, entertaining,…
Without fail, all nine finalists had nice clear ringing voices. Whether they develop into great artists is another question.
Is Manon Lescaut a cold, clinical tale of the splendors and pitfalls of transactional sex, or is it a romantic Italian opera at its most lush and melodic?
There might be nothing in the world as joyous as a Rossini overture.
The annual Richard Tucker Gala is probably the event of the year to indulge your love of verismo staples and can belto screaming.
Enthusiasts of Janácek’s opera will want to pick up this video immediately.
The production by Sebastian Baumgarten is the type of regietheater that’s not a rethinking or reconstruction, but just a hot mess.
It’s fun to wonder what might have happened if Rossini had never composed Il Barbiere di Siviglia. Would Giovanni Paisiello’s earlier adaptation of the work be a repertory favorite? Or would it have faded into obscurity with an occasional revival here and there?
Another month, another La Traviata release on video.
The Metropolitan Opera yesterday afternoon was an uncommonly cozy place, as the auditorium was packed to the rafters with friends and family members of the nine National Council Audition Finalists.
Certain operas are better in theory than practice.
The key to enjoying Bellini’s I Capuleti e Montechi is to do a hard factory reset and reformat your brain to forget all other works based on Romeo and Juliet.
Newton’s Third Law of Motion states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
The Met’s planned premiere of Iolanta/Bluebeard’s Castle was cancelled due to the Great Blizzard That Wasn’t.
Vittorio Grigolo in the title role of the Met’s revival of Les Contes d’Hoffman is the opera version of the charming homeless drunk.
2014 was a year of lemons into lemonade.
Verdi must have gotten tired of tossing and turning by now and has gone back to resting in peace.
One of the major complaints about the five year casting system (as well as the shared productions by different companies) is that operatic events are rarely surprises anymore.
Every year I say I’m not going to another La Bohème because I’ve seen this too many times.
If you are of the belief that Show Boat can stand on its own as a classic score and thus doesn’t need the trappings of musical production, you’ll love the New York Philharmonic’s “semi-staged” production.
At the first intermission at last night’s Met revival of Aida, I turned to my companion and said, “So… what about the Aida? I thought she was supposed to be good.”
The Metropolitan Opera desperately needed a new production of Le nozze di Figaro.
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.
