Poison Ivy
Poison Ivy is the alter-ego of Ivy Lin, who in her day job teaches biology at an alternative transfer high school. Ivy's love of opera began when her father decreed that Mozart, Beethoven and other symphonic and instrumental works were superior to opera. Naturally, Ivy rebelled and began to secretly listen to Met broadcasts on Saturday afternoons on WQXR. In her spare time Ivy runs her own performance arts blog, brags about her cat, and obsesses over Game of Thrones. If Ivy were to sing opera she’d be typecast as Despina until she was in a wheelchair.
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,…
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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?
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.
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.
I always think of Don Giovanni as half of the greatest opera ever written. Or, actually, about 2/3 of the greatest opera ever written.
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