The snows that lie on the mountains of Judaea
Salome sweeps in like a storm at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
Sylvia Korman
Sylvia Korman is a PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center a recent devotee of all things opera. They like mezzos in pants, Met Opera student tickets and reading the comments sections. See their tweets at cowboyverismo and people mad at opera.
School gyrls
What Opera Lafayette’s Dido and Aeneas lost in gravitas it gained in charm and specificity.
Storybored
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay was, somehow, a fun night at the opera—just not one that felt specifically operatic.
Little girls get bigger every day
Elza van den Heever and Peter Mattei (and the stage elevator) elevate an assertive, if not definitive, new Salome at the Met
Force of habit
Turmoil and injustice in the federal government; turmoil and grief in the Catholic Church: the time sure seems right for a staging of Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites.
Humdrum existence
Missy Mazzoli has established herself as one of contemporary opera’s most skilled and subtle architects of emotional response, and her latest, The Listeners—now at the Lyric Opera of Chicago—is no exception.
Spain and neutered
Ainadamar never quite found its identity between the two poles of conceptual and concrete.
Cult classic
Sylvia Korman previews The Listeners, the latest and most ambitious opera by Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek that opens this week at Opera Philadelphia with tickets for just $11
The disaster artists
It was an unexpected tone for the cold stone and moody ambiance of the catacombs—an odd juxtaposition that I’m not sure really worked.
Tito’s, neat
This Clemenza seemed more or less unconcerned with the opera’s political imagination, content to take Tito at his word that his rule is morally enlightened and the citizens at theirs that a benevolent dictatorship is a wonderful thing indeed.
At liberty to divulge
If it didn’t all work, it wouldn’t work at all.
A post-electric opera
Two months ago, when climate activists interrupted a performance of Tannhaüser at the Met, the banners they unfurled from the balconies announced, “no opera on a dead planet.”
The school for music lovers
Angel Island seemed a piece with two simultaneous goals: to musically interpret the poetry of Angel Island detainees and to educate its audience on the history of Asian and particularly Chinese immigration to America.
Let the river run
In its Met premier, neither a talented cast nor some beautiful musical moments were enough to make Florencia feel new or vital.
Unicorn tapestry
The Hunt’s strongest argument for the possibility of growth, connection, and agency even under adverse and restrictive circumstances lay, of course, in its music, in which three individual voices were able to combine and transform into something infinitely rich and strange.
Nervous system theater
Like a sommelier of male entitlement, Peter Mattei paired with precision moves from a wide-ranging vocabulary of gesture.
Radically giddy
Verdi’s Falstaff is a brilliantly written opera: funny, with a complex ability to operate across minutely shifting registers of farce and lyricism. It needs, ideally, a production and cast capable of executing both comedy and drama, irony and sincerity—often concurrently. In its current Met revival, happily, Falstaff has everything it needs.
Mozart, maximally
Do you ever wonder how easy it is to invent a Christmas tradition?
Alone in the world
Step aside, Texas: “Everything is bigger at Aida” is the motto of the Met’s second attempt at retiring Sonja Frisell’s colossal production.
On a par with tuberculosis
Come back, Big Clock! We need you more than ever!
Resisting the recognizable
It was Matthew Jocelyn’s libretto, with its disorientingly deconstructive approach to its source text, that gave Brett Dean’s Hamlet its identity.
Not really about ‘La bohème’
What is there to say about the Franco Zeffirelli Bohème? What is left to say?
Better than the sum of its parts
Is there any opera more bullet-proof than Le Nozze di Figaro?
Faces in the crowd
Saturday night’s Rosenkavalier at the Met was an evening of excess — beautiful singing, sensitive acting, elaborate sets, and an unfortunate business that mars Robert Carsen’s otherwise excellent production.
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).
Win a Free Ticket to Opening Night at the Met!
Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen star in the Met's new Macbeth. We're giving away one ticket, so screw your courage to the sticking place and enter now!
