Critics and Their Criticism
“Tony could only sing one note and the note he sang was this…”
With all the greatest respect for Jessye Norman as an artist, I do wish people would stop quoting her vain and defensive statements about critics as if she were some kind of oracle.
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.
An “opera critic” is still terrified of productions that closed a generation ago.
“In none of this was he ever anything close to perfect. Great artists never are. Without their devils there would be no angels.”
That’s right, it’s September 30, 2019 and Venomous Fishwife Norman Lebrecht claims this is the first time in his entire life he has heard that some people might find Turandot offensive.
The musical director of the Opera Royal de Wallonie at Liege is currently experiencing the early phase of a promising international career in music.
Leave it to Opera News to whitewash the revolting reactionary politics of Franco Zeffirelli.
Congratulations to venerable Opera News on their new hire, art director Harvey Dent.
Since his death, Mackerras has had not very much interesting to say aside from “Avenge me!”
“Marlis Petersen, in her first shot at the role, is as complete a video Violetta as Rosanna Carteri, Marie McLaughlin or the young Angela Gheorghiu, and as riveting as Teresa Stratas or Anna Netrebko.”
Finally we know what Brian Kellow used to do at Opera News: proofreading.
“A few weeks after the opening night of Otello in New York, The Washington Post convened a group of African–American opera singers to discuss the issue.”
“It’s in the ‘Behind the Scenes’ section of the Lady Gaga issue, involving Brian Mitchell, archivist and occasional child wrangler with the Houston Grand Opera.”
The winners of the ninth annual F. Paul Driscoll Awards for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence (or, as they are colloquially known, the “Opera News Awards”) have been revealed.
“F. Paul Driscoll, editor of Opera News [not pictured], is optimistic.”
Has it been a year already? Apparently so.
La Cieca has reviewed the parterre circulation numbers and she is delighted and not a little perplexed to note that the day of the Great Opera News Kerfuffle provided our site with the highest number of pageviews in history.
Brian Kellow‘s “Coda” piece in the current Opera News, summarized: “I’m so cranky that even namedropping has lost its thrill.” (Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera)
The bestowal of a bouquet of accolades upon James Levine is unsurprisingly the main thrust of the current Opera News (why, after all, should this month be different from any other in the rag’s 75 year history?) and given the plum of penning this poetical posy is the horticulturally apt writer Scott Rose, “author of…
Congratulations to Opera Chic, named “Essential Opera Blogger” in the current Opera News by a panel consisting of Brian Kellow and Tristan Kraft.
Lots of media news today, so let’s not waste any time! La Cieca congratulates Opera News on the occasion of the mag’s 75th anniversary this month, though your doyenne is willing to swear that the mag doesn’t look a day over 60!
It may seem quixotic that La Cieca subscribes to Opera News, and the print version at that, but, after all, the dear people there were kind enough to interview Our Own JJ last summer on the subject of this very cum-blog, so, well, noblesse oblige and all that, you know. Since the mag is showing…
See, La Cieca thinks Brian Kellow is asking for trouble when, in the second paragraph of his analysis of last March’s Slatkinshchina, he admits, “I did not attend the March 29 opening-night performance of La Traviata, nor did I listen to it on Sirius Radio.”
A brace of profiles in the March issue of Opera News engage the reader in a fascinating game of “the same, but different.” Simon Keenlyside and Paulo Szot are both baritones; both handsome, sexy men; and they’re both adept in classical and more modern musical theater forms. Both gentlemen are starring in new productions at…
