Obituary
Zack Woolfe of The New York Times remembers James Jorden
In voice, artistic sensibility and glamour, the singer was every inch a diva.
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.
The beloved concert and opera singer died earlier today.
The mixture of romance and realism in Sondheim songs, the revelation that while love could be grand and passionate it could also be mundane or inconvenient or mistimed or just plain embarrassing, was such a relief.
Steve adored puzzles, solving them and creating them, so it makes you wonder that this one continued to fester—was that so few of his songs attained the rank of “standard.”
When I think of Stephen Sondheim, so many of my memories are not simply about shows of his I loved and learned from—they are experiences that literally shaped my life.
The master of Broadway musical theater died suddenly earlier today at his home in Connecticut.
In the month and a half leading to Bernard Haitink’s passing on October 21, my AirPods constantly channeled a musical festival of sorts centered on the Dutch giant’s expansive discography.
The Slovak soprano, whose career spanned more than 50 years, died yesterday in Zurich. She was 74.
American soprano Gianna Rolandi died Sunday morning, according to a number of her friends and colleagues. She was 68.
April is the cruelest month, the song tells us—but this year, it was a week later. Ghenady Meirson, Philadelphia’s master of Russian Opera and coach extraordinaire, died on May 8.
The renowned interpreter of Wagner, Mozart and Strauss for more than four decades died yesterday.
We all lost a great champion of the arts as news arrived that Lois Kirschenbaum passed away on 27 March at the Beth Israel hospital.
The conductor and former music director of the Metropolitan Opera died on March 9.
Nathan Hull was an operatic Quixote who did not go it alone, but inspired bands of optimists, giving proper employment to the many worthy New Yorkers mad enough to study voice and pleasure rare elsewhere to those of us thrilled to take it in.
In related macabre news, (reportedly) gay tenor Sergej Larin died this weekend, and La Cieca has just heard an unconfirmed report that another gay tenor, Giuliano Ciannella, has also passed away.
Legendary opera administrator Joan Ingpen died on December 29 at the age of 91. The Telegraph has an appreciation of her life and career that includes this observation: “She had wonderful teeth that sparkled like diamonds when they caught the light.”
The legendary mezzo-soprano of the Russian Soviet period, Zara Dolukhanova, died last week at the age of 89. Though she excelled in brilliant Rossini roles in the opera house, her greatest success was as a recitalist. Dolukhanova’s broad repertoire included music from arie antiche to Prokofiev and Stravinsky; unusually for Soviet-era singers, she often included…
The Broadway baritone, star of Camelot, died yesterday at the age of 73. Goulet won a Tony Award for for the 1968 Kander and Ebb musical The Happy Time, and most recently appeared on Broadway as Georges in the 2004 revival of La Cage aux Folles. An obituary and appreciation of the performer can be…
Tribute to Pavarotti at Unnatural Acts of Opera
The American dramatic soprano is heard in the final scene of Daphne (R. Strauss) in a performance from Buenos Aires, 1948. Set Svanholm is Apollo; Erich Kleiber conducts. Rose Bampton sings Daphne
The American soprano, whose voice Toscanini called “the find of the century,” died Tuesday in Vienna. She is heard here singing “Crudele… Non mi dir” from a 1960 performance of Don Giovanni. Teresa Stich-Randall
Régine Crespin in Recital Wolf: Blumengruß – Der Schäfer – Die Spröde – Anakreons Grab -Epiphanias – Mignon I, II and III – Philine – Kennst du das Land Debussy: Le Promenoir des deux amants: Auprès de cette grotte sombre -Crois mon conseil, chère Climène – Je tremble en voyant ton visage Milhaud: Poèmes Juifs…
Actress, singer, arts advocate, socialite, TV personality (and New Orleans native) Kitty Carlisle Hart has died at the age of 96. La Carlisle made her Broadway debut in 1933 in the musical Champagne Sec (a version of Die Fledermaus), then went to Hollywood for a brief stay highlighted by her turn as “Rosa Castaldi” in…
