Questo e Quello
“Trove Thursday” presents a broadcast of Benvenuto Cellini (in English) starring Berlioz tenor par excellence Michael Spyres as the flamboyant goldsmith.
The opening of the 2019 Bayreuth season.
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.
Born on this day in 1894 soprano Yvonne Printemps.
Alexander Neef (currently Canadian Opera Company’s General Director and Santa Fe Opera’s Artistic Director) will succeed Stéphane Lissner as chief at the Opéra de Paris.
Countertenor Jakub Jozef Orlinski will jump into Glyndebourne Opera’s production of Handel’s Rinaldo after mezzo-soprano Elizabeth DeShong pulled out “for personal reasons.”
Happy 50th birthday singer and songstress Kristin Chenoweth.
“Turandot is visibly stirred by Liù’s self-sacrifice and she caresses her dead body. Just after Calaf kisses her, she takes her headdress off and comes out as a gay woman.”
In this recital, the Polish bass-baritone Tomasz Konieczny and his pianist Lech Napierala present the world premiere recording of Stanislaw Baranczak‘s Podróz Zimowa (Winter’s Journey), which weds the poet’s meticulously crafted poetry to the music of Franz Schubert.
Happy 47th birthday soprano Anja Harteros.
Born on this day in 1849 poet Emma Lazarus.
Happy National Ice Cream Day!
The Bayerische Staatsorchester with General Music Director Kirill Petrenko plays music by George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Frederick Loewe, Leonard Bernstein, Rodgers and Hammerstein and more.
Happy 81st birthday actress Diana Rigg.
The four leading roles in La Straniera were all attractively cast by Teatro Nuovo with fresh, promising young voices that did not seem quite ready for the big time.
Operawire.
Born on this day in 1868 soprano Florence Foster Jenkins.
Trove Thursday offers Bellini’s La Sonnambula with Anna Moffo (San Francisco 1960) and Anna Netrebko (Vienna 2006).
Why did I mostly want to close my eyes and just listen?
Born on this day in 1821 mezzo-soprano, pedagogue and composer Pauline Viardot.
“Will no one shed a tear for obsolescent analog technology?”
Born on this day in 1914 soprano Eleanor Steber.
Tannhäuser pales beside the other great Wagnerian operas in the degree to which it has innovated the Regisseur’s vocabulary for set design and dramaturgy.
Can a work with indisputably great music fail to add up to a successful opera? I puzzled over that Sunday during Teatro Nuovo’s essential concert staging of Rossini’s La Gazza Ladra at SUNY Purchase.
Born on this day in 1911 actress, dancer and singer Ginger Rogers.
