review / performance
Pauline Viardot‘s Cendrillon hews closer to the Perrault original than either Rossini or Massenet’s more familiar retellings and is dainty in conception as a salon opera for her students.
By Harry Rose
2 comments
The crown jewel of this year’s Munich Festival is undoubtedly Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, which opened the Festival on June 29 and will close the Festival with an “Opera for All” screening on July 31.
Zachary James builds on his early career experience as a musical theater performer to deliver a thoughtfully crafted, blessedly restrained Quixote/Cervantes.
For the weeks between the announcement that the return of Wolf Trap Opera would, in part, take the form of a concert performance of Sweeney Todd and its opening at the Filene Center on Friday evening, I racked my brain: why Sweeney now?
By Harry Rose
Sponsored
Advertise on parterre box!
parterre box, “the most essential blog in opera” (New York Times), is now booking display advertising for 2021. Join Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, BAM, New York City Opera and many others in reaching your target audience through parterre box.
Today’s listener has heard the scores of the classic Westerns that borrowed from Puccini (and Wagner!) to create the sound of the myth of the West.
By Ben Miller
March 2, 2020 – June 18, 2021: Those 15 months were the longest I’ve gone without attending a live opera performance since high school.
When LA Opera finally decided to put a toe in the water and mount its first production since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, it was Igor Stravinsky‘s opera/oratorio Oedipus Rex.
By Patrick Mack
If you have not been following the exploits of Teatro Grattacielo during lockdown, it’s not because they haven’t been exploitatory all over the place.
By John Yohalem
Faith. The title of this fourth and final chapter of Adam Guettel’s Myths and Hymns made me pause for reflection.
By David Fox
I’ve enjoyed these streamed recitals, warts and all, and always appreciate the chance to watch performers let their hair down, so to speak.
The Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions were one of the last events I attended in person in 2020. Now, one year on, the competition has returned, this time in an online format, and this time with an entirely new name: The Metropolitan Opera Eric and Dominique Laffont Competition, after the event’s new sponsors.
Opera is back, baby, and it’s good to be home!
The great Dalai Lama once said, “whenever there is a challenge, there is also an opportunity to face it, to demonstrate and develop our will and determination.”
“Spring has sprung,” announces MasterVoices’ director Ted Sperling with a smile at the beginning of Part III. And indeed, even the doomsayers among us (and I count myself one) can’t help but feel signs of cautious optimism, as the world we knew slowly but noticeably begins to re-emerge.
By David Fox
