Reviews
With tight, jazzy orchestrations, a queer-coded Mephistopheles, and sassy modern recitative, Heartbeat Opera’s fast 100-minute Faust delivers Gounod in miniature, minus some of the schmaltz.
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Buoyed by a cast of emerging stars, the Metropolitan Opera’s revival of Il Barbiere di Siviglia asserted a key trait of this ubiquitous buffo: it is a young person’s opera.
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WIN TICKETS to Kissin Shostakovich Tribute at Carnegie Hall
Legendary pianist Evgeny Kissin leads an all-star lineup featuring some delicious vocal rarities, with soprano Susanna Phillips, mezzo Sasha Cooke, tenor John Matthew Myers, and bass Alexander Roslavets. We’re giving away two pairs of tix!
An impressive cast blurs binaries as John Adams‘s ambitious Antony and Cleopatra arrives at the Met
Christopher Corwin on three stylish sopranos delighting audiences live in New York and on recording in a trio of new releases.
An uneven new cast can’t dim the glow of Richard Eyre‘s incisive Le nozze di Figaro at the Met
The Met Orchestra Chamber Ensemble’s Das Lied von der Erde skirts the sublime at Carnegie Hall
The Jupiter Ensemble with Lea Desandre and Anthony Roth Costanzo offers sleek and sexy HIP inaugurates the Frick Collection’s new Stephen A. Schwartzman Auditorium
Before stopping at Carnegie Hall this weekend, The English Concert returned to the Bay Area last week with a fiery performance of Giulio Cesare
Elza van den Heever and Peter Mattei (and the stage elevator) elevate an assertive, if not definitive, new Salome at the Met
Lise Davidsen‘s singular Senta dominates the forces of the Norwegian National Opera in a roiling new recording of Der fliegende Holländer out now on Decca Classics
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.
Elina Garanca is back at the Met for the first time since 2020 — her Amneris is, in a word, sensational.
A fine Don Giovanni at Opera Philadelphia rounds out the company’s inaugural season under Anthony Roth Costanzo
Opera San José (OSJ) concluded its eclectic 41st Season with another first, Héctor Armienta’s Zorro, which received its Northern California premiere at the California Theatre on Friday, April 19th.
Breaking the Waves and Tannhaüser at Houston Grand Opera are a can’t-miss doubleheader of sex and miracles.
The long-awaited Broadway musical adaptation of the NBC series Smash is “not Bombshell – it’s just a bomb,” according to David Fox and Cameron Kelsall.
A feast of whimsy for the recently resurrected in Aaron Siegel’s new opera, Rainbird
Félix Fourdrain‘s “féerie” Les Contes de Perrault by the Frivolités Parisiennes is as fun for adults as it is for children
By the time the curtain rose on Verdi’s Luisa Miller last Sunday in Washington Concert Opera’s final show of the season, the originally announced line-up was about as accurate as a federal agency org chart from February.
Don Carlos returns to the Opéra National de Paris and it’s an unusually happy occasion
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.
The nail-biting adventures of Voltaire’s titular hero Candide are hardly more circuitous than those faced by Leonard Bernstein’s 1956 Broadway musical adaptation.
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Pick a little, talk a little
Following the successful launch of the new regular feature The Talk of the Town in January, the team at the box is inviting contributions for a new quarter of operatic potpourri.
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Yannick Nézet-Séguin leads an epic Wagner opera concert
Yannick leads The Philadelphia Orchestra, superstars Nina Stemme and Stuart Skelton, and world-class singers in a rare concert performance that reveals every detail and nuance of this richly harmonic score. Experience the passion and cold-hearted revenge of this scandalous opera. Get tickets now!
