The voice of spring
“I come, I come! ye have called me long;
I come o’er the mountains, with light and song”
Reviews
Crying ‘Uncle’
Surely it was lightning in a bottle. The announcement that Steve Carell would appear at Lincoln Center’s Beaumont Theater playing the titular Uncle Vanya in Anton Chekhov’s classic play would, of course, be a box office windfall.
Miracle on 64th Street
Only connect! So sayeth E.M. Forster (via Margaret Wilcox) in Howard’s End.
Dinosaur surviving the crunch
I have a confession and you may need to sit down for it: Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita was one of the gateway drugs to my eventual opera fandom.
Yo soy Daniela
Mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack appeared at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater this past Thursday with pianist Keun-A Lee in a thoughtful and distinctly personal recital program presented by Vocal Arts DC.
Pulling some strings
When my press invite came for the Book of Mountains and Seas, the collaboration between Chinese born contemporary composer Huang Ruo, the vocal ensemble Ars Nova Copenhagen, and master puppeteer and production designer Basil Twist, I was in.
Havin’ a ball
Over the weekend, Opera Parallèle, San Francisco’s contemporary opera company, stayed true to their mission of “merging tradition and innovation to re-invent opera for a modern world” as they presented a world premiere double-bill cheekily titled Birds & Balls at SFJazz Center’s Miner Auditorium.
Hope is a thing with feathers
After a century of searching, the world has perhaps finally found a definitive Magda in ethereal soprano Ailyn Pérez.
Blow the house down
Hailed as the first opera by an African-American composer performed at the Metropolitan Opera, Fire Shut Up in My Bones was a huge audience and box office hit in the Fall of 2021 when it reopened the Met after two seasons shut down by COVID-19.
Baby crazy
Heartbeat Opera’s The Extinctionist — composed by Dan Schlosberg with a libretto by Amanda Quaid — is the first opera, as far as I know, to stage a pap smear.
Champagne tastes
Oh, La traviata, how do I love thee? Let me count the recordings.
Hear the dance
I confess to being a “bad” dance fan: over the decades I’ve learned that if I don’t love (or at least like) the music, I won’t love the dance.
At liberty to divulge
If it didn’t all work, it wouldn’t work at all.
Decadent genealogies
Arnold Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder and Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot are, in their different ways, the final decadent flowering of a musical tradition at its twilight.
Still glowin’, still crowin’, still goin’ strong
Matthew Polenzani returned triumphantly to his comfort zone in a Philadelphia Chamber Music Society recital on April 2.
Thoughts on La Gioconda: the others
Yes, there were other Giocondas if not of quite the same distinction. Chronologically…
Dancing at the edge of the world
Puccini’s schmaltziest, most melodic, most dramatically limp, most cynical, most obscure mature work
Du weisst, wo du mich wiederfinden kannst!
And what a luxury it is to experience this musically outstanding Parsifal with a cast of this caliber!
Character is destiny
La forza del destino concluded its run at the Metropolitan Opera with a significant cast change.
Brazilian brass lift
The past seems to be in conversation with the present.
Women on the verge of a nervous breakup
Not in my wildest dreams could I have come up with anything more homosexual than the sight of Almodóvar muse Rossy de Palma in a stage-length wedding gown onstage Madrid’s Teatro Real.
If on a winter’s night a traveler
The tragic speaker of Schubert’s Winterreise makes his fateful journey but once, yet some singers cannot help trodding the path again and again.
Win a Free Ticket to Opening Night at the Met!
Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen star in the Met's new Macbeth. We're giving away one ticket, so screw your courage to the sticking place and enter now!
