Reviews
This month, both the Paris Opéra and the Opéra-Comique are mounting seminal works about unhinged anti-heroines who meet their downfall after falling head-over-heels for an unavailable, deeply unattainable man – Salome, in the case of the Opéra; and Armide, in the case of the Opéra-Comique.
Teatro Nuovo took a big risk in a bad way on Wednesday with its revival of Rossini’s Maometto II.
The revival of Don Carlo(s) which opened on November 3 restored the translated Italian text and the cut 1882 four-act revision not seen at the Met since Rudolf Bing’s last season in 1972.
If it is true that there are few respectable ways for people over 40 without small children to celebrate Halloween, a performance of Richard Strauss’ pioneering horror opera Elektra belongs on the short list.
The pandemic had different effects on different people.
Dame Ethel Smyth’s third opera, The Wreckers, opened at Houston Grand Opera on October 28 and runs through November 11.
Come back, Big Clock! We need you more than ever!
Why did Ted Sperling and MasterVoices choose to perform an old warhorse like Carmen which has been produced almost continuously over decades just up the street at Lincoln Center?
In George Balanchine’s Allegro Brillante, the dancers are dancing even before the curtain goes up.
The audience greeted the opening night of Omar with more genuine enthusiasm than I have ever seen at Los Angeles Opera.
Philippe Jaroussky mentioned introducing his encores that he has not appeared in New York in 12 years.
“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays” – Soren Kierkegaard
We watch Peter Grimes being made into a deviant— a process that can take place through the mechanism of the law, but often happens outside of it through social processes.
Stefan Vinke brings to Tristan an indefatigable heldentenor of sturdy, muscular brilliance and a physical intensity that allowed him to fearlessly traverse this complex character’s broad emotional compass.
This is likely the best Giargiari Bel Canto competition year in my experience, evidenced in several important ways.
In his attempts to be clever, and to overstuff Leopoldstadt with a dictionary’s worth of marginalia, Tom Stoppard never lingers on a character or storyline long enough to develop it into something worth caring about.
Cost of Living, the Pulitzer Prize–winning play by Martyna Majok now on Broadway, overflows with complexity. It begins with the title.
Whoever thought Verdi’s Il trovatore needed an injection of humor to make it complete?
Gianandrea Noseda leads seasoned Wagnerians in Andreas Homoki’s stark production of Die Walküre for Zurich Opera.
David McVicar’s 2017 production of Tosca returned to the Met on Tuesday night, with an able and watchable, if not transcendent cast.
People turn up at a cancer hospital on the worst day of their lives. In I’m Revolting, a moving and often unsettling world premiere from Atlantic Theatre Company, playwright Gracie Gardner dissects the fears and motivations of patients and their caregivers with surgical precision.
Yuval Sharon at Boston Lyric Opera has brilliantly found an interpretative middle ground for La bohème by presenting the acts in reverse order.
Both the mise-en-scène and the musical direction amplified the absolute worst tendencies of the Opéra Comique’s Lakmé in the most tasteless and baffling ways.
Michael Spyres’s nobly moving Idomeneo wasn’t just a bravura triumph: singing strongly throughout, he brought more colors to his portrayal of the tortured king than I had experienced from others in the Ponnelle production.
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.
