Reviews
We open in a war room that resembled nothing so much as a parking garage. Amneris’s boudoir was certainly recognizable as such but I’d be hard-pressed to pinpoint the location of the Triumphal Scene other than the inside of a large discothèque.
The Met brought back 2019 smash Akhnaten last night, with nearly the exact same cast and creative team, and with nearly the same knockout effect of three years ago.
It was Matthew Jocelyn’s libretto, with its disorientingly deconstructive approach to its source text, that gave Brett Dean’s Hamlet its identity.
It’s maybe not a surprise that Carmen is neither a good vocal nor temperamental fit for Isabel Leonard.
It’s nice to see Sony Classical backing a serious operatic soprano and not some crossover refugee from Britain’s Got Talent or another syrupy Christmas album from the world’s reigning Heldentenor.
I wonder why many New Yorkers have been led to believe that the only Handel conductor in the world is Harry Bicket.
Sondra Radvanovsky is very special here!
The Met’s revival of Turandot on Saturday night was surprisingly contentious.
Reunited and it feels so good!
“We came through the Depression by the skin of our teeth! One more tight squeeze like that and where will we be?”
Ms. Damrau unleashed a Blitzkrieg of charm upon her audience.
Joyce DiDonato admits that she is “a problem solver, a dreamer, and—yes I’m a belligerent optimist.”
With no disrespect to Nadine Sierra, who as Lucia acquits herself honorably if not magically in vocal terms, the undisputed cause célèbre here is director Simon Stone.
Why is so twinkling, tuneful a score so little known?
This is more than just a revival—it’s a reinvigoration of what I consider to be one of the best works of the last 50 years.
Ireland’s Wexford Festival Opera marked its 70th birthday in 2021 by presenting four prima donnas who made important early appearances at the festival in solo recitals across the globe.
She Loves Me can take a beating.
Saturday’s performance of Le nozze di Figaro at the Met mined the humor from Mozart’s divine setting of Beaumarchais’s play about a crazy day in the Almaviva household.
On this past, rainy Thursday, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s delivered a really rather extraordinary performance of the St. Matthew Passion. To me, this evening was a fascinating exploration of work.
From the multiple standing ovations, to say nothing of the gentleman in the front row waving the Mexican flag, I can safely say that a very good time was had by all.
Nina Stemme’s Elektra always seemed the sanest individual onstage never quite giving over to obsession or hysteria with a good line in mordant sarcasm and contempt.
A co-production of Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Metropolitan Opera, and Los Angeles Opera, Fire Shut Up In My Bones blazed into Chicago as a stunning, highly emotional and moving performance.
People these days often exclaim “…..is everything!” but often it feels like gross hyperbole. But surely anyone who has seen Mark Morris’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato since it premiered in 1989 would agree that it is indeed everything!
I was reminded at the Met’s season premiere of Eugene Onegin Friday night always to expect the unexpected.
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.
