It seems that François Girard has been watching a little too much Star Wars lately. His new production of Lohengrin, which opened at the Metropolitan Opera Sunday afternoon, reduced Wagner’s opera to a knockoff space opera, full of hackneyed sci-fi tropes and B-rated futurist apologue.
Updating opera settings is, of course, expected; I’d wager in most houses more often than not it’s now the norm. Still, few in my experience have the specificity and local immediacy of Don Pasquale at the Academy of Vocal Arts.
A stack of noteworthy recent baroque vocal CDs on my desk has been staring at me for weeks, so I’m tackling them on Handel’s birthday before the Met roars back into action beginning this weekend.
What’s the status of the American Dream nowadays? Did it ever really exist? If it’s dead, why isn’t it gone?
On Saturday at Alice Tully Hall, Julliard 415, the school’s top-flight period-instrument ensemble, was joined by students from the Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts and Juilliard Drama for a rare semi-staging of King Arthur.
Ghost sex is part of the popular zeitgeist.
Baritone Will Liverman is becoming a real Renaissance man.
Now the opera world can have a taste of what an immersive opera looks like, as Opera Parallèle opened their spectacular world premiere of Everest: An Immersive Experience .
There is a moment about 75% of the way through the Rome Narrative where you can almost literally hear Tannhäuser’s stomach turn.
For anyone who thought that Downton Abbey, with its plot lines divided between the gentry and their faithful (or not-so) servants was somehow unique, that particular tale, and lo its many variations, has been told in one form or another since Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais put quill to paper in 1778 with La Folle Journée, ou Le Mariage de Figaro.
Director Richard Jones’ well-traveled and visually arresting production of Humperdinck’s 1893 opera Hansel and Gretel has returned to Lyric Opera of Chicago after a 10-year absence.
Kurt Weill, Ira Gershwin, and Moss Hart’s 1941 musical Lady in the Dark is a psychoanalytical romantic comedy. It simultaneously mocks and takes seriously the power of looking inward to understand oneself, a process which can be silly, frustrating and life-changing in turn.
For me, Fedora is the perfect opera
When I saw that Richard Bonynge AC CBE, conductor and musicologist supreme, had authored a book titled Chalet Monet about the home he shared with his wife, La Dame Joan Sutherland OM AC DBE, in Les Avants, Switzerland I practically had to wipe my chin.
What happens when you attend a performance and it doesn’t engage you?
Joyce DiDonato’s Eden immerses listeners within a centuries-spanning musical meditation that channels the majesty of our natural world.
Shortly before Tuesday’s performance of Salome at La Scala, I did something I rarely do: I took a mirror selfie.
It doesn’t get more classic than John Dexter‘s Dialogues des Carmélites.
On paper, the Met’s revival of L’elisir d’amore looked like a lovely evening. And at times it was—a few scenes hinted at what it could be and what it might yet become.
We constantly wonder whether the young man will embrace him—or slit his throat.
Du Yun is the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer of Angel’s Bone. Her new opera, In Our Daughter’s Eyes, a one-act monodrama for bass-baritone and an orchestra of six, opened the current tenth Prototype Festival, in a performance at the Baruch Performing Arts Center, starring erstwhile Met regular Nathan Gunn.
Plink. A marble drops into a bowl. A brief yelp from glass, and a dozen, a hundred, a thousand years pass. Eventually the bowl is full of marbles, each one a tiny globe.
The first time I heard of Ermonela Jaho it was as the ultimate understudy. In the aughts it seemed that every time Angela Gheorghiu or Anna Netrebko or whoever canceled, Jaho was standing by.
Following new productions of Tosca in 2017, Adriana Lecouvreur in 2018, and the Anna Netrebko-led Puccini orgy of 2019, New Year’s Eve at the Met has come to signify that verismo, as this school tends to be known, is still kicking.
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!
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).
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