Reviews
Rigoletto at Circo Massimo was my first opera since the lockdown started in March.
Such a sleek, polished finish is a testament to the incredible resources and experience at the Met’s disposal – to coordinate this livestream across two different continents so seamlessly and with such flair is very impressive indeed.
This video recording of Il trovatore is sensational for all the right and wrong reasons simultaneously.
Mr. Wilson’s production concept, according to his liner notes, has more to do with Paris at the time of the premiere and a “world of memory” than it does with the storytelling of civil war in medieval Spain.
Robert Wilson is many things: a visionary (certainly); an iconoclast, artist, director, and designer of sets, lighting, costumes, movement (and furniture). Yet his work is never boring (well, at least not intentionally).
I have seen all sorts of Boris Godunovs, but nothing quite like this.
On the first viewing of this Idomeneo, with a cast clad mostly in military khaki green set against a green sky, the eye starts to tire from the dullness of the surroundings.
Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana has always been a particular favorite, although I’ve only seen it staged once (and that by an amateur company the details of which I share spare you all, save to note that dinner was served during the performance.)
AVA met the challenge with a delightful, if necessarily truncated, video recital that allowed each singer to participate in the now-familiar Zoom platform.
Lady M, an Online Fantasia on Verdi’s Macbeth, Heartbeat Opera’s creative and thought-provoking foray into the Zoom opera scene, left me feeling alternately pensive, hopeful and somewhat uneasy, in a good way.
HERE’s Zoom opera, all decisions will be made by consensus, is not merely an opera written to be performed on a digital platform, but an opera that critiques the platform itself, laying bare all its social and aesthetic limitations.
With most of us dug in for the duration, there’s no better time to tuck into a CD box set of neglected treasures. Not that I needed an excuse, mind you.
While isolated opera-lovers intently navigate the deluge of streaming videos being made available, I’ve been listening rather than viewing.
Time to stop being coy, I think. You and I had quite different takeaways on the show, didn’t we?
For a show set during the hardscrabble 1930s, very few of the performances give off an air of downtroddedness.
As long as women have been preyed upon, Don Giovanni has been relevant.
It’s difficult to discuss Unknown Soldier without considering the impact of legacy.
We are in the midst of a titanic Beethoven onslaught prompted by the unstoppable need to commemorate the composer’s upcoming 250th birthday.
Ester, Liberatrice del Popolo Ebreo was presented in concert on Thursday night by Salon/Sanctuary Concerts in the Brotherhood Synagogue on Gramercy Park, in proper time for Purim.
Bess is clearly Angel Blue’s part—set in the richest and most shimmering upper middle portion of her voice, and optimally suited to her persona.
Not everyone is happy about the Beethoven sestercentennial.
That question hung in the air when Teatro de la Zarzuela Madrid revived Tomás Bretón’s opera Farinelli for first time since its premiere in 1902.
While last year’s finals were dominated by early nineteenth-century bel canto arias, this year’s finalists took on a remarkably broad range of music from a variety of repertoires.
VIctor Herbert demonstrates in this slight, affectionate piece a talent for keeping his musico-dramatic balls in the air, as Madeleine’s spirits juggle, fall, rise again, and droop to elegant resignation at the last.
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.
