Unequal tooning
There is sensory overload, and very little humanity.
Reviews
Open and clothes case
From an exposure standpoint, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the best thing to happen to opera since Beverly Sills.
Witchy women
You’d think after nearly 40 years of opera going I’d have seen almost everything.. .twice. Yet I found myself at LA Opera Tuesday night for a special presentation of George Frideric Handel’s Alcina which was my first live experience with one of his operas.
‘Morning’ is broken
Morning Sun often feels as occluded and distancing as the austere, featureless set on which it’s performed.
The high and the mighty
Last Wednesday the 92nd Street Y presented the friendliest-ever episode of American Gladiators when Lawrence Brownlee and Michael Spyres continued their bel canto bromance with a delirious (almost) all-Rossini recital accompanied by Myra Huang.
Sachs appeal
Last night’s cast of Die Meistersinger at the Met, dominated by the irascible, unbeatable duo of Michael Volle and Johannes Martin Kränzle as Sachs and Beckmesser, did much to enliven Otto Schenk’s creaky, nearly 30-year-old production.
A dream deferred
In an era when the Metropolitan Opera cannot cast an Aida, Trovatore or Forza consistently, New Amsterdam Opera managed to cast large, attractive and fully technically capable voices in all the cruelly demanding principal roles in I Vespri Siciliani!
Do you believe in magic?
Remember that time you went to the opera and the whole evening was like magic? Saturday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion probably ranks among my greatest nights in the theater and I’m finding the superlatives in my thesaurus inadequate to the task.
A seacoast of Bohemia
The people—I assume most of them were natives—seemed pretty happy at La Boheme at the San Carlo on Saturday night. For one thing, the theater was packed to the top tier, all of us masked (vigili di fuoco—firemen—made sure of that)
The big cube
Ludwig van Beethoven’s “rescue opera” Fidelio was presented by San Francisco Opera as their first new production of the season last Thursday in reinterpreted fashion.
Lehman’s terms
The Lehman Trilogy had me in its thrall from the moment the lights went up. It’s absolutely spellbinding. That’s not to say I endorse it wholeheartedly, though.
Turandot doesn’t exist
It’s back to business as usual at the Met, for better and for worse.
Lady willpower
Hie thee hither to the Lyric Opera House!
Hate-watch
I can’t imagine anyone watching this two-hour schlockfest at home and then dropping $150 for the privilege to see it again, masked and in an uncomfortable chair.
The sonic clash never resolves itself
The cabaret at Saint Ann’s Warehouse delivered frothy fun and a dollop of pathos with Anthony Roth Costanzo and Justin Vivian Bond in Only an Octave Apart.
A wig and a prayer
A snarky commentator might dub last night at the Met “Boris of the divo hair flip” but that would do a disservice to a serious, often effective performance of the challenging original version of Mussorgsky’s masterpiece.
Playing with ‘Fire’
With composer Terence Blanchard and librettist Kasi Lemmons‘ incendiary Fire Shut Up in My Bones, the Met makes long overdue history and Will Liverman ascends to superstardom.
The brew that is true
This is an exuberant, uplifting, and joyous Elisir, and, for once, it was actually laugh-out-loud funny.
Real Housewives of Verismo
New Camerata Opera is presenting its first staged and indoor program in some time, at “The Muse,” a lofty cabaret space up against a cemetery in Bushwick, and their singers sound like they’ve been champing at the bit for eighteen months and are bursting to vocalize!
Widow’s talk
Call me Mary Quite Contrary if you want, but as we finally see live performances coming back, I’m reflecting with gratitude and even some nostalgia on the way COVID quarantine forged a path for entrepreneurial performance companies to recalibrate and deliver their work through streaming platforms.
Goodbye, Nostalgia!
The program was set around themes of loss, of unfulfilled wishes, the endurance of loss, triumphant or depressed.
Uncloistered
Let’s all cast our minds back to March of 2020. Or, better, let’s not.
Letting their hair down
After the break the ladies stepped up their game so much that it elevated the night into legendary status: definitely one for the books!
Great and happy, but not quite live
This was a great and happy event, but it wasn’t so much a musical one.
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!
I’ll take the fall
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).
