Reviews
The San Francisco Opera, perhaps incidentally, continued their exploration of operas based on literary works by mounting the revival of Giacomo Puccini’s first success, Manon Lescaut.
Since 1934, Philadelphia’s Academy of Vocal Arts has been preparing emerging artists for operatic careers.
What is opera for if not to commemorate a national epic tragedy and triumph?
Sunday’s matinee at Lyric Opera of Chicago was my first experience of Heggie and McNally’s 2000 opera Dead Man Walking. It certainly won’t be my last.
Friday evening’s Met premiere of Akhnaten was a resounding triumph and an outstanding testament to Philip Glass’s enduring operatic vision.
While Russell Thomas admirably goes toe to toe with Otello (and Otello) in a thoughtful and self-aware way, the assumption feels like a work in progress if not an outright mismatch with his vocal gifts.
In recent weeks local and visiting groups performed refreshing rarities by Zelenka, Domenico Scarlatti and Telemann so engagingly that one didn’t miss the old standbys at all.
Come ye addicts of melody! After long eclipse, Bel Canto shines again!
Zauberland: An Encounter with Schumann’s Dichterliebe touched on themes of forced migration, loss, exile, and dehumanization.
Sunday’s Richard Tucker Gala at Carnegie Hall was unusually satisfying despite a less than usually superstarry line-up.
On Site Opera’s Turn of the Screw, an immersive production set in the Bronx’s Wave Hill Gardens, featured mostly good singing and a few directorial and technological missteps.
At Friday night’s performance of La Bohème at the Met, the cast seemed to lean into (and gamble upon) the production’s enduring popularity.
Like any good gay theatergoers, we seek out Tennessee Williams revivals with the fervor of truffle-sniffing pigs.
Opéra Royal revives Grétry’s Richard Cœur-de-lion, one of the finest examples of the opéra comique genre.
Sunday evening Los Angeles Opera presented tenor Javier Camarena in recital to a wildly enthusiastic audience from the stage of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
How does one make a performance of standard opera repertoire like Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro feel “fresh?”
My first-ever Met Sunday opera brought the welcome return of Gluck’s sublime Orfeo ed Euridice in an enchanting afternoon that combined elegant conducting, joyous dancing and Jamie Barton’s extraordinary hero.
Christian Gerhaher delivers a Kindertotenlieder of such conciliatory tact that it erases all others.
I find it difficult to experience Madama Butterfly without also experiencing an odd fracturing of the self.
At the Park Avenue Armory, Barbara Hannigan chose to sing works that tested her metal in odd corners of vocalism.
In El Barbero de Sevilla, as given through the weekend by the New Camerata Opera, there is far too much comic dialogue, all of it in English and none of it sparkling.
Hannah Lash’s latest opera, which premiered at the Miller Theater on Wednesday night, was a musical and dramatic misfire.
Little Shop of Horrors loses its necessary edge when it’s wrested from the gritty world of its creation.
A sense of celebration was definitely in the air last Thursday at the Vienna State Opera.
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.
