Reviews
The singers and the orchestra carry the show, but where do they carry it?
The Princeton Festival has long been a “Little Engine that Could,” but the current operatic offering, John Adams’ Nixon in China, is a good deal more than that.
One of the main problems with My Undying Love was that it did not appear to know what audience it was pitching to.
Stonewall threads some difficult needles with great success overall in this last installment of New York City Opera’s Pride Month Programming.
With the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Candide, they saved the best (of all possible worlds) for last.
Brigitte Fassbaender‘s sound is piquant and, I’d hazard to guess, instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with her work.
“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?” went the introduction to the 1940s radio program The Shadow, an apt description for the San Francisco Opera’s production of Rusalka.
Everett Quinton’s Galas is a star at the end of her tether, and she goes nova with the best.
In the triumphant American premiere of Orlando Generoso at the Boston Early Music Festival last week, the hippogriff was among the many stars of the show.
Elina Garanca was radiantly present at Carnegie Hall Friday night performing a ravishingly somber Rückert-Lieder with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the MET Orchestra.
Michael Fabiano is a boss. This is a fact.
An unusually provocative program by the Orchestra of St. Luke’s conducted by Bernard Labadie with soloists Lydia Teuscher and Benno Schachtner made my “return” Thursday evening an illuminating and rewarding experience at Zankel Hall.
Although stripped down, this comedy of manners was far from boring due to well-choreographed movements and actions of the characters.
“Tame” seemed to be the appropriate adjective to describe San Francisco Opera’s Carmen.
David Lang’s Prisoner of the State, which was premiered on Thursday night by the New York Philharmonic, places the issue of mass incarceration front and center, foregrounding the violence of the prison system, both physical and psychological.
We convoke for Dido and Aeneas in an arched tunnel a city block long, lit by candles in the many recesses.
The Wiener Staatsoper commemorated its 150th anniversary with a musically sensational presentation of Richard Strauss’ Die Frau Ohne Schatten.
La Traviata offered a cast of fresh debutantes and an uncommonly strong musical performance that could hardly be bettered.
Tosca, as it exists now, can’t be real, spontaneous drama-it’s just Camp.
Lise Davidsen, the young Norwegian soprano who won the Operalia competition in 2015, makes her debut as a recording artist with the Decca label in a new recital of Wagner and Strauss arias and orchestral songs.
Amore Opera, an old-fashioned, adventurous little company that performs ambitious and sometimes delectably obscure but worthy repertory at the Riverside Theatre, is now (through Sunday) presenting Un ballo in maschera.
The opera proved somewhat puzzling—the score representing more a collage of fragmented and incidental musical ideas, and the libretto a turgid, slow-moving mass of purple prose.
The Canadian Opera Company’s new production of Otello is a collection of welcome returns.
Daniel Thomas Davis’ The Impossible She, was a towering musical achievement, a hugely complex work packing a whopping political and intellectual punch.
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.
