Reviews
Carmen in Brussels is dramatically vibrant, if vocally stretched
A muted production challenges a talented cast in San Francisco Opera’s Idomeneo
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.
A starry concert Aïda in Baltimore proves unusually polished
John Yohalem reports on Catapult Opera’s satiating San Giovanni Battista
Opera Director and Detroit Opera Artistic Director Yuval Sharon begins his recent book A New Philosophy of Opera by imagining a future – some forty to fifty years from now – in which opera ceases to exist as an art form.
Contrasting approaches to Regie duke it out in Cavalleria rusticana & Pagliacci and Rusalka in Munich
Krzysztof Warlikowski‘s Der Rosenkavalier at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées surpasses even Nigel Wilkinson‘s high ‘WTF threshhold’
Eli Jacobson on a luscious evening of early Strauss with Guntram at Carnegie Hall
Francesco Filidei’s new opera The Name of the Rose struggles to bridge the past and the present in Milan
A plodding La bohème in San Francisco never quite takes off
A double bill of rare Bizet works in Paris is not something any of us needs to do more than once
Yannick Nézet-Séguin leads the Philadelphia Orchestra, Stuart Skelton, and Nina Stemme in a Tristan und Isolde for the ages
For Niel Rishoi, a new CD of Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi by Eleonora Burrato for Pentatone can’t help but invite unflattering comparisons
West Bay Opera’s Otello punches well above its weight
An impressively well-rounded revival of Francesca Zambello‘s production of Porgy and Bess concludes the Washington National Opera season
The Met’s mostly successful revivals of The Queen of Spades and La bohème showcase the returns of Sonya Yoncheva and Corinne Winters
An innovative score and fluid production by Denyce Graves-Montgomery are highlights of Virginia Opera’s production of Loving v. Virginia
Cameron Kelsall reports on a transcendent Jenufa from the Cleveland Orchestra
The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs at the Kennedy Center: not a poorly made opera, but so relentlessly mid.
Asmik Grigorian’s scorching turn in Il trittico in Paris has Nigel Wilkinson wondering, ‘what is it that makes Americans so weepy?’
With tight, jazzy orchestrations, a queer-coded Mephistopheles, and sassy modern recitative, Heartbeat Opera’s fast 100-minute Faust delivers Gounod in miniature, minus some of the schmaltz.
Buoyed by a cast of emerging stars, the Metropolitan Opera’s revival of Il Barbiere di Siviglia asserted a key trait of this ubiquitous buffo: it is a young person’s opera.
An impressive cast blurs binaries as John Adams‘s ambitious Antony and Cleopatra arrives at the Met
Christopher Corwin on three stylish sopranos delighting audiences live in New York and on recording in a trio of new releases.
