Performance Reviews
Reviews of operatic, vocal, and classical performances at the Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, all across America, and around the world.
Reviews of operatic, vocal, and classical performances at the Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, all across America, and around the world.
Despite some fine performances, Così fan tutte at the Livermore Valley Opera doesn’t quite click into place.
Akhnaten has lost none of its power or glitz at the Los Angeles Opera.
Strong performances at Opera Naples can’t overcome the cringey nostalgia of Derrick Wang‘s Scalia/Ginsburg.
Will Liverman and Kiera Duffy brought an eclectic program to their jovial post-blizzard recital at Rhode Island College.
A uniformly strong cast triumphs over a dull production of Don Carlos at the Dallas Opera.
Baritone John Brancy smoothly traverses the American songbook at Carnegie Hall.
Samantha Hankey’s Composer is the standout in the Wiener Staatsoper’s episodically sublime Ariadne auf Naxos revival.
Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s Grammy-winning Intelligence makes a largely successful East Coast debut at Virginia Opera.
The Ralph Fiennes production of Eugene Onegin at the Paris Opera is just…fine.
The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra under conductor Stéphane Denève plays up the schtick in a concert performance of The Magic Flute – and obscures Mozart’s magic in the process.
Joyce DiDonato makes the most of Kevin Puts‘s trite new Emily Dickinson monodrama.
That Trump opera at the Staatsoper Hamburg is lazy activism at its finest, we fear.
An excellent Věc Makropulos at Opéra de Lille makes the case for the vitality and necessity of France’s regional companies.
San Diego Opera presents a strongly directed and cast revival of Il barbiere di Siviglia.
In Modena, Teodor Currentzis‘s Ring ohne Worte foregoes words but not gimmickry.
Marina Rebeka comes tantalizingly close to triumph in Cherubini’s Médée at Théâtre des Champs Elysées.
Under the baton of Nicholas McGegan, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale proves they have a magic touch in a program of Rameau and Handel.
Austin Opera’s moving production of Fiddler on the Roof grounds itself in lived tradition, to great effect.
Davóne Tines leads a thought-provoking program in San Francisco reconsidering patriotism, dissent, and spirituality as the United States faces down its quarter millennium crisis.
La Monnaie’s flamboyantly busy new production of Benvenuto Cellini reads more burlesque than Berlioz.
Christof Loy’s production of Pablo Luna’s gender-bending Orientalist farce Benamor proves to be irresistible.
Die Entführung aus dem Serail boldly goes where no opera has gone before at Pacific Opera Project.
Despite some complications, the Deutsche Oper exhumes buried treasure in Franz Schreker’s Der Schatzgräber.
Iván Fischer‘s Mahler 3 with the Budapest Festival Orchestra at Carnegie Hall is memorable but crude, sometimes exhilarating and often tedious.
Tell us: What’s your favorite Verdi performance?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
