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.
SoCal goes Scandi in two recent concerts, with one featuring an appearance by Lise Davidsen.
An invigorating double bill at the San Francisco Symphony challenges how Bach “should” be performed.
Golda Schultz soldiers through illness at the New York Philharmonic.
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra explores love and death in an intense, intelligent program featuring soprano Corinne Winters.
The embattled Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra bring Adams and Dvorák to Carnegie Hall.
A new DVD recording of La Juive boasts considerable musical strengths in spite of a frustrating production.
Daring reimaginings of Cocteau and Wilde take the stage at the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Golda Schultz casts darkness in an alluring light in an intimate recital at the New Orleans Opera Festival.
Kaija Saariaho’s spectral, shattering Innocence makes its Metropolitan Opera debut.
The inaugural New Orleans Opera Festival goes big across the Big Easy.
Back-to-back casts in the Metropolitan Opera’s revivals of Madama Butterfly and La traviata offer ample opportunity for soprano-gazing.
A first-time operagoer is lured to Thaïs at Opera Idaho by the promise of a new experience… and Neil, the Burmese python
Led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Yoann Combémorel, the Curtis Symphony Orchestra proves themselves the equal of any major American orchestra in a program of Mahler, Wagner, and Dawson.
Madama Butterfly confronts anime, virtual reality, and weeaboos in Matthew Ozawa‘s bold production at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
Barrie Kosky’s zany production of The Nose time-steps back onto the Komische Oper Berlin stage.
Calixto Bieito‘s production of Idomeneo at La Monnaie is anchored by a committed cast, but gets swept up in pseudo-psychoanalytic imagery — and foot fetishism.
Washington National Opera offered a searing production of Robert Ward’s opera The Crucible, directed by WNO Artistic Director Francesca Zambello, as the second installment in the company’s next chapter.
Opera directors could learn a thing or two from Deaf Broadway’s vivacious performance of Jeanine Tesori‘s Violet.
Lisette Oropesa, Piotr Buszewski, and Luca Salsi feature in a rote revival of Michael Mayer‘s cloying production of La traviata.
El último sueño de Frida y Diego at the Lyric Opera of Chicago is a visual and sonic wonder, but a weak libretto dampens its effect.
Kent Nagano gives a boost to the Opéra national de Paris‘s revival of Nixon in China.
In its first production since departing the Kennedy Center, the Washington National Opera presents a new adaptation of “King of Ragtime” Scott Joplin’s opera Treemonisha.
Matthias Pintscher’s Nuit sans aube at the Opéra Comique conjures up plenty of atmosphere — but not much else.
A sublime Reginald Mobley and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra are a balm for troubled times in a program of baroque selections and spirituals.
Tell us: What’s your favorite Verdi performance?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
