Hold! Enough!
The timing for Boston Lyric Opera’s production of Macbeth this weekend was perfect for Halloween, though the show itself at the Emerson Colonial Theatre was decidedly less spooky.
Performance Reviews
Reviews of operatic, vocal, and classical performances at the Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, all across America, and around the world.
Ain’t no mountain high enough
A new production of La sonnambula at the Metropolitan Opera is musically charming if dramatically confounding.
Only vaulting ambition
Macbeth at the Festival Verdi in Parma aims big — on a small scale
The 500 Fingers of Dr. H
Surely you agree that piano concerti are inherently political.
Moor is more
A pair of Otellos – in Madrid and Parma – is a study in contrasts.
It all began tonight
West Side Story opened LA Opera’s 40th anniversary season with fury and flair
Storybored
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay was, somehow, a fun night at the opera—just not one that felt specifically operatic.
Reunited and it feels so good
When Angela Meade and Michael Fabiano first sang Lucia together as students at AVA few would have predicted that they would go on to sing Turandot 16 years later.
Museum quality
Opera Philadelphia’s Il viaggio a Reims in a nutshell: Hyperactive, confusing, and distracting from (and sometimes for) the singers? Yes. Imaginative, wildly entertaining, and musically rewarding? Absolutely.
The rain in Spain
Wolf Trap Opera concluded its 2025 summer season last month with a production of Carmen that was vocally strong, though not entirely dramatically satisfying, amid challenging weather.
One-woman Brutus and Cassius
Anna Pirozzi and Luca Salsi reunite in blazing form in Tosca at the Teatro San Carlo
Act of contrition
The 25th anniversary revival of Dead Man Walking at San Francisco Opera is most moving in its quietest moments
Self-made woman
In the pursuit of clowning, Anthony Roth Costanzo’s Galas may have lost sight of “the seriousness of the theme.”
All about her father
Adela Zaharia and Amartuvshin Enkhbat shine brightly in San Francisco Opera’s opening night Rigoletto.
A smoking Traviata
Restrictions encourage creative staging, for which the Berkshire Opera Festival is renowned.
Marriage is what brings us together today
Le nozze di Figaro in Santa Fe is a light and kindly revival while The Turn of the Screw is crisp and atmospheric
Operation desert storm
The Santa Fe Opera’s fine first Die Walküre finds Wagner in America at a crossroads.
Jester to me
Rigoletto at The Santa Fe Opera is a near miss.
If you’re cold, they’re cold
La bohème at The Santa Fe Opera feels warmed over in more ways than one.
Sing out, Louise
Christof Loy‘s Louise in Aix-en-Provence scratches at the urban– and operatic– unconscious
¡Sí, se puede!
The world premiere of Dolores and Charpentier‘s David and Jonathan bring the heat to West Edge Opera’s 2025 Festival.
Cross my heart and hope to die
Wolf Trap Opera’s stirring production of Dialogues des Carmélites was a welcome respite from a brutally hot and humid DC summer.
Shadows of a doubt
R.B. Schlather‘s shadowy production with Heartbeat Opera at the Williamstown Theatre Festival proves that Vanessa might be coming into its own at last
Gonna build a heaven from a little hell
Tobias Kratzer‘s Das Rheingold in Munich kicks off a Ring for the post-secular age
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).