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.
“The distance between dreams and reality is called action.” – Brian Tracy
Witnessing William Christie guide his orchestra and singers was truly one of this performance’s greatest highlights.
Opera took center stage on the final weekend of the Philadelphia Orchestra season.
A work that skimps on profundity need not be devoid of entertainment value, and Madrid’s charismatic soloists and musicians more than capably deliver on this front.
The score for Innocence was menacing yet comforting, and, essentially, violent and peaceful at the same time
You can imagine my surprise at encountering an almost wholly traditional staging with one teensy difference.
Peter Sellars’s rarely radical climate epic Shall We Gather at The River brought together a superb collection of musical talent for an unfortunately incoherent night of sacred song.
Matthew Polenzani strode into the Park Avenue Armory’s Board of Officers Room last Monday evening and was received like a beloved friend–and indeed that is what he is to many of New York’s opera-goers.
“Sempre viva!”
Washington National Opera’s final production of the season, seen May 22, is also its high point: a new Turandot directed by Francesca Zambello, updated to the 20th century and featuring the world premiere of a completion of Puccini’s score by composer Christopher Tin and playwright and screenwriter Susan Soon He Stanton.
It has been a great season for prolific Bay Area composer Jake Heggie.
Opera has always been Orpheus-obsessed.
The melodrama was fabulous.
Like Emily discovering her gift in The Weight of Light, Vanguard fellows (ideally) come through a process of intense multivocality with a stronger sense of their own individual voice.
Erin Morley closed Vocal Arts DC’s season on May 13th with a recital in the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater, partnered by pianist Gerald Martin Moore.
To bring a well-known story to the stage, many methods are available.
On May 2, Rebecca Herman‘s conceptualizing of Carmen was a significant departure from the traditional depiction of a marginalized “other,” maintaining a traditional staging in Seville.
The Cunning Little Vixen, Leos Janacek’s late-career opera—a wonderous work with an almost miraculous sense of charm and poignance—has found significant success in conservatories.
There was much to love in Andrew Ousley’s Tiergarten: a three-night cabaret revue from Death of Classical and part of Carnegie Hall’s Weimar Festival, performed in the vaulted gothic hall of the Church of St. Mary.
In its first go-around in November 2022, Kevin Puts’s The Hours (libretto by Greg Pierce based on the novel by Michael Cunningham and the screenplay for the Stephen Daldry’s 2002 film was a box office bullseye for the Metropolitan Opera.
Her star is indeed on the rise, but squarely on her terms.
Madama Butterfly is the opera of the moment.
An air of discovery pervaded the first New York presentation of La ville morte much the way that it pervades the opera’s plot itself.
When it premiered at the Opéra Comique in 1875, Carmen shocked audiences with its frank depictions of female sexuality, the proletariat, and violence: subjects that have ensured the piece’s continued relevance and that have inspired numerous retellings and revisions.
Tell us: What’s your favorite Verdi performance?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
