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.
Lyric Opera of Chicago has brought back its wildly successful 2019 production of West Side Story, directed by Francesca Zambello. I thought it was terrific back then and, even with numerous cast changes, it was just as terrific on Sunday afternoon.
Although somewhat flawed, Days of Wine and Roses draws from the same musical language that made Piazza so instantly distinctive, and it features a specificity that I noticed in Adam Guettel’s earlier breakthrough work, Floyd Collins.
STEMdiva status
Ahead of a special boozy, bawdy Valentine’s Day concert, artistic director of Opera Lafayette Patrick Quigley speaks with soprano Maya Kherani about her journey from MIT to rising American Baroque star.
Renée Fleming arrived at Carnegie Hall on May 31 with something to prove.
In French opera—until Pelleas et Mélisande anyway—there is always a great deal of dance; often, dance rather than song is the main event.
This Holländer offers neither a clear narrative vision for the work nor a sense of turbocharged drama; it simply sits on the Met’s cavernous stage as a dull gray mass.
Out of sheer morbid curiosity last evening I pulled up the “orders” page of my Amazon account and searched Otello to discover that over the past 11 years. I’ve ordered 15 items with that title (one as recently as last night!)
In the five short years that I’ve been in New York, I have seen that crusty old Franco Zeffirelli production of La bohème more times than I can count on one hand. And there are certainly times when that peeling mise-en-scène really shows its age.
The wicked poisoner showed herself in fine form, full of purple passion and lusty music-making that would gladden the heart of any bel canto enthusiast or opera lover in general.
The opera took place on an actual boat: the Lightship Ambrose in the South Street Seaport.
Simon McBurney’s Die Zauberflöte, the second new production of the Met’s May Mozart Miracle, opened on Friday to rousing near-unanimous cheers.
Nina Stemme’s program guided her audience through a period of musical history that explores themes of love and mortality with texts that traverse emotional extremes.
Like a sommelier of male entitlement, Peter Mattei paired with precision moves from a wide-ranging vocabulary of gesture.
Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe, presented at Carnegie Hall this past Wednesday by MasterVoices, is a charming rom-com that pits the feminine world of nature against masculine government with unabashedly silly and utterly delightful results.
Old opera productions at the end of their performing life can be sad affairs.
While Charles III’s coronation (with Harry but without Meghan and Fergie) commences in London on Saturday, the party started early last month at Carnegie Hall when the Orchestra of St. Luke’s joined by La Chappelle de Québec performed Handel’s gloriously celebratory Coronation Anthems which were composed for a 1727 crowning.
Okay, let’s get the silly jokes out of the way first. Around our house, we’ve been referring to this alternately as Merrily We Bohemians Roll Along, or Emèhob Al.
“A Concert for Sugihara”—presented at Carnegie Hall by New York City Opera and The American Society for Yad Vashem on Wednesday, April 19—marked 80 years since the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
How do you remember Oscar Levant?
At all of these vocal contests, including this one, I find myself fascinated and perplexed by the same question: What exactly are the judges looking for?
To paraphrase Terence Blanchard’s Champion, what makes an opera an opera?
What do you see when you look at Into the Woods? Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine‘s musical might serve as a kind of theatrical Rorschach test.
I wish more sopranos programmed recitals like Fatma Said does.
Sweeney Todd is by any measure a triumphant show, the kind that makes an audience understand why Broadway is American theater’s gold standard
This was by far my most satisfying experience with Pelléas et Mélisande for a multitude of reasons and I encourage anyone who’s even mildly curious to find their way to the Music Center for a very rich experience.
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 Baroque Valentine’s with Opera Lafayette | Feb | DC & NYC
Celebrate love in all its guises with tender ballads, amorous duets, cheeky verses, and bawdy drinking songs plus food, cocktails and wine.