New man river
Mixing the historical with the personal in strikingly original ways, Davóne Tines and Zack Winokur’s Robeson sent sparks out over the Hudson.
Performance Reviews
Reviews of operatic, vocal, and classical performances at the Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, all across America, and around the world.
A happening in Central Park
The outdoor recitals that the Metropolitan Opera presents in New York City Parks every summer are a wonderful way to showcase rising young stars and promising beginners from the Met’s Lindemann Program.
Purple pros
On Friday, June 21st, Opera Parallèle – the Bay Area nomadic, contemporary opera company – together with the Presidio Theatre unveiled their final production of the season, the West Coast premiere of Gregory Spears and Greg Pierce’s Fellow Travelers, an adaptation of Thomas Mallon’s 2007 novel of the same name.
Sax and the city
PRISM Quartet teams up with Tyshawn Sorey, David Krakauer, and a host of some of the finest new music musicians and composers in the nation to create Generate Music: a musical exploration of the ties that bind together Black and Jewish Americans.
Halle if ya hear me
Bergamo hosts an annual Donizetti festival, Salzburg presents a Mozart-woche every January, and of course there is Bayreuth for Wagner. But Handel gets two festivals every spring, and this year I was finally able to attend one of them.
In Napoli where love is queen
Final opera of the season. Little-known opera. A revival. So, you can probably skip it, right?
The eras tour
She can’t put her foot on the gas the way she used to but there’s still plenty of fuel in that tank.
Parable of the prodigious son
I’m old enough to remember when Yannick Nézet-Séguin could do no wrong.
It may not have been echt, but it was fun!
On June 11th, the Met Orchestra returned to Carnegie Hall with a diverse program led by music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
Four frightened people
As an opera fanatic who was baptized by the blood of Leontyne Price, the Messa da Requiem by Giuseppe Verdi appeared on my radar fairly soon after I started delving into the operatic canon.
Psychological projections
“The distance between dreams and reality is called action.” – Brian Tracy
Véronique, with fiery pride
Witnessing William Christie guide his orchestra and singers was truly one of this performance’s greatest highlights.
Playing in the rafters
Opera took center stage on the final weekend of the Philadelphia Orchestra season.
Woman’s lib
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 age of Innocence
The score for Innocence was menacing yet comforting, and, essentially, violent and peaceful at the same time
Speaking of tradition
You can imagine my surprise at encountering an almost wholly traditional staging with one teensy difference.
Bach humbug
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.
Try and try again
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.
The red attachment of women
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.
Monuments man
It has been a great season for prolific Bay Area composer Jake Heggie.
Everything the light touches
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.
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).