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.
This tenor must be the finest classical singer in the world today.
LOC’s Ernani is a satisfying evening of Verdi sung by four stars at the height of their powers.
The New York City Opera has become an elusive “now you see it, now you don’t” presence in the New York opera scene since the departure of main sponsor and chairman of the board Roy G. Niederhoffer in 2019.
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz is perfect figure for an opera; known, but not known enough, especially in English-speaking countries, with a life that involved plenty of love, poetry and tragedy.
No uneasy stock market or rickety roller coaster has generated more stomach-churning highs and lows than the musical Dear Evan Hansen.
The smile for the fools is especially broad this summer in the Berkshires, where a charming revival of A Little Night Music opened recently at Barrington Stage Company.
I felt that the whole performance at West Edge Opera on Sunday was greater the sum of its parts, particularly due to the dedication of the whole cast and crew amidst all adversities.
The July-August timeframe in the San Francisco Bay Area is always exciting time in terms of opera.
Having had many memorable encounters with these characters before, I had been looking forward to encountering them again in an ambitious contemporary Oresteia, but I left the Armory feeling that writer-director Robert Icke just didn’t get it.
It is perhaps a misperception to suggest that Die Schweigsame Frau is stronger in the uncut version.
Gregory Spears’ latest opera Castor and Patience, with a libretto by former US Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winner Tracy K. Smith, was commissioned by Cincinnati Opera to celebrate its centennial season in 2020.
This Traviata remained firmly Beltway-bound and by the time I had gotten home, the 45-minute traffic jam to leave the parking lot was eminently fresher in my mind than the evening’s performance.
Only three years separate the creation of The Most Happy Fella (1956) and The Sound of Music (1959), but there’s a proverbial ocean between these two Golden Age musicals are being performed at prestigious festivals this summer.
A trip to Mediterranean climes came through musically, as the Boston Symphony Orchestra presented a largely satisfying concert performance of Don Giovanni on July 16.
Since April four wildly varied incarnations of Hamlet have been haunting New York City theaters; the most recent to arrive was Robert Icke’s chicly contemporary take on Shakespeare’s play which opened last week at the Park Avenue Armory.
On Thursday June 30th, San Francisco Opera closed their summer season with a one-night-only special concert celebrating Eun Sun Kim’s first season as the Caroline H. Hume Music Director, in an aptly named concert “Eun Sun Kim Conducts Verdi.”
People’s Light deserves commendation for resurfacing The Vinegar Tree, and there’s satisfaction in seeing a fine old play handled with care.
Director R.B. Schlather deftly walks a porous boundary, casting this primordial paroxysm of Germanness as a dialogue between its naïve and moralistic narrative with its outsized legacy.
The second act of Dream of the Red Chamber reached the apex and provided the audience with soul-stirring fulfillment.
To conclude its triumphant season, last week the Met Orchestra performed its annual Carnegie Hall concerts under music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin and once again performed superbly.
The winners of the evening were the composer Riccardo Zandonai and Teatro Grattacielo which pulled off a near-impossible feat with success.
An elegantly streamlined production of Into the Woods now on stage at Philadelphia’s Arden Theatre makes the best case for the show I’ve yet seen
Do you know the musical about the quirky little girl, her dysfunctional family and the devastating secret that binds them all together?
“This used to be a funhouse… but now it’s full of evil clowns / It’s time to start the countdown…. I’m gonna burn it down”
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.
