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 elusive La dame blanche returned for one evening to New York City on May 28 thanks to the New Amsterdam Opera led by maestro Keith Chambers.
The opera The Rake’s Progress, as many people know already, was inspired by a series of engravings and paintings of the same name by William Hogarth, showing the decline of a young man into depravity and insanity.
Can we start by not using Barbra Streisand as a polestar here?
Pavarotti and Freni are gone but the Franco Zeffirelli Bohème remains.
The monsoon outside was no match for the torrents of gorgeous, dramatic singing and playing that was unleashed inside George Washington University’s Lisner Hall Sunday afternoon when Washington Concert Opera, in a glorious deluge of Léo Delibes, presented Lakmé to round out its return season.
Before Wednesday I don’t remember gasping when I entered a concert venue.
We open in a war room that resembled nothing so much as a parking garage. Amneris’s boudoir was certainly recognizable as such but I’d be hard-pressed to pinpoint the location of the Triumphal Scene other than the inside of a large discothèque.
The Met brought back 2019 smash Akhnaten last night, with nearly the exact same cast and creative team, and with nearly the same knockout effect of three years ago.
It was Matthew Jocelyn’s libretto, with its disorientingly deconstructive approach to its source text, that gave Brett Dean’s Hamlet its identity.
It’s maybe not a surprise that Carmen is neither a good vocal nor temperamental fit for Isabel Leonard.
I wonder why many New Yorkers have been led to believe that the only Handel conductor in the world is Harry Bicket.
The Met’s revival of Turandot on Saturday night was surprisingly contentious.
Reunited and it feels so good!
“We came through the Depression by the skin of our teeth! One more tight squeeze like that and where will we be?”
Ms. Damrau unleashed a Blitzkrieg of charm upon her audience.
Joyce DiDonato admits that she is “a problem solver, a dreamer, and—yes I’m a belligerent optimist.”
With no disrespect to Nadine Sierra, who as Lucia acquits herself honorably if not magically in vocal terms, the undisputed cause célèbre here is director Simon Stone.
Why is so twinkling, tuneful a score so little known?
This is more than just a revival—it’s a reinvigoration of what I consider to be one of the best works of the last 50 years.
Ireland’s Wexford Festival Opera marked its 70th birthday in 2021 by presenting four prima donnas who made important early appearances at the festival in solo recitals across the globe.
She Loves Me can take a beating.
Saturday’s performance of Le nozze di Figaro at the Met mined the humor from Mozart’s divine setting of Beaumarchais’s play about a crazy day in the Almaviva household.
On this past, rainy Thursday, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s delivered a really rather extraordinary performance of the St. Matthew Passion. To me, this evening was a fascinating exploration of work.
From the multiple standing ovations, to say nothing of the gentleman in the front row waving the Mexican flag, I can safely say that a very good time was had by all.
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.
