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.
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.
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.
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.
Nina Stemme’s Elektra always seemed the sanest individual onstage never quite giving over to obsession or hysteria with a good line in mordant sarcasm and contempt.
A co-production of Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Metropolitan Opera, and Los Angeles Opera, Fire Shut Up In My Bones blazed into Chicago as a stunning, highly emotional and moving performance.
People these days often exclaim “…..is everything!” but often it feels like gross hyperbole. But surely anyone who has seen Mark Morris’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato since it premiered in 1989 would agree that it is indeed everything!
I was reminded at the Met’s season premiere of Eugene Onegin Friday night always to expect the unexpected.
I must confess to feeling a bit of “Tosca fatigue” as I entered the Lyric Opera of Chicago house for Wednesday’s matinee of the Puccini standard.
Michel van der Aa’s new opera UPLOAD at the Park Avenue Armory explores the various ethical issues surrounding AI while coming back to a set of classic philosophical questions about free will, pain and the nature of the soul.
Eleanora Buratto at this fully matured point of her career has a warm, creamy full lyric soprano that has the roundness and sweet warmth of a Freni but can also expand into the spinto power of a Tebaldi.
In 2022, making Così fan tutte intimate is not a radical act. Making it enjoyable, however, is.
Dramaturgically, The Hours is a mixed bag: I wouldn’t discard it, but I would want to fix it. But simply as an evening of gorgeous music and singing, it’s cordon bleu.
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.
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.