They are the champions
This is likely the best Giargiari Bel Canto competition year in my experience, evidenced in several important ways.
Performance Reviews
Reviews of operatic, vocal, and classical performances at the Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, all across America, and around the world.
Street scene
In his attempts to be clever, and to overstuff Leopoldstadt with a dictionary’s worth of marginalia, Tom Stoppard never lingers on a character or storyline long enough to develop it into something worth caring about.
It’s going to cost you
Cost of Living, the Pulitzer Prize–winning play by Martyna Majok now on Broadway, overflows with complexity. It begins with the title.
Laugh, laugh, I nearly died
Whoever thought Verdi’s Il trovatore needed an injection of humor to make it complete?
Approaching Valhalla
Gianandrea Noseda leads seasoned Wagnerians in Andreas Homoki’s stark production of Die Walküre for Zurich Opera.
Take the long way Rome
David McVicar’s 2017 production of Tosca returned to the Met on Tuesday night, with an able and watchable, if not transcendent cast.
Talking about a revolution
People turn up at a cancer hospital on the worst day of their lives. In I’m Revolting, a moving and often unsettling world premiere from Atlantic Theatre Company, playwright Gracie Gardner dissects the fears and motivations of patients and their caregivers with surgical precision.
If they could turn back time
Yuval Sharon at Boston Lyric Opera has brilliantly found an interpretative middle ground for La bohème by presenting the acts in reverse order.
Exotic asphyxiation
Both the mise-en-scène and the musical direction amplified the absolute worst tendencies of the Opéra Comique’s Lakmé in the most tasteless and baffling ways.
Ocean, thou mighty monster
Michael Spyres’s nobly moving Idomeneo wasn’t just a bravura triumph: singing strongly throughout, he brought more colors to his portrayal of the tortured king than I had experienced from others in the Ponnelle production.
So damn bored
It’s nasty world, Shostakovich seems to say, where life alternates between boring and terrifying.
“Laiden with happiness and tears”
Director Barrie Kosky brings to Fiddler on the Roof fascinating ideas, fine casting, equal mixes of comedy and sadness, and, from the beginning, a sense for we of the audience that we were about to spend three hours in very good hands.
How do you solve a problem like ‘Medea’?
Sondra Radvanovsky has an unconventional voice that is suited to unconventional characters and is best used in rangy, difficult music. The lack of lush beauty was no deficit in depicting Medea’s jealousy and vengeful rage.
Rachmaninoff three ways
A troika of operas by Rachmaninoff: Aleko , The Miserly Knight and Francesca da Rimini , courtesy of Odyssey Opera.
Love me or leaf me
Robert Carsen‘s legendary production of Eugene Onegin finally arrives in San Francisco.
A touch of class
For the season opener, Opera San José decided to explore the class conflict central to Le nozze di Figaro by transporting the opera to India, specifically during the British Raj.
Ceaselessly beautiful
With the phenomenal cast that stacked Paris Opera’s production of I Capuleti e i Montecchi , it was easy to overlook the quirks of Bellini’s opera and get lost in the pleasures of glorious bel canto singing.
A divided duty
Rodrigo is a ball-breaking role, but Lawrence Brownlee makes the demands sound easy—tossing in additional high notes and audaciously decorating cabalettas as if it were the easiest thing in the world.
Sweet and low: Orlinski’s Orfeo
My impression was of a very fine singer performing a role that was slightly too large for him.
As ‘The Raven’ flies
Festival O is back, and the sense of joy and expectation was palpable among the audience and Opera Philadelphia staff, who chatted together as we awaited the start of The Raven.
A different type of self-consciousness altogether
Emily D’Angelo, in a moment of subversion, sang the entire program wearing casual trousers, a vest, and chunky combat boots, her cropped hair slightly mussed, and wearing only light make-up.
The Real thing
Surrounded by security and greeted by a bevy of cameras, Su Majestad la Reina Sofía brought a bit of excitement to an evening that didn’t end up being all that musically rewarding.
No heather on the hill: ‘Lucia’ in LA
LA Opera sent out an email warning that the production “contains depictions of blood, violence, and drug use, as well as strobe lights and a gunshot effect in Act III.”
It’s oh so quiet
The concert itself—starring Michael Fabiano, Nadine Sierra, Pene Pati and Lucas Meachem—seemed to be a beautiful affair that I would have loved to see it in a person.
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).