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.
VIctor Herbert demonstrates in this slight, affectionate piece a talent for keeping his musico-dramatic balls in the air, as Madeleine’s spirits juggle, fall, rise again, and droop to elegant resignation at the last.
I never imagined I’d see such a rote park-and-bark Wagner production created in 2020!
In the opera world, one of the pieces that underwent a multitude of changes in its reception was undoubtedly Richard Wagner’s longest and most Germanic opera, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
Although I usually pretend that I don’t have the diva-worship gene, sharp-eyed readers of parterre box will know that since I joined the site in 2011 as “DeCaffarrelli” I have often swooned as an Ann Hallenberg-fanboi.
The season’s second cast delivered a satisfying, if not transcendent, La Traviata at the Met last night as they struggled to emerge from piles of jewel tone brocade and gold filigree.
The fabulous Beth Malone is the Molly Brown of my dreams—forthright, bold, and a superbly gifted singer with just the right touch of country twang.
Jakub Józef Orlinski‘s “Stille amare” packed a lot of punch in terms of dramatic intensity.
Time heals almost everything, as Jerry Herman’s best score is stylishly resurrected.
Original Director Richard Jones and revival director Benjamin Davis have created a staging that veers wildly between fascinating and fatally flawed.
For those of you keeping track at home that’s four substitutions for three roles and the curtain hasn’t even gone up yet.
Opera for families may not generally be my thing, but I loved feeling like I was a tiny part of shaping a new opera.
If only she’d been able to sing more than 10 minutes of Bjork’s music!
Dolly definitely did not have me at Hello!
Over the past two decades, the understatedly beguiling Sasha Cooke has inched chronologically inwards in her subtle conquest of swathes of mezzo concert repertoire.
By an astounding coincidence, on Monday night Handel’s third and fourth extant operas were being performed simultaneously across the street from each other at Lincoln Center.
Donizetti’s La Favorite remains a relative rarity in the repertoire, especially in the original French version.
The success of Porgy and Bess at the Met forced bass-baritone Eric Owens, the newly installed director of vocal studies at the Curtis Institute, to cancel a long-planned afternoon recital at the school on February 16.
Saturday’s performance of Così fan tutte demonstrated that even the cool, acerbic wit of Mozart’s most controversial comedy can warm our hearts in these icy winter months.
Winter weather has taken a toll on the cast of Lyric Opera of Chicago’s revival of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.
Do we do what we have to do? Or do we have to do what we do?
On the day of the Super Bowl, I attended a near-sold-out screening of the Paris Opéra’s recent production of Rameau’s 1735 opéra-ballet Les Indes galantes at New York’s Alliance Française.
It’s 2020, Ivo’s the new Ethel Merman, and I caught a preview of his fourth Broadway show and first Broadway musical, West Side Story.
Handel’s biting Agrippina finally arrived at the Metropolitan Opera Thursday evening 310 years after its Venetian premiere.
Is there any opera more bullet-proof than Le Nozze di Figaro?
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.
