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 Santa Fe Opera’s fine first Die Walküre finds Wagner in America at a crossroads.
Rigoletto at The Santa Fe Opera is a near miss.
La bohème at The Santa Fe Opera feels warmed over in more ways than one.
Christof Loy‘s Louise in Aix-en-Provence scratches at the urban– and operatic– unconscious
The world premiere of Dolores and Charpentier‘s David and Jonathan bring the heat to West Edge Opera’s 2025 Festival.
Wolf Trap Opera’s stirring production of Dialogues des Carmélites was a welcome respite from a brutally hot and humid DC summer.
R.B. Schlather‘s shadowy production with Heartbeat Opera at the Williamstown Theatre Festival proves that Vanessa might be coming into its own at last
Tobias Kratzer‘s Das Rheingold in Munich kicks off a Ring for the post-secular age
Valentin Schwarz‘s and Simone Young‘s Ring, in its final outing at Bayreuth, is dramaturgically messy and musically excellent.
The repertory company of Munich’s Gärtnerplatztheater brings sparkle to a goofy, summery L’elisir d’amore
This summer’s festival, taking place amid record high temperatures and in the wake of its artistic director, Pierre Audi, featured a disquietingly zeigeisty focus on sexual violence.
In Lohengrin, populism comes to an apocalyptic end on the Bavarian stage
Peter Sellars‘s triple bill of Viennese modernism featuring Erwartung and a concert performance of The Raft of the Medusa stare down death at the Salzburg Festival
Claus Guth mines urgent and contemporary commentary from Die Liebe der Danae in Munich.
This Bard production, led by Leon Botstein, makes the strongest possible case musically, dramatically and visually for Smetana’s opera Dalibor.
A revival of the furious I masnadieri at the Bayerische Staatsoper falls short of perfection – and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Pénélope at the Bayerische Staatsoper’s summer festival spotlights the crossroads between the nostalgic and the progressive.
Matthias Davids‘s reactionary new production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg might be fun, but no one comes to Bayreuth for fun.
A North American debut of a respectable French Baroque ensemble, an ebullient presentation of La fille du régiment, and an afternoon soiree in Wine Country proved to be the hottest (yet affordable!) tickets around here this Summer.
In the 1847 version of Macbeth, the forces of Teatro Nuovo lacked the thunderous punch this music can pack, but provided a pleasant ride
It’s Norma, darling. We know.
Jessica Pratt’s last-minute Norma in Milan might well be the stuff of legend
A starry cast is hampered by Christof Loy‘s dour production of Rusalka in Barcelona
La sonnambula at Teatro Nuovo overcomes uneven casting to highlight the many charms of Bellini’s bel canto masterpiece
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.
