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 finals on Sunday seemed a bit like the modern-day operatic equivalent of the Roman colosseum.
At the Metropolitan Opera on Saturday night, Mozart’s opera never sounded fresher, a superstar cast shining new light on one of the composer’s all-too-seldom-performed scores.
Frankly, I can’t imagine there’s a future for I Married an Angel.
Die Walküre crystallizes the cycle’s questions, ideas, and stakes.
Saturday night, Lyric Opera of Chicago gave us a wonderful evening of vocalism in honoring Renée Fleming’s 25th anniversary at Lyric.
Kiss Me Kate is a sophisticated soufflé of a show: a comedy of manners, requiring effortless verve and elegance in the playing.
Amore Opera, one of New York’s smaller opera companies, is presenting the first local run of Dinorah, ou le Pardon de Ploërmel since before the war.
Teatro Real continued their 200 years’ celebration by premiering a piece that they have never done before, Francesco Cavalli’s opera La Calisto.
I’ve never liked the term “crossover.”
Soprano Iulia Isaev proved to be in just about every way a lovely Tosca.
Austin McCormack‘s lascivious choreography outshone a tepid and tedious staging of Saint-Saëns’s old-testament epic.
Is there any opera that can take more of a beating while still making an impact than Eugene Onegin?
It’s difficult to reconcile what Schlather writes with what we see onstage, which is a jumble not only of pianos, but of periods and concepts.
Hearing Lucas Meachem perform Kindertotenlieder in the crypt of Harlem’s Church of the Intercession was a heart-warming, and ultimately uplifting experience.
Così fan tutte, Mozart’s final Italian comedy with Lorenzo Da Ponte, is this season’s heaviest lift for Philadelphia’s Academy of Vocal Arts (AVA).
Russell Thomas’s opening aria, “Del piu sublime soglio” displayed an intense attention to the text and some surprisingly beautiful piano phrasing that I’ve never heard risked before and it brought wonder and gooseflesh.
The most disappointing performance in 30 otherwise glorious years of William Christie and Les Arts Florissants visiting New York City.
Sondra Radvanovsky returned for her 29th Met Aïda Thursday night (but only her second Aïda.)
West Bay Opera’s sterling production of Verdi’s I due Foscari played over the last two weekends.
Tenor Matthew Polenzani and pianist Julius Drake’s performance left this listener in a a state of euphoria.
What happens in Karlsruhe stays in Karlsruhe!
Since 1985, from the Chicago Symphony at Carnegie Hall to the Welsh National Opera visiting BAM and from Chicago Lyric to New York City Opera to the Met, I’ve never encountered a bad Falstaff—or one that didn’t astound and delight me.
The full title of the opera pretty much describes the plot: Il mondo alla roversa osia Le donne che comandano.
We humans tend to dislike uncertainty, therefore there is something comforting going to opera revivals; you know exactly what you are going to get.
Tell us: What’s your favorite Verdi performance?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
