Drag me to hell
My first-ever Met Sunday opera brought the welcome return of Gluck’s sublime Orfeo ed Euridice in an enchanting afternoon that combined elegant conducting, joyous dancing and Jamie Barton’s extraordinary hero.
Performance Reviews
Reviews of operatic, vocal, and classical performances at the Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, all across America, and around the world.
Immersed in eternal light
Christian Gerhaher delivers a Kindertotenlieder of such conciliatory tact that it erases all others.
Puppets and cherry blossoms
I find it difficult to experience Madama Butterfly without also experiencing an odd fracturing of the self.
Quicksilver messenger
At the Park Avenue Armory, Barbara Hannigan chose to sing works that tested her metal in odd corners of vocalism.
A life for the zarzuela
In El Barbero de Sevilla, as given through the weekend by the New Camerata Opera, there is far too much comic dialogue, all of it in English and none of it sparkling.
Over the garden wall
Hannah Lash’s latest opera, which premiered at the Miller Theater on Wednesday night, was a musical and dramatic misfire.
You better shop around
Little Shop of Horrors loses its necessary edge when it’s wrested from the gritty world of its creation.
Storm of the century
A sense of celebration was definitely in the air last Thursday at the Vienna State Opera.
Ray of ‘Light’
An opera company presenting a Broadway musical that centers around a woman of a certain age travelling to Italy with her young daughter might seem more a vehicle for a great diva of a certain age.
The Wurm turns
Luisa Miller snowballs toward disaster and death.
Suddenly spinto
When soprano Yihan Duan started to sing her aria, you could feel an almost electric charge that something special was happening.
A whole new world
The Paris Opera assembled an all-French cast to stage arguably the most well-known example of opéra-ballet, Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Les Indes Galantes.
Orientation
There were plenty of Turan-do’s and only a few Turandon’ts at the Met’s Turandot Sunday afternoon.
The other woman
I can’t think of an opera this year that I’ve enjoyed as much as Tuesday’s Met Macbeth, thanks especially to the smashing house debut of Italian soprano Anna Pirozzi as its blazing Madame M.
From a distance
The opening night of the Canadian Opera Company’s 2019-20 season was all about the Wilsons.
Sparkle, Lyric, sparkle!
It’s an old chestnut of a joke that applies even more to opera than to the theatre: A veteran actor is on his deathbed.
The Philadelphia stories
As we also saw last year, Festival O19 ended on a sweetly quiet note, movingly connecting Opera Philadelphia with the larger city and our musical future.
Sleeper
As the Netrebko-crowned Macbeth took to the stage at the Met, just a few blocks away, Teatro Grattacielo presented its 25th Anniversary Gala Concert.
If I had a photograph of you
I’m certain I wasn’t the only one thrilled to bits to see LA Opera’s production of La Bohème finally retired after 26 years and seven mountings.
Wait and see
Erwartung and Bluebeard’s Castle returned to Lincoln Center Thursday night in a musically scintillating if theatrically mild double-bill by the New York Philharmonic.
Roman holiday
A brace of Handel operas at the George Enescu International Festival.
Portrait of a Lady on fire
My blood sure boiled at this revival of the Met’s utterly punchable production of Macbeth.
When a man loves a woman
At the Met’s performance of Manon Tuesday evening, Michael Fabiano made as good a case as any for renaming the opera Chevalier des Grieux.
All I cared about was Bess
Opera’s latest superstar, Angel Blue, in a compleat and enthralling portrayal, gloriously sung and rivetingly acted.
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).