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.
Performances of Pittori fiamminghi and Madama Butterfly in picturesque Castell’Arquato were a fine way to honor Luigi Illica, the city’s native son
Music for New Bodies at Lincoln Center’s Running AMOC* Festival proves Matthew Aucoin really is everything he’s made out to be
Wolf Trap Opera kicked off its summer season with an inventive production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro inspired by Pablo Picasso that showcased up-and-coming singers.
When such a canonically ossified work like Verdi’s Aïda is directed at all (let alone as ambitiously as Damiano Michieletto at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino), it does feel like a completely different opera
Les Brigands at the Paris Opera is an expensive joke that never lands
This evening of Julius Eastman at Lincoln Center was so good it hurt
A new production of Dialogues des Carmélites featuring Anna Caterina Antonacci proves that it’s hard to be an iconoclast in Venice.
Pride weekend events at San Francisco Opera and Festival Opera are fabulous starts to the Bay Area summer
Opera Parallèle’s Harvey Milk Reimagined offers a fragmented portrait lacking the depth or coherence needed to honor Milk’s legacy
The Comet/Poppea at this summer’s Running AMOC* festival at Lincoln Center is a thrilling, startling, deeply moving experience
A brilliant L’italiana in Algeri in Rome has Larry Wolff once again thinking about “singing Turks”
The operatic offerings of Boston Early Music Festival — Keiser‘s Octavia and Telemann‘s Pimpinone and Ino — are delectable discoveries
The Met Orchestra under Yannick Nézet-Séguin surges into summer with a mixed program at Carnegie Hall
Kent Nagano‘s and the Richard-Wagner-Akademie‘s historically informed Ring Cycle takes on Siegfried in Dresden
Carmen in Brussels is dramatically vibrant, if vocally stretched
A muted production challenges a talented cast in San Francisco Opera’s Idomeneo
A starry concert Aïda in Baltimore proves unusually polished
John Yohalem reports on Catapult Opera’s satiating San Giovanni Battista
Contrasting approaches to Regie duke it out in Cavalleria rusticana & Pagliacci and Rusalka in Munich
Krzysztof Warlikowski‘s Der Rosenkavalier at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées surpasses even Nigel Wilkinson‘s high ‘WTF threshhold’
Eli Jacobson on a luscious evening of early Strauss with Guntram at Carnegie Hall
Francesco Filidei’s new opera The Name of the Rose struggles to bridge the past and the present in Milan
A plodding La bohème in San Francisco never quite takes off
A double bill of rare Bizet works in Paris is not something any of us needs to do more than once
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.
