Now sleeps the crimson petal
Gregory Spears’s Sleepers Awake mystifies and delights at Opera Philadelphia.
Performance Reviews
Reviews of operatic, vocal, and classical performances at the Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, all across America, and around the world.
Come and Gandhi
Led by a mesmerizing Anthony Roth Costanzo, Satyagraha at the Paris Opera dispenses with historical particularities for something for more elusive.
Kuda, woulda, shoulda
A strong revival of Eugene Onegin at the Metropolitan Opera and a recital by Benjamin Bernheim offered the chance to hear “Kuda, kuda” twice in two days.
Trouble in paradise
The New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players‘s vivacious music making compensates for uninspired storytelling in their staging of Utopia, Limited.
Dodging a bullet
Dull conducting makes Der Freischütz miss its mark at Carnegie Hall.
Northern lights
SoCal goes Scandi in two recent concerts, with one featuring an appearance by Lise Davidsen.
Bach to Bach
An invigorating double bill at the San Francisco Symphony challenges how Bach “should” be performed.
That time of evening
Golda Schultz soldiers through illness at the New York Philharmonic.
Heaven, here within my heart
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra explores love and death in an intense, intelligent program featuring soprano Corinne Winters.
Rose to the occasion
The embattled Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra bring Adams and Dvorák to Carnegie Hall.
Seder play
A new DVD recording of La Juive boasts considerable musical strengths in spite of a frustrating production.
Where imitation ends
Daring reimaginings of Cocteau and Wilde take the stage at the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Darkling I listen
Golda Schultz casts darkness in an alluring light in an intimate recital at the New Orleans Opera Festival.
A specter, haunting
Kaija Saariaho’s spectral, shattering Innocence makes its Metropolitan Opera debut.
Festspiel for the consecration of the French Quarter
The inaugural New Orleans Opera Festival goes big across the Big Easy.
Cavalcade of stars
Back-to-back casts in the Metropolitan Opera’s revivals of Madama Butterfly and La traviata offer ample opportunity for soprano-gazing.
Asp and you shall receive
A first-time operagoer is lured to Thaïs at Opera Idaho by the promise of a new experience… and Neil, the Burmese python
By Drew Godbehere
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Youth has no age
Led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Yoann Combémorel, the Curtis Symphony Orchestra proves themselves the equal of any major American orchestra in a program of Mahler, Wagner, and Dawson.
Anime sante degli avi
Madama Butterfly confronts anime, virtual reality, and weeaboos in Matthew Ozawa‘s bold production at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
Hit me with your best Shoshty
Barrie Kosky’s zany production of The Nose time-steps back onto the Komische Oper Berlin stage.
Suffering a sea-change
Calixto Bieito‘s production of Idomeneo at La Monnaie is anchored by a committed cast, but gets swept up in pseudo-psychoanalytic imagery — and foot fetishism.
Which witch?
Washington National Opera offered a searing production of Robert Ward’s opera The Crucible, directed by WNO Artistic Director Francesca Zambello, as the second installment in the company’s next chapter.
Follow the signs
Opera directors could learn a thing or two from Deaf Broadway’s vivacious performance of Jeanine Tesori‘s Violet.
Gild the Lily
Lisette Oropesa, Piotr Buszewski, and Luca Salsi feature in a rote revival of Michael Mayer‘s cloying production of La traviata.
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).