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.
Matthias Goerne‘s Die schöne Müllerin at Carnegie Hall offers a hoary and excessive collection of mannerisms and vocal tics that served the artist more than the music itself.
Buoyed by a strong cast, The Metropolitan Opera continues its autumn bel canto streak with a winning revival of Donizetti’s La fille du regiment.
Seeing Sondra Radvanovsky as Medea at Lyric Opera of Chicago sprawled across the floor, soaked in her children’s blood, is proof that we’re witnessing an utterly haunting singer-actor.
A Missa Solemnis to celebrate 125 years of Boston’s Symphony Hall was sophisticated and subdued.
The timing for Boston Lyric Opera’s production of Macbeth this weekend was perfect for Halloween, though the show itself at the Emerson Colonial Theatre was decidedly less spooky.
A new production of La sonnambula at the Metropolitan Opera is musically charming if dramatically confounding.
Macbeth at the Festival Verdi in Parma aims big — on a small scale
Surely you agree that piano concerti are inherently political.
A pair of Otellos – in Madrid and Parma – is a study in contrasts.
West Side Story opened LA Opera’s 40th anniversary season with fury and flair
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay was, somehow, a fun night at the opera—just not one that felt specifically operatic.
When Angela Meade and Michael Fabiano first sang Lucia together as students at AVA few would have predicted that they would go on to sing Turandot 16 years later.
Opera Philadelphia’s Il viaggio a Reims in a nutshell: Hyperactive, confusing, and distracting from (and sometimes for) the singers? Yes. Imaginative, wildly entertaining, and musically rewarding? Absolutely.
Wolf Trap Opera concluded its 2025 summer season last month with a production of Carmen that was vocally strong, though not entirely dramatically satisfying, amid challenging weather.
Anna Pirozzi and Luca Salsi reunite in blazing form in Tosca at the Teatro San Carlo
The 25th anniversary revival of Dead Man Walking at San Francisco Opera is most moving in its quietest moments
In the pursuit of clowning, Anthony Roth Costanzo’s Galas may have lost sight of “the seriousness of the theme.”
Adela Zaharia and Amartuvshin Enkhbat shine brightly in San Francisco Opera’s opening night Rigoletto.
Restrictions encourage creative staging, for which the Berkshire Opera Festival is renowned.
Le nozze di Figaro in Santa Fe is a light and kindly revival while The Turn of the Screw is crisp and atmospheric
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
Tell us: What’s your favorite Verdi performance?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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