The Talk of the Town
I still don’t think Sunset Boulevard is a top-tier musical but it was by far the most memorable vocal performance I saw in 2025.
Elina Garanča scaled the vocal and dramatic summits of the Judgement Duet and Scene in the May series of Aïda.
A staged Freischütz is rare enough in itself to be the highlight of any opera season, but it was in Christoph Marthaler‘s Antwerp production that I connected with the characters and felt the story for the first time.
Houston Grand Opera’s 2025 Breaking the Waves was absolutely my highlight of the year!
In the spring, The English Concert completed a three-city tour performing a concert version of Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto.
What better sentiment can we embrace as the year ends then to hope, often against against hope, for peace and love in a world of chaos?
I am sure many of us will post the Fledermaus gala, but it doesn’t get better than this, even in a Fledermaus gala
If you’ve ever been to Juan Diego Flórez‘s recitals, you’ll know the part most of the audience is waiting for is when he takes out his guitar.
Eileen Farrell could sing in all genres. I call her the queen of crossover, especially in her bluesy albums. Eileen Farrell, like Miami, you’ve got style!
Lovely Christmas carol by Pietro Yon, “Gesù bambino” as sung by The Greatest Thing Ever at a Christmas concert in Ravello in 2021. Beautiful!
Leontyne Price in her early prime is soaring and radiant in traditional Christmas songs.
An Australian Christmas where the paddocks are brown, the gullies are green, and the singing is, frankly, better behaved than most of us will be by lunchtime.
Though there are a number of fine recording of holiday music by opera singers (Eileen Farrell!), this great performance of Jessye Norman was captured on video as well.
A beautiful Christmas album is Pavarotti‘s ‘Oh, Holy Night” conducted by Kurt Herbert Adler.
This has been my favorite Christmas song since I first heard this performance, the opening track of Malena Ernman‘s first Christmas album.
There’s plenty of full-on Christmas music to love in Anne Sophie von Otter‘s “Home for Christmas.”
I bought this album because I found the photo on the cover to be Camp.
When I first listened years ago as a baby opera queen to Tebaldi‘s 1971 “Christmas Festival,” I could not get over just how enfeebled she sounded.
“Vesselina’s Chest Voice” is my new drag name.
Dear Joan with her trills and ornaments brings “Joy to the World” every holiday season. Wishing a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all.
Christmas kitsch is great fun, of course, but Christmas can be just as wonderful without it, as this great singer proves.
Christmas should be over the top, opulent, a little sad, utterly sincere, and ever so vulgar.
Auntie Joan goes the whole nine yards on this one and invigorates it to make it work in a way as no one else can.
Like Type 2 Diabetes, symptoms of YAS (Yuletide Aversion Syndrome) commonly creep up on gay men after manopause.
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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