Queen of the B’s
Born on this day in 1919 actress Marie Windsor.
Recent Stories
The Hours
The opening of the Metropolitan Opera Saturday Broadcast season.
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).
Poker night
On this day in 1910 Puccini’s La fanciulla del West had its world premiere at the Metropolitan Opera.
Freaky ‘Freitag’
Monday November 14th’s performance of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Freitag aus Licht by the contemporary music ensemble Le Balcon began in complete chaos.
Wagnerienne
Diva November meets Wagner December when Chris’s Cache this week offers Régine Crespin as both Elisabeth in Tannhäuser and Senta in Der Fliegende Holländer via a pair of American pirates from the 1960s.
Behind the veil
On this day in 1905 Richard Strauss‘s Salome premiered in Dresden.
“That might be a wisecrack, but I doubt it”
On this day in 1925 the George S. Kaufman / Irving Berlin musical The Cocoanuts opened at the Lyric Theatre starring The Marx Brothers.
Louis Louis
For those who relish 17th and 18th century vocal music, the annual visits to the Morgan Library by the singers and instrumentalists of the Boston Early Music Festival invariably guarantee delight
Almost paradise
Born on this day in 1864 soprano Sibyl Sanderson.
So far away
As the focal point of the The Far Country, Eric Yang anchors the production with a cool steadiness that only occasionally betrays a sense of urgency beneath his patient countenance.
“Pseudo-Greek”
On this day in 1960 soprano Eileen Farrell made her Metropolitan Opera debut in the title role of a new production of Gluck’s Alceste.
Triste madre
On this day in 1960, Galina Vishnevskaya made a guest appearance with the Metropolitan Opera, singing Madama Butterfly in Russian.
“A soprano from the antipodes”
On this day in 1935 the Metropolitan Opera presented a new production of Die Walküre featuring the company debut of soprano Marjorie Lawrence as Brünnhilde.
Alone in the world
Step aside, Texas: “Everything is bigger at Aida” is the motto of the Met’s second attempt at retiring Sonja Frisell’s colossal production.
Lohengrin
Premiere of a new production from the Bayreische Staatsoper.
‘Contes’, get you out of my head
On this day in 2009 the Metropolitan Opera presented a production of Les Contes d’Hoffmann that went through six major cast changes during the rehearsal period.
Aida
Soprano Latonia Moore stars as the Ethiopian princess torn between love and country in Verdi’s grand Egyptian epic.
Leveling up or leveling down?
Arts Council England, as a global policy trendsetter, may have sounded the death knell for the international opera industry as we know it.
That indescribable feeling
Alma Deutscher’s quest for beautiful music permeates the score of her Cinderella from the hushed opening of the Overture.
Yours, mine and ‘Hours’
Of course the Met premiere of The Hours grabbed most of the attention last month!
Everyone’s an outlaw
On this day in 1962, the Metropolitan Opera presented Ernani starring Carlo Bergonzi, Leontyne Price, Cornell MacNeil and Giorgio Tozzi, conducted by Thomas Schippers.
“Oh, thoughtless crew! Ye know not what ye do!”
One wonders whether an obsession with metrics and measurement has the potential to create arts organizations that are more preoccupied with finding systems that quickly and efficiently tick the Arts Council’s boxes than with creating meaningful, impactful art.