Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci
The classic double bill of potboilers, as telecast in 2015.
Recent Stories
Don Carlos
Gregory Kunde heads this cast of this new production from l’Opéra Royal de Wallonie-Liège.
Mythos, mystery and grandeur
Reducing Antony and Cleopatra to the status of mere mortals makes their torrid, tragic love seem rather ho-hum.
Bargain basement
“Met’s Roller Coaster Season Dips Back Into Artistic Basement with Walküre“
The Opera House
On what would have been the last night of the 2019–20 Met season, Susan Froemke’s acclaimed 2017 documentary.
Stray ‘Cats’
I think that Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is the Williams play I have seen most often, on stage and through film. So, shall we share some observations on some of these experiences?
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
As performed by the Finnish National Opera on 11 March 2019.
Win a Free Ticket to Opening Night at the Met!
Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen star in the Met's new Macbeth. We're giving away one ticket, so screw your courage to the sticking place and enter now!
Scene d’amour
On this day in 1958 Alfred Hitchcock‘s Vertigo premiered at the Stage Door Theater in San Francisco.
La bohème
Renata Scotto and Luciano Pavarotti star in this pioneering video from March 15, 1977.
World of Wunders, part three
The final third of this week’s vocal-identification quiz brings together perhaps the most difficult-to-name sopranos offering Sieglinde’s “O hehrstes Wunder!” from Die Walküre.
Capriccio
Renée Fleming rocks a chin-length bob as Countess Madeleine in Richard Strauss’s final opera.
Les Contes d’Hoffmann
“Director Krzysztof Warlikowski and conductor Alain Altinoglu take on the challenge of revealing the essence of a work in which time and space are merely the remnants of a crumbled mosaic.”
I want to break free
Many now have scads more time for listening so Trove Thursday will offer several epic operas during May beginning with Rossini’s Guillaume Tell (this week aka Guglielmo Tell) in a concert performance featuring Giuseppe Taddei in the title role and Teresa Zylis-Gara and Franco Bonisolli as the war-crossed lovers.
Upper West Side Story
On this day in 2017 the Metropolitan Opera celebrated 50 years at Lincoln Center.
L’amour de Loin
Kaija Saariaho’s modern masterpiece, as transmitted live on December 10, 2016.
‘Cat’ people
Gorgeousness is, of course, its own reward—and the movie of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof has many other pluses as well—but I do think Elizabeth Taylor‘s and Paul Newman‘s good looks pose an ongoing distraction.
World of Wunders, part two
Today’s installment of parterre box’s latest vocal-identification quiz brings eight more Sieglindes proclaiming “O hehrstes Wunder!”
Wozzeck
Krzysztof Warlikowski directs Christopher Maltman and Eva-Maria Westbroek in this production from Dutch National Opera in 2017.
Oh what a knight
On this day in 1948 the Metropolitan Opera presented Der Rosenkavalier in Northrup Memorial Auditorium in Minneapolis.
Hamlet
Simon Keenlyside, Marlis Petersen, Jennifer Larmore and James Morris star in this Live in HD video from March 27, 2010.
Gloriana
Susan Bullock, Toby Spence and Kate Royal star in Benjamin Britten‘s 1953 opera.
