Scene d’amour
On this day in 1958 Alfred Hitchcock‘s Vertigo premiered at the Stage Door Theater in San Francisco.
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La bohème
Renata Scotto and Luciano Pavarotti star in this pioneering video from March 15, 1977.
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).
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.
With an emphasis on the latter
On this day in 1955 the Richard Adler/Jerry Ross musical Damn Yankees opened at the 46th Street Theatre, to run 1,019 performances.
Le nozze di Figaro
The cream of the Met’s 1990s roster join forces for a controversial* staging of Mozart’s comedy.
The Bartered Bride
Video from the January 6, 2019 performance at the Bayerische Staatsoper.
A gala day is enough for me
The discussion of the Metropolitan Opera’s “At-Home Gala” set a new record for parterre box articles, with 11,590 pageviews and 1,877 comments!
World of Wunders
For an ecstatic outburst lasting less than a minute I swiftly gathered up an exaltation of Sieglindes from live performances spanning nearly 80 years. In fact, there were so many I decided to split up the quiz into three parts.
The Cat’s meow
This Cat seems more together than most. Unlike many of the teleplays we’ve considered so far, this one is actually directed by a Tony-winning theater director, and I’d venture that accounts for its relative success.
You’ve got to come back a star!
Born on this day in 1930 soprano Roberta Peters.