Sweet comic valentine
Born on this day in 1897 Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart.
Recent Stories
Damned if you do
Our Own “Einspringer” JJ‘s sad duty of reviewing the Met’s spring revival of La traviata garnered the site’s most pageviews in the month of April.
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).
The Goddess
On this day on 1990 mezzo-soprano Christa Ludwig celebrated her 30th anniversary Metropolitan Opera performance as Fricka.
Into the wooed
We are the elusive, the mysterious, the ever-courted Millennial Audience, Mr. Darcy to the marketing department’s Mrs. Bennet.
Quels enfants!
On this day in 1902 Debussy’s Pelléas et Melisande premiered in Paris.
The end is the beginning of the end
At the Metropolitan Opera’s Götterdämmerung on Saturday afternoon, the fires which consumed the Gods burned lukewarm.
Conductivity
Happy 83rd birthday maestro Zubin Mehta.
All she has to do is dream
In the most hectic and sometimes marvelous year of theater I’ve had in memory, Lady in the Dark at MasterVoices this weekend thrilled me most.
Pigment of the imagination
It’s a wonderful idea to cast Bohème with young singers, and these delivered astonishingly assured, confident, mature performances.
“The richest food that money can buy”
All about the life of Lorenzo Da Ponte, but depicted as an opera performed as a dress rehearsal for an opera.
Jest you, jest me
Friday night’s Rigoletto at the Metropolitan Opera revealed once again a predictable dissonance between the performances on stage and Michael Mayer’s production.
Some othering time
On this day in 1900 the play Madame Butterfly by David Belasco opened at the Duke of York’s Theatre in London.
Broadcast: Götterdämmerung
Join the cher public for this morning’s (and afternoon’s) bang-up broadcast.
Oh very young
Happy 76th birthday soprano Judith Blegen.
Dressed to kill
Oh, that slippery Don Giovanni—so elusive, so chaotic, so open to no end of interpretation!
Demented
Claus Guth, in a staging of Handel’s Orlando for Theater an der Wien, decided to revisit a PTSD theme.
The lady don’t mind
Happy 49th birthday soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek.
Everything sacred
“Trove Thursday” features a rare live broadcast of Les Dialogues des Carmélites featuring the composer’s favored soprano Denise Duval as Blanche.
The answer’s in the question
On this day in 1926 Puccini’s opera Turandot premiered in Milan.
Welcome to the Machine
The “the ‘most authentic aspect of Lepage’s production is the overall failure of its illusionist agenda.”
Holy wedlock!
“Michaela Schuster will sing Fricka in tomorrow’s performance of Wagner’s Die Walküre, replacing Jamie Barton,” says the Met’s press office.
Pearl of wisdom
Odyssey Opera’s Ägyptische Helena was a beautifully executed production of a flawed opera.