Schön geschmückt und ganz allein!
With the 2025 Bayreuth Festival beginning next week, Grand Tier Grab Bag spotlights the Eva of its opening Meistersinger: Christina Nilsson
Recent Stories
Breaking the box
Jacquelyn Stucker talks to Kevin Ng about repertoire, tearing down the Fach system, and what it takes to make music from baroque to George Benjamin her own.
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).
Change my mind about the Toscanini Bohème
It’s like making love with someone whose rap never ceases—and includes “helpful suggestions” about how you can be improving your game.
By Peter Russell
79 comments
Troth or dare
Chris’s Cache would argue that Prokofiev’s Betrothal in a Monastery is a much more enjoyable alternative to the pandemic-canceled Barrie Kosky The Fiery Angel
Oedipe
George Enescu‘s opera in a live broadcast from the Bregenz Festival
Le nozze di Picasso
Wolf Trap Opera kicked off its summer season with an inventive production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro inspired by Pablo Picasso that showcased up-and-coming singers.
Change my mind about The Last Savage
Despite having endured premiers at the Santa Fe Opera, including Cold Mountain, Oscar, and The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, all of which were disappointing on every level, Santa Fe Opera’s 2011 production of Menotti‘s The Last Savage is an opera I never care to see or listen to again.
By Darby Fegan
153 comments
Canonically ossified
When such a canonically ossified work like Verdi’s Aïda is directed at all (let alone as ambitiously as Damiano Michieletto at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino), it does feel like a completely different opera
Louise
A performance of Gustave Charpentier‘s opera recorded last week at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence
La Calisto
A performance of Cavalli‘s opera recorded last week at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence
Change my mind about Joan Sutherland’s Norma
Joan Sutherland as Norma is something I’ve never been able to get.
By Ivy Lin
159 comments
Les contes d’Hoffmann
A live video broadcast from Zurich starring Saimir Pirgu in the title role
Don Giovanni
A live broadcast from the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence
America runs on Duncan
The opening of Teatro Nuovo’s Macbeth next week is the first of two opportunities this year to hear the opera in its original 1847 Version
Change my mind about booing singers
I don’t understand the booing of singers, whether it’s booing bad characters, or booing singers who don’t live up to the booer’s expectations.
By Remko Jas
204 comments
Come on, baby, and rescue me
In Smetana‘s Dalibor, a rescue opera and a nationalistic fable collide at this year’s SummerScape Festival
Elektra becomes mourning
Chris’s Cache presents for carefree summer listening a delightful 20th century operetta featuring a perhaps unexpected casting surprise in the title role: Lehár’s Die Lustige Witwe starring Hildegard Behrens.
Change my mind about performing operetta in English
I so don’t get why any company in the Anglophone world ever bothers to perform Continental operetta in English.
By Last Castrato
139 comments
There’s a parade in town
Les Brigands at the Paris Opera is an expensive joke that never lands
Now and at the hour of our death
This evening of Julius Eastman at Lincoln Center was so good it hurt
Take it or Liv it
The opening of the Santa Fe Opera’s season is the perfect occasion to highlight its Susanna, American soprano Liv Redpath
Changing habits
A new production of Dialogues des Carmélites featuring Anna Caterina Antonacci proves that it’s hard to be an iconoclast in Venice.
Change my mind about Joyce DiDonato
When I first encountered Joyce DiDonato in the early 2000s, I found her to be the case of an extraordinary technique and intelligent artistry supporting a rather ordinary voice.
By Cameron Kelsall
135 comments