Parterre Box

Following the announcement that she’ll make her Met debut next season, Grand Tier Grab Bag brings Italian soprano Erika Grimaldi to your attention with a duet from Manon Lescaut.

Ahead of his performance in Les pêcheurs de perles with Washington Concert Opera, Parterre Box features the unusually elegant Anthony León performing Mozart.

Parterre Box highlights a busy few months of Verdi performances for Marina Rebeka and Ludovic Tézier with an exciting sample of their debuts in Nabucco.

Parterre Box highlights two recent Verdi Requiems of interest with a pair of Libera mes from Asmik Grigorian and Anna Netrebko.

Bellini and Donizetti may be top of mind these days, so Parterre Box offers two budding belcantisti, Beth Taylor and Dave Monaco, in a duet from Rossini’s La cenerentola.

Anticipating the titanic arrival of Lise Davidsen‘s Isolde in New York in March, Parterre Box is thrilled to share a bit of her debut opposite Clay Hilley recorded in Barcelona last week.

George Frideric Handel (born 341 years ago on Monday) composed over 40 operas including many masterpieces, but his Giulio Cesare is the one that everyone knows best.

For all his undeniable precision and discipline, I still find Toscanini’s tempi rushed and unyielding and his lack of rubato a chilly turnoff.

While the three leads do sing the material well, there has been a glut of recordings since then which are more complete and at least as well sung.

It was many decades ago that I first listened to the Solti Ring Cycle.

Karajan’s 1959 Aïda was once treated like gospel, a wall of plush Vienna Philharmonic sound and star power that critics dutifully genuflected before.

The Solti recording of Bohème is completely miscast.