Parterre Box

Parterre Box pays tribute to late conductor Antonino Fogliani with a bit of Maria Stuarda ahead of the opera’s return to the Met next month.

Marina Rebeka and Jonas Kaufmann are heading to New York for Tosca, so Parterre Box offers a sample of the two of them in a different Puccini opera.

Köln’s current Rigoletto, the debonair Korean baritone Insik Choi, is this week’s Grand Tier Grab Bag featured artist.

The operatically elusive Marianne Crebassa is in Parterre Box‘s spotlight this week ahead of La clemenza di Tito in Barcelona.

Anita Rachvelishvili and Saioa Hernandez are headed back to New York and this week’s Grand Tier Grab Bag features them together in a performance from July.

Iwona Sobotka, a favorite of Riccardo Muti, is this week’s featured Grand Tier Grab Bag artist

Richard Strauss adapted Oscar Wilde’s original 1891 French libretto into a 1907 French revision of Salome, unfortunately not often performed.

Yes, you miss the champagne sparkle and lilt of the best French versions but look at what you gain by hearing these grizzly tales in ETA Hoffmann’s own language.

There are Bohèmes and Bohèmes, and it is almost a joke word these days, but the French show us how it is properly done.

This performance by Marilyn Horne has always stunned me and everyone I play it for.

Some singers only need a few seconds to show what they are all about. Listen to Ursula Hesse von den Steinen in this stunning performance to see what I mean.

One of my favorite mezzo performances is Tatiana Troyanos in Cavalleria rusticana.