The Bayerische Staatsoper’s summer festival wound down with Lotte de Beer’s darkly effective production of Gounod ’sFaust.
Back-to-back casts in the Metropolitan Opera’s revivals of Madama Butterfly and La traviata offer ample opportunity for soprano-gazing.
Franz Welser-Möst leads a rigorous, if emotionally staid, performance of Verdi‘s Requiem at Carnegie Hall.
Nearly three years after the premiere of François Girard’s Lohengrin at the Met, Parterre Box looks back at the production with a duet from Piotr Beczala and Elena Stikhina.
Parterre Box anticipates Ailyn Peréz‘s upcoming New York performances of Madama Butterfly with the Puccini role most closely associated with her
Le nozze di Figaro in Santa Fe is a light and kindly revival while The Turn of the Screw is crisp and atmospheric
Contrasting approaches to Regie duke it out in Cavalleria rusticana & Pagliacci and Rusalka in Munich
Matthew Travisano takes on Mimì’s Act III aria from La bohème — not that one, the other one — in the latest installment of the “Perspectives on an Aria” series
Before this weekend, I never thought I would want to leave an opera by Act I. The recent production of Puccini’s La bohème at the Lyric Opera of Chicago taught me that there’s a first time for everything.
This archly traditional production of La bohème was a little shaky on opening night. It nevertheless had a full complement of sterling individual performances to take us on home.
For the opening night of Il Trovatore, Houston Grand Opera’s new production aimed high, bringing together a star-studded cast and a fresh, contemporary take on Verdi’s intense drama.
When it premiered at the Opéra Comique in 1875, Carmen shocked audiences with its frank depictions of female sexuality, the proletariat, and violence: subjects that have ensured the piece’s continued relevance and that have inspired numerous retellings and revisions.
Puccini’s schmaltziest, most melodic, most dramatically limp, most cynical, most obscure mature work
In its Met premier, neither a talented cast nor some beautiful musical moments were enough to make Florencia feel new or vital.
This Sunday marked a muted return of the Richard Tucker Foundation Gala, which had the dubious distinction of the fourth edition not to feature a prizewinner and perhaps the first not to provide complete orchestral and choral accompaniment for its performers.
The fourth production of Santa Fe Opera’s 66th Festival Season that opened on Saturday June 22 offered a multitude of firsts.
On June 16, San Francisco Opera concluded their excellent Centennial Season with a heartfelt 100th Anniversary Concert, featuring a starry cast, three conductors (including current and former Music Directors) and the SF Opera Orchestra and Chorus.
Out of sheer morbid curiosity last evening I pulled up the “orders” page of my Amazon account and searched Otello to discover that over the past 11 years. I’ve ordered 15 items with that title (one as recently as last night!)
Verdi’s Falstaff is a brilliantly written opera: funny, with a complex ability to operate across minutely shifting registers of farce and lyricism. It needs, ideally, a production and cast capable of executing both comedy and drama, irony and sincerity—often concurrently. In its current Met revival, happily, Falstaff has everything it needs.
It doesn’t get more classic than John Dexter‘s Dialogues des Carmélites.
I was reminded at the Met’s season premiere of Eugene Onegin Friday night always to expect the unexpected.
This is an exuberant, uplifting, and joyous Elisir, and, for once, it was actually laugh-out-loud funny.
In anticipation of the Met’s reopening performance on September 11, another serving of pandemic-hoarding arrives on Trove Thursday with 10 rare live performances of the Verdi Requiem’s concluding “Libera me.”
The San Francisco Opera became the first US opera company to present a full-blown production indoors on its home turf this season when they ushered the US opera audience into 2021-22 Season on Saturday September 21 with a stellar performance of Giacomo Puccini’s perennial favorite Tosca.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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