Christopher Corwin surveys the three Traviata casts — led by Lisette Oropesa, Rosa Feola, and Ermonela Jaho — at the Met this spring.
To celebrate the 100th anniversary performances of Turandot at the Met starting next week, Patrick Dillon gives a listen to seven versions of “Signore, ascolta!” for Perspectives on an Aria.
A strong revival of Eugene Onegin at the Metropolitan Opera and a recital by Benjamin Bernheim offered the chance to hear “Kuda, kuda” twice in two days.
Back-to-back casts in the Metropolitan Opera’s revivals of Madama Butterfly and La traviata offer ample opportunity for soprano-gazing.
“Soprano Aleksandra Kurzak will sing the role of Cio-Cio-San in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, replacing Sonya Yoncheva, who has withdrawn from the run due to family reasons,” says the Met press office.
Grand Tier Grab Bag offers a face off of two Polish divas from Aleksandra Kurzak‘s debut performances as Aïda in Verona this summer.
Chris’s Cache offers Nadine Sierra and Xabier Anduaga, the stars of the upcoming production of La sonnambula, in a performance of another favorite bel canto opera
In 2011, Sondra Radvanovsky‘s Tosca proved promising; fourteen years later, it was absolutely magnificent, a completely satisfying musical and dramatic embodiment of a challenging role by an artist at the peak of her powers.
Lincoln Center is in full diva mode. Or at least that is what it seemed as I passed the line of posters outside Alice Tully Hall for the forthcoming Maria Callas biopic.
Arnold Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder and Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot are, in their different ways, the final decadent flowering of a musical tradition at its twilight.
Yes, there were other Giocondas if not of quite the same distinction. Chronologically…
From a musical perspective, the evening came together admirably. As a work of theater, though, it was as stale as last week’s takeout.
Power struggles, prejudice, feuds and revenge abound in San Francisco at the moment.
Chris’s Cache offers up a quintet of intriguing “forgotten” Leonora-Azucena pairings from the 1970s.
David McVicar’s 2017 production of Tosca returned to the Met on Tuesday night, with an able and watchable, if not transcendent cast.
Pavarotti and Freni are gone but the Franco Zeffirelli Bohème remains.
Trove Thursday offers two very different live recordings of Halévy’s grand opera La Juive.
On Sunday afternoon, husband-and-wife duo Roberto Alagna and Aleksandra Kurzak presented a charming program of operatic favorites from the patio of the Château de la Chèvre d’Or in Èze, France.
Roberto Alagna’s physical and vocal embodiment of Don José lent his particular narrative a complication I hadn’t anticipated.
Headlining the Met’s current revival of both Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci, Roberto Alagna was operating on all cylinders Monday evening.
Endlessly extricating her from existing contracts then negotiating new ones must make being Sonya Yoncheva’s manager the hardest job in the music business.
As portrayed by Vittorio Grigolo, Nemorino was a manic self-absorbed, probably bipolar, stalker who—against all odds and good sense—gets the poor girl.
These days a cadre of voluble opera-goers regularly issues dire warnings that anyone about to attend this or that production at the Met should close her eyes and just listen rather than witness yet another Peter Gelb regie “atrocity.”
Newton’s Third Law of Motion states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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