Anna Pirozzi makes a welcome return to the Metropolitan Opera, but Turandot remains as thorny as ever.
Christopher Corwin surveys the three Traviata casts — led by Lisette Oropesa, Rosa Feola, and Ermonela Jaho — at the Met this spring.
The Met Orchestra under Yannick Nézet-Séguin surges into summer with a mixed program at Carnegie Hall
A starry concert Aïda in Baltimore proves unusually polished
Elina Garanca is back at the Met for the first time since 2020 — her Amneris is, in a word, sensational.
By the time the curtain rose on Verdi’s Luisa Miller last Sunday in Washington Concert Opera’s final show of the season, the originally announced line-up was about as accurate as a federal agency org chart from February.
A grand concert from Angel Blue has Patrick Mack wondering, “where’s her crossover album?”
Prompted by Washington Concert Opera’s upcoming Luisa Miller, Chris Cache’s misbehaves five times by offering just the opera’s final act with sopranos from the 1970s, some of whom might be considered “under-appreciated”: Gabriella Tucci, Adriana Maliponte, Renata Scotto, Gilda Cruz-Romo, and Katia Ricciarelli.
I had been hopeful that 2024 would end, if not on a high note, then one that was at least in tune.
Ainadamar functions on two levels: as a defiant dance against fascist totalitarianism and as an exaltation of the diva.
The Richard Tucker Foundation Gala has always been a big annual celebration of the voice with an emphasis on big-voiced singers in big repertoire (not much Wagner usually, though…). Like so many reliable operatic institutions it has struggled for survival after the pandemic.
Ainadamar never quite found its identity between the two poles of conceptual and concrete.
Some operas carry around the shadow of their most famous interpreters more than others.
After a century of searching, the world has perhaps finally found a definitive Magda in ethereal soprano Ailyn Pérez.
Hailed as the first opera by an African-American composer performed at the Metropolitan Opera, Fire Shut Up in My Bones was a huge audience and box office hit in the Fall of 2021 when it reopened the Met after two seasons shut down by COVID-19.
Puccini’s schmaltziest, most melodic, most dramatically limp, most cynical, most obscure mature work
Next week Puccini’s La Rondine returns to the Met for the first time in eleven years, so Chris’s Cache offers three quite diverse sopranos as Magda: Ljuba Welitsch, Virginia Zeani, and Cristina Gallardo-Domâs.
This Carmen, in other words, was somewhat less radical than its initial image suggested.
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.
Power struggles, prejudice, feuds and revenge abound in San Francisco at the moment.
Today’s Chris’s Cache features live recordings of Otello most noteworthy for their Desdemonas: (in chronological order) Teresa Stratas, Julia Varady, Eva Marton and Karita Mattila.
Old opera productions at the end of their performing life can be sad affairs.
Angel Blue‘s refulgent, lush soprano blooms as Violetta’s vocal lines broaden and soar.
I have a horrible confession. I’ve always judged the quality of an opera largely on the number of dead characters at the finale.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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