Second casts in Don Giovanni and Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera offer mixed blessings.
When Angela Meade and Michael Fabiano first sang Lucia together as students at AVA few would have predicted that they would go on to sing Turandot 16 years later.
Anticipating a busy season for both, Parterre Box features married couple Angela Meade and John Matthew Myers trading soaring Strauss lines in a duet from Die Liebe der Danae.
Eli Jacobson on a luscious evening of early Strauss with Guntram at Carnegie Hall
For me, Donizetti’s operas are all about the mad scenes.
Il trovatore may be famous for its melodramatic plot and unlikely mistaken identities, but surely even Verdi and Cammarano couldn’t have imagined the chaos of a performance featuring two Manricos and two Leonoras.
Michael Steinberg on Riccardo Muti, fascism, and who speaks through the collective voice of the Verdi Requiem.
Some operas carry around the shadow of their most famous interpreters more than others.
Washington Concert Opera’s season opened with a triumphant performance of Gioachino Rossini’s rarely heard Ermione Saturday night at George Washington University in D.C., led by Antony Walker and a stellar quartet of principals in Angela Meade, Lawrence Brownlee, David Portillo, and Ginger Costa-Jackson.
Anna Bolena might be the earliest of Donizetti’s operas that might have name recognition to a non-specialist audience.
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.
For Philadelphia opera lovers, October means the Giargiari Bel Canto Competition—a staple event for the Academy of Vocal Arts, and a pipeline for the public to discover some of their strongest resident artists.
On October 20th, a wet but warmish Friday night, the Metropolitan Opera opened this season’s revival of Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera in David Alden’s 2012 production.
The wicked poisoner showed herself in fine form, full of purple passion and lusty music-making that would gladden the heart of any bel canto enthusiast or opera lover in general.
Old opera productions at the end of their performing life can be sad affairs.
Angela Meade, reportedly flown in at the very last minute to take on the role of Norma, absolutely triumphed, pulling out all the stops to deliver a commanding performance that should, indeed, go down in history.
On the train ride home I was thinking that I don’t want to see or hear Norma ever again.
After putting a hiatus on their awards in 2020 and 2021 (for reasons that are all too well-known to all of us), the Richard Tucker Foundation Gala returned on Sunday evening November 13 honoring soprano Angel Blue the 2022 Award winner.
The revival of Don Carlo(s) which opened on November 3 restored the translated Italian text and the cut 1882 four-act revision not seen at the Met since Rudolf Bing’s last season in 1972.
In an era when the Metropolitan Opera cannot cast an Aida, Trovatore or Forza consistently, New Amsterdam Opera managed to cast large, attractive and fully technically capable voices in all the cruelly demanding principal roles in I Vespri Siciliani!
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.”
April is the cruelest month, the song tells us—but this year, it was a week later. Ghenady Meirson, Philadelphia’s master of Russian Opera and coach extraordinaire, died on May 8.
For those pining for Puccini with the Met out of commission. Trove Thursday steps up with the composer’s brief first opera Le Villi with Krassimira Stoyanova, José Cura and Franz Grundheber, led by Simone Young.
I’ll just note that Cameron and I listened separately; we didn’t compare notes; and on our own, came up with the same list of top three singers… none of whom were among the actual winners.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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