Sondra Radvanovsky returned for her 29th Met Aïda Thursday night (but only her second Aïda.)
There are, on rare occasions, moments in a live performance where some intangible symbiotic relationship between audience and performer creates an instant that borders on the sublime.
I do not envy Jennifer Rowley the task of stepping into Anna Netrebko’s shoes.
If I had to live with just one Tchaikovsky opera, it would be Iolanta.
Use bodily force and get your friends to one of the next five performances of the Met’s new production of Adriana Lecouvreur. It is everything!
The long evening didn’t achieve the degree of celebration it should have.
It had something for everyone who loves loud chesty singing and smoky soft-singing: from Tchaikovsky to Rachmaninoff to Strauss…
Anna Netrebko sang throughout with a palpable sense of joy and ease in vocal production, never a hint of strain or any moment forced.
Riccardo Chailly’s appointment as La Scala’s new music director was news that I greeted with enthusiasm when first announced in 2013.
The Albanian soprano Ermonela Jaho is surely the reason that Covent Garden has made a commercial release of this “Live to Cinemas” relay from March of 2017.
Sondra Radvanovsky changed my opinion of her through a single performance—I’ll never think of her the same way again; the power of her singing overwhelmed my previous impressions.
Isn’t it nice to know a lot? And a little bit not.
Carnegie Hall’s season opener last night fetched the usual glitterati.
Anna Netrebko is the greatest performing artist singing opera today. Nobody else comes close; she makes me love her in a way that verges on the erotic.
As the first of the 2018 opera productions last Saturday, the Merola Opera Program chose Mozart’s rarely-performed early serenata, Il re pastore.
I found myself engrossed in the comments of bitchy queens and backseat directors.
Trove Thursday wades into the murky musicological waters of Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann..
At “Trove Thursday” it’s May Night, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s 1880 comic opera, in a recent broadcast from Moscow led by pianist-conductor Mikhail Pletnev.
Like Julius Caesar before her, Anna Netrebko can rightly proclaim “Veni vidi vici” about her decisive Roman victory at the Metropolitan Opera where she took on her first-ever Tosca.
This revival of Phyllida Lloyd’s 2002 Macbeth production was probably the most anticipated event of the Royal Opera House 2017/2018 season, due mostly to Anna Netrebko’s return to Covent Garden after a three-year absence.
Anita Rachvelishvili and Quinn Kelsey towered over an otherwise pedestrian if still exciting Il Trovatore.
“Semiramide—a better opera than this dude expected!”
“Trove Thursday” pays tribute to Dmitri Hrovostovsky with a broadcast of his final new role, Rubinstein’s The Demon.
In Andrea Chenier an unexpected Canadian star-tenor relishes beheading alongside a far less well-known Italian diva: Jon Vickers and Ilva Ligabue.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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