In Richard Strauss’s Arabella, the heroine is consumed with finding the right man—der Richtige—but who is the right Arabella?
Quarantining during COVID dramatically increased my compulsion to collect and compare interpretations.
Alban Berg’s compact yet potent oeuvre has long played an outsized role in shaping my understanding of music’s aesthetic evolution.
L’Arlesiana in a vibrant live performance from a dozen years ago with Giuseppe Filianoti, Latonia Moore and Marianne Cornetti.
“Trove Thursday ” presents Heinrich Marschner’s Hans Heiling in a 2001 performance from Berlin featuring Alessandra Marc as the title character’s mom, the Queen of the Elves.
An outstanding performance of Weber’s Euryanthe to share on “Trove Thursday.”
I think the sturdier of you will enjoy Nina Stemme’s Elektra from Saturday night at Wiener Staatsoper.
“Conduct Salome and Elektra as if they were by Mendelssohn: Fairy music.” Seriously, how often has that happened?
To some, Anne Schwanewilms will always be the soprano in the slinky black dress who replaced Deborah Voigt at Covent Garden a decade ago.
Coming as Peter Gelb did from the music industry, opera lovers hoped that he would display a more distinctive knack for casting and an improved talent pipeline than Joe Volpe offered during the waning years of his tenure.
With orchestral and choral forces that could outnumber a small European village, Arnold Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder is a composition designed to overwhelm.
The simple fable at the heart of Die Frau ohne Schatten shouldn’t be difficult to parse, but Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s libretto juggles its vaguely Jungian, vaguely Arabian Nights symbolitry as if with intent to mystify and bewilder.
Before you depart the Met at the end of this season, Ms. Billinghurst, you have the chance to do some good for both the Met audience and James Levine.
Richard Strauss’s “last romantic opera,” as he called Die Frau Ohne Schatten, is and has always been a problem child.
Not a fairy kingdom, but rather an unheated postwar Vienna ballroom transformed into an improvised recording studio: that’s the setting for Christof Loy‘s new production of Die Frau Ohne Schatten at Salzburg. The production is also (if not more so) notable for Christian Thielemann‘s virtuouso conducting of the Vienna Philharmonic and the hair-raising performances of…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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