A stylish and funny Così fan tutte at LA Opera is a pretty glam affair, according to Patrick Mack.
Michael Anthonio crunches the numbers on San Francisco Opera’s recent seasons and goes straight to the top to General Director Matthew Shilvock for a look at where SF Opera has been and where it’s headed
At the heart of Tobias Kratzer’s incisively rollicking production of Tannhäuser lies a metanarrative that maps Wagner’s early political and artistic challenges onto its hero’s philosophical struggles.
“The distance between dreams and reality is called action.” – Brian Tracy
When our friends at Naxos and C Major announced near-dueling releases of Puccini’s “shabby little shocker,” I was ready with my critic’s pen dipped in bile.
The Aix festival organized two back-to-back evening concerts dedicated to the Russian masters. One was an embarrassment of Slavic riches, the other… well, just an embarrassment.
Simon McBurney’s Die Zauberflöte, the second new production of the Met’s May Mozart Miracle, opened on Friday to rousing near-unanimous cheers.
The English Concert’s annual Handel tour brings Solomon conducted by Harry Bicket to the US beginning Sunday March 5. In anticipation, Chris’s Cache offers Solomon plus four other oratorios by the master: Belshazzar, Hercules, Saul and Jephtha, all via broadcasts for which I feel a personal connection.
A quick survey of the Met website shows wide swaths of available seats for the upcoming performances of La traviata and L’elisir d’amore. Only new works like The Hours and Fire Shut Up in My Bones have been achieving sold-out houses.
Director Barrie Kosky brings to Fiddler on the Roof fascinating ideas, fine casting, equal mixes of comedy and sadness, and, from the beginning, a sense for we of the audience that we were about to spend three hours in very good hands.
There is sensory overload, and very little humanity.
Trove Thursday turns to another epic opera in which the personal and the political intertwine: Prokofiev’s War and Peace.
In the opera world, one of the pieces that underwent a multitude of changes in its reception was undoubtedly Richard Wagner’s longest and most Germanic opera, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
Otto Nicolai’s Il Templario with Juan Diego Flórez, Clémentine Margaine and Luca Salsi.
We’ve had a mini-fest of director Barrie Kosky’s work this year at LA Opera.
“Trove Thursday” presents for the third annual installment of “Handel for my Birthday” a wickedly ideal Felicity Palmer dominating Agrippina.
Why did I mostly want to close my eyes and just listen?
Tannhäuser pales beside the other great Wagnerian operas in the degree to which it has innovated the Regisseur’s vocabulary for set design and dramaturgy.
San Francisco Opera opened their 2018-19 Season Friday with a double bill of Italian verismo operas, Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci, which made a welcome return to War Memorial Opera House after 15 years.
Celebrating Lenny’s 100th this year has made Candide ubiquitous at opera houses worldwide.
I had my head in my hands groaning in disbelief instead of joining in the general applause around me.
An outstanding performance of Weber’s Euryanthe to share on “Trove Thursday.”
Director Barrie Kosky’s Glyndebourne 2015 production of Handel’s 1739 oratorio Saul (released on Opus Arte DVD) shows imagination as well as a strong cast and design team.
Sunday afternoon at Carnegie Hall two remarkable slices of soprano-heaven were served up, first by Carolyn Sampson and then by Erin Morley, during the second act of Handel’s Orlando.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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