Soprano Amanda Forsythe as Ilia and tenor David Portillo in the titular role were highlights of Washington Concert Opera’s robust Idomeneo.
The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra under conductor Stéphane Denève plays up the schtick in a concert performance of The Magic Flute – and obscures Mozart’s magic in the process.
In recital for the Los Angeles Opera, tenor Ben Bliss makes the case for the next stage of his career.
New York audiences got a taste of Ben Bliss in Mozart this fall, but this week Grand Tier Grab Bag offers snippets of the tenor trying his hand at Handel earlier this year.
The Met Orchestra Chamber Ensemble’s Das Lied von der Erde skirts the sublime at Carnegie Hall
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.
Look, for one of the most-staged operas in the repertoire, Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte seems awfully difficult to stage.
Even if our monolingual American tourists can be the source of vexation for many a Parisian, our singers gave much for the city’s operagoers to admire this month in stylish productions of Semele at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and I Puritani at the Opéra Bastille.
Instead of giving laurels to a performance already praised since a long time, my choice will be Don Giovanni, Metropolitan Opera, May 2023.
It was, at least, a jolly good show. Whether or not it actually suited Stravinsky’s music or Auden and Kallman’s text, is another question.
It’s not so much that I hated the Met Opera’s Grounded. I’m just not convinced that it should have been an opera.
This July, Munich played host to hordes of football fans in town for the European Championship—and arguably the two finest working sopranos today.
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.
Like a sommelier of male entitlement, Peter Mattei paired with precision moves from a wide-ranging vocabulary of gesture.
Do you ever wonder how easy it is to invent a Christmas tradition?
“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays” – Soren Kierkegaard
The opera The Rake’s Progress, as many people know already, was inspired by a series of engravings and paintings of the same name by William Hogarth, showing the decline of a young man into depravity and insanity.
Los Angeles Opera’s St. Matthew Passion was by equal parts challenging and hypnotic to watch.
In San Francisco Opera’s new Così fan tutte, the elements that most visibly read as “American” were a penchant for slapstick humor, overcooked blocking, and an abundance of cartoonish period costumes that hobbled the opera’s first act.
Saturday’s performance of Così fan tutte demonstrated that even the cool, acerbic wit of Mozart’s most controversial comedy can warm our hearts in these icy winter months.
Ryan McKinny’s Don is subtler, slyer, smoother, with a sharp wit and sense of dark humor that gives added dimension to the role.
Lyric Opera of Chicago’as Don Giovanni lands smack dab in the middle of our current debate about wanted or unwanted sexual advances and outright sexual abuse.
Mozart appears to find promiscuity a source of humor rather than something that is a fundamental problem.
I was shocked to realize I hadn’t seen Don Giovanni at the Met since Michael Grandage’s stultifying production opened in 2011.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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