My comfort opera after all these years remains Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, even with its sociologically problematical presentation of Japanese culture.
It’s like making love with someone whose rap never ceases—and includes “helpful suggestions” about how you can be improving your game.
Patrick Mack on the iconic Ethan Mordden‘s career and his first book on opera in 30 years – and it appears that time has mostly stopped in the Mordden manse.
When asked to express some “thoughts” here about Verdi’s Il trovatore, my immediate thought was “hmm… not a lot to think about there.”
“In over nine years you’ve never posted an opera by Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari,” no one has ever said.
Quite simply, the singers are not around today who are steeped in the tradition of verismo, or for that matter the later part of the 19th century.
Next week Puccini’s La Rondine returns to the Met for the first time in eleven years, so Chris’s Cache offers three quite diverse sopranos as Magda: Ljuba Welitsch, Virginia Zeani, and Cristina Gallardo-Domâs.
Amilcare Ponchielli’s La Gioconda might not be a perfect opera (though I don’t see why not) but it is one of my favorites…
On this day in 1922 the Metropolitan Opera presented the company debut of Catalani’s Loreley.
Trove Thursday offers a nearly forgotten 19th century opera with a most marvelous name: Le Roi d’Ys by Éduoard Lalo featuring a superb French cast led by Alain Vanzo, Andrea Guiot, Jane Rhodes and Robert Massard.
Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana has always been a particular favorite, although I’ve only seen it staged once (and that by an amateur company the details of which I share spare you all, save to note that dinner was served during the performance.)
“Trove Thursday” keeps the evil deeds going this All Saints’s Day with a vintage La Scala broadcast of Arrigo Boito’s only completed opera Mefistofele.
Usually the longer I know a work the more I look forward to rediscovering it, but that’s just not the case with the Verdi Requiem.
Flotow’s Martha, a work of 1847 that was popular around the world for a hundred years.
Jonas Kaufmann announced that he feels ready to return to the stage after calling in sick since last autumn
With Christmas Eve 2016 falling on a Saturday, the Met offers contrasting orchestral splendors at noon and 6 p.m.
This year as part of Bard’s “Puccini and His World” festival audiences may witness the resurrection of Mascagni’s distinctly odd Iris.
Is Manon Lescaut a cold, clinical tale of the splendors and pitfalls of transactional sex, or is it a romantic Italian opera at its most lush and melodic?
Between them, Maria Guleghina, Marcello Giordani, James Morris and John Del Carlo have nearly 150 combined years of service on stage.
With help from the Met’s invaluable performance archive, here is a look back at just some of what you could have seen, and perhaps did see, on October 31st through the years at the Met.
On Wednesday, the still-active, still radiant Virginia Zeani turns 90.
“Voglio essere giudicato per la musica e nient’altro che per la musica.” “I want to be judged for my music and nothing but my music.” This phrase, which Mascagni himself wrote to his publisher Sonzogno, is the key to understanding the very essence and existence of L’amico Fritz (1891). Cavalleria rusticana, Mascagni’s first performed opera,…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
×
Sign up for Parterre’s free newsletter.
Exclusive opera reviews, commentary, and top reads
delivered to your email weekly…ish.