Troy story
Lyric Opera of Chicago rose to the challenges mightily in its first-ever performance of Les Troyens.
Brandon Jovanovich
35 pieces since 2005 — in 18 roles, at 8 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
35
pieces
18
roles
8
companies
22
years
By role
Role Aeneas
Role Ahab
Third leg
The term “narrative prosthesis” refers to the tendency for works of literature to use disability as the conflict upon which the whole narrative hinges. Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick is a quintessential example of “narrative prosthesis.”
Role Énée
This means war
Considering the size and the logistics for staging Les Troyens, every new production of Berlioz’s epic masterpiece is a special event.
Role Florestan
I wake up screaming
Töt erst sein Weib!” shrieks Anja Kampe as Leonore during the very first moments of Andreas Homoki’s ingenious production of Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio, at Opernhaus Zürich.
Role Gherman
Skeleton key
Original Director Richard Jones and revival director Benjamin Davis have created a staging that veers wildly between fascinating and fatally flawed.
Role Herman
The discreet charm of the bourgeoisie
This July, Munich played host to hordes of football fans in town for the European Championship—and arguably the two finest working sopranos today.
Role Hoffegut
Cloud nein
Although Walter Braunfels was among those German composers whose music was banned in their home country after 1933, and whose political rehabilitiation in 1945 was not accompanied by a commensurate revival of his music, his 1920 opera Die Vögel should need no special pleading on musical or dramatic grounds. Though Braunfels is traditionally described as […]
Role Narraboth
salome (met) 9/23/2008
I was there in the house and it was a good night. I still think that Mattila and the production were fresher in 2004 with a wider range of colors and dynamics. However, she didn’t sound frayed or at the end of her rope. Some of the louder high notes can get a blanched quality […]
Role Parsifal
Grail against the machine
A new production of Parsifal at San Francisco Opera stirred something deep inside Michael Anthonio about how music soothes the soul
The open wound that will never heal
In his new production that opens at San Francisco Opera this weekend, Matthew Ozawa is creating a Parsifal for the cancel culture age.
Role Paul
Not a Marietta
We are a nostalgic sort, we opera lovers. Fortunately, Korngold’s Die tote Stadt, which arrived in concert form to Boston’s Symphony Hall last weekend, is all about nostalgia.
Role Pinkerton
Under the covers
Winter weather has taken a toll on the cast of Lyric Opera of Chicago’s revival of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.
Role Prince
Under the silver lake
“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?” went the introduction to the 1940s radio program The Shadow, an apt description for the San Francisco Opera’s production of Rusalka.
Water, logged
So, how excited are you to read another piece about the Mary Zimmerman Rusalka?
Sleeping with the fishes
With a cast of stellar singers and uneven direction by Mary Zimmerman, Dvorák’s Rusalka debuts in a new production at the Metropolitan Opera.
Role Sergei
So damn bored
It’s nasty world, Shostakovich seems to say, where life alternates between boring and terrifying.
Katerina’s insomnia
Throw in a trio of murders and a healthy splash of vodka and you have, more or less, the plot of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.
Role Siegmund
Consistently enthralling
To conclude its triumphant season, last week the Met Orchestra performed its annual Carnegie Hall concerts under music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin and once again performed superbly.
The hipster demigoddess
If Das Rheingold is an opera about infinitude, the illusory idea that the world is large enough to satisfy all of our desires, passions, and lusts, Die Walküre is an opera about scarcity.
Girls on horseback
It’s a fairly traditional post-Patrice-Chereau Ring, set during the Industrial Revolution.
Wow factor
The second installment of Lyric’s Ring Cycle proved an evening of glorious singing, moving drama, great conducting and orchestral playing.
Role Siegmund; Siegfried
Next to godliness
Washington National Opera rounded out its season opening weekend with a one-night-only performance entitled “Gods & Mortals: A Celebration of Wagner” the evening after the premiere of its new production of Fidelio.
Role Tenor/Bacchus
Desert island diva
This sterling revival shows the Metropolitan to be surviving well and in good shape.
Role Ulysse
Old wife’s tale
Pénélope at the Bayerische Staatsoper’s summer festival spotlights the crossroads between the nostalgic and the progressive.
Role Walther
Wahn for a day
Die Meistersinger is a bold stroke of programming, in a not particularly exciting way.
Win a Free Ticket to Opening Night at the Met!
Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen star in the Met's new Macbeth. We're giving away one ticket, so screw your courage to the sticking place and enter now!
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).
