Nature boy
With Siegfried, the directorial vision of the Paris Opera‘s Ring cycle finally takes root.
Brian Mulligan
24 pieces since 2011 — in 18 roles, at 6 companies, most often at San Francisco Opera.
24
pieces
18
roles
6
companies
16
years
By role
Role Alberich
God grief
Nigel Wilkinson takes on the first installment of the Paris Opera’s new Calixto Bieito-directed Ring Cycle
Role Amfortas
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
Role Barak
Aix tremendae, salva me
Festival d’Aix-en-Provence confronts the living and the dead — and its own future — through audacious productions and an intimate world premiere.
Role Chorebe
Not since Ilium
As I mentioned in a previous post, one of my two favorite operas is Les Troyens,
Fou fighter
It is easy to become overly identified with opera—as a cleverer friend of mine once noted: being a sports fan is an interest, but if you like opera, everyone thinks of it as a crippling obsession.
Role Daniel
Old-Fashioned Oratorio
For the fourth annual edition of “Handel for my birthday” Trove Thursday serves up three heaping portions of “old-fashioned oratorio.”
Role Enrico
All my Edgardos
Well that’s a terrible place to start a review, and it’s not quite fair to SFO’s Lucia di Lammermoor, but…
Role Faninal
Somewhere in time
The current Met revival of Der Rosenkavalier, while not perfect, has much to feel joyful and excited about.
Role Gunther
Baby the rain must fall
As Brünnhilde invokes the gods of an empty Valhalla for one last time and strides confidently into a wall of flame, we pause for a moment, unsure of what will follow.
Role Herald
A hole new world
Here’s an update for those keeping up with the Lohengrin casting sweepstakes at the Met.
It might as well be Einspring
I can’t imagine anything more anxiety-inducing than being put in at last-minute to sing a role in a high-profile production at the Met.
Role King's Herald
A whiter shade of grail
It seems that François Girard has been watching a little too much Star Wars lately. His new production of Lohengrin, which opened at the Metropolitan Opera Sunday afternoon, reduced Wagner’s opera to a knockoff space opera, full of hackneyed sci-fi tropes and B-rated futurist apologue.
Role Kurwenal
Höchste Lust!
Yannick Nézet-Séguin leads the Philadelphia Orchestra, Stuart Skelton, and Nina Stemme in a Tristan und Isolde for the ages
Role Mandryka
Coming out
Beautiful singing, thoughtful staging, lovely melodies… a perfect escape from daily life.
Role Paolo
Doge days
That Placido Domingo and James Levine, the Met’s inexorable septuagenarians, would team up yet again—on April Fools’ Day, no less—for a revival of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra occasioned an uncomfortable degree of doubt and dread.
Role Prometheus
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 Roderick Usher
Chute your shot
Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher is heavy on macabre atmosphere and light on action.
Role Sweeney Todd
Wahn for a day
Die Meistersinger is a bold stroke of programming, in a not particularly exciting way.
Leave it to cleaver
If I’d gotten an hour less sleep you’d now find me mixing everything up and writing about Mrs. Lovett making her entrance on a bronze horse like Peter the Great.
Role Telramund
Swan’s weh
All in all, this was truly a superb achievement for San Francisco Opera and an auspicious first chapter in the Wagner opera journey with Eun Sun Kim.
Role Wotan
Get in the zone
Tamara Wilson and Stanislas de Barbeyrac are the standouts in Calixto Bieito’s underwhelming Die Walküre in Paris
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).
