Les Contes d’Hoffmann is something of a puzzle in which some of the pieces are missing and others been altered to fit since Offenbach died before he could complete and revise the work.
When my editor suggested to me a round-up of my favorite recordings of Jacques Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann I was très, très, intrigued.
You can imagine my surprise at encountering an almost wholly traditional staging with one teensy difference.
Zachary Woolfe reflects on the legacy of parterre box founder James Jorden and three decades of “remembering when opera was queer and dangerous and exciting and making it that way again”
My sister Julie celebrates an important birthday later this month which reminded me—as I also recalled I visiting her while she was living in Prague—that I should unearth Bohuslav Martin?’s Julietta with Lucia Popp and Dénes Gulyás for this week’s Trove Thursday.
Teatro Grattacielo presented two visions of love’s magic on November 13 and 14—one via Spain and Argentina (in collaboration with Opera Hispánica) and the other via Alsace by way of Italy.
Saturday marks the centenary of Julius Rudel’s birth which Trove Thursday celebrates with Le Coq d’or, Faust and Ariodante, a triple-bill showcasing his impressive versatility, featuring Beverly Sills and Norman Treigle, two of the most important artists he nurtured during his leadership of the New York City Opera.
Today’s Trove Thursday was originally scheduled for February 27, which would have been Mirella Freni’s 85th birthday, but instead we remember today the beloved soprano who passed away this past weekend in Puccini.
To mark Beverly Sills’s 90th birthday (May 25, 1929) “Trove Thursday” offers the late diva’s acclaimed Massenet heroine opposite her ideal Des Grieux, Alain Vanzo.
With a program of Schumann, Wagner, Ravel and de Falla, mezzo-soprano Elina Garanca and pianist Kevin Murphy delivered a underdone performance at Carnegie Hall on Tuesday night.
The old adage “the third time’s the charm” proved to be the case with me and Daphne, Richard Strauss’s ravishing bukolische Tragödie, when I recently heard it performed by Franz Welser-Möst and the Cleveland Orchestra.
Next week the Italian soprano Mariella Devia celebrates her 70th birthday so “Trove Thursday” salutes her with one of her earliest New York successes: Delibes’s Lakmé
I struggle to articulate the notion of an erotics of art.
Weekends at Aura Bar on 53rd and Ninth are typically big money makers for the morons who run the place. Jonjon and Yoni.
Andrea Andermann is the veteran film producer who had the notion to assemble top-flight talent from the worlds of music and cinema for a generously funded film of Tosca.
With Christmas Eve 2016 falling on a Saturday, the Met offers contrasting orchestral splendors at noon and 6 p.m.
Twenty years ago, a sad and lonely gay man sat down with a pair of scissors and a glue stick and said, “I think I’ll make a magazine.”
Janácek’s Makropulos Case has only chalked up thirteen performances in three previous runs at the Met and will have just five more this season. Try to catch at least one.
La Cieca received this letter yesterday. If you have reviews, opinion pieces, appreciations, or (as in this case) a Letter to the Doyenne, please email to [email protected]. Saving New York City Opera?
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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