Tunnel vision
Lise Davidsen, Michael Spyres, and Yannick Nézet-Séguin are astonishing in Tristan und Isolde at the Met, while Yuval Sharon‘s new production is anything but.
Charles Edwards
15 pieces since 2012 — at 5 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
15
pieces
5
companies
15
years
I wanna be the one to walk in the sun
Two recent Paminas feature in concerts at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall.
Doublet trouble
A messy new I puritani at the Met is a historic and historical disappointment.
Make them die through singing
Ahead of a new production opening at the Met on New Year’s Eve, director Charles Edwards and Lisette Oropesa discuss creating an I puritani that is stark and serious — and sings.
Five of a kind
Rare is the revival of Il trovatore that boasts five first-rate singers, and such an occasion should be treasured. And so, at the Met last Saturday, it was.
Got to get you into my strife
Power struggles, prejudice, feuds and revenge abound in San Francisco at the moment.
Poison of interest
Following new productions of Tosca in 2017, Adriana Lecouvreur in 2018, and the Anna Netrebko-led Puccini orgy of 2019, New Year’s Eve at the Met has come to signify that verismo, as this school tends to be known, is still kicking.
We’ll always have Paris (or maybe not)
The revival of Don Carlo(s) which opened on November 3 restored the translated Italian text and the cut 1882 four-act revision not seen at the Met since Rudolf Bing’s last season in 1972.
Back to black
When was the last time the Metropolitan Opera mounted a new production that was musically outstanding yet the direction and/or design mostly sucked?
Eventide
David Alden’s acclaimed production of Leos Janácek’s Jenufa was mounted for its final performance of the season during the evening that I experienced my first opera at Santa Fe.
A talent to a Muse
Use bodily force and get your friends to one of the next five performances of the Met’s new production of Adriana Lecouvreur. It is everything!
Great Chicago fire
If sheer clarion vocalism is what draws you to the opera, then hie thee to Lyric Opera of Chicago’s rousing revival Of Verdi’s Il Trovatore, the oddly plotted but musically sublime opera that opened last night in the David McVicar production, originally seen in 2006.
The trouble with troubadours
Anita Rachvelishvili and Quinn Kelsey towered over an otherwise pedestrian if still exciting Il Trovatore.
Wigs and weaves
It’s easiest to write reviews when there are soaring triumphs and miserable failures.
See the pretty diva in that mirror there
The diva must be a Diva in Adriana Lecouvreur. Fact.
Expect opera, pay less
You may remember, gentle readers, that last year about this time Peter Gelb decided to enter into an unholy alliance with Target to benefit their mountainous number of opera loving customers by pre-releasing two Met performances exclusively in their fine emporiums.