Mice mice baby
This “new-to-Chicago” production is a sheer pleasure from beginning to end.
Christian Van Horn
58 pieces since 2013 — in 30 roles, at 13 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
58
pieces
30
roles
13
companies
14
years
By role
Colline 5
Narbal 4
Bluebeard 3
Méphistophélès 3
Donner 2
Mefistofele 2
Alidoro 2
Oroveso 2
Giorgio 1
Raimondo 1
Pistola 1
Ramfis 1
Nick Shadow 1
Simon 1
Speaker 1
The Four Villains 1
Zoroastro 1
King Philip II 1
King Philip 1
Friar Laurence 1
Filippo II 1
Figaro 1
Fiesco 1
Escamillo 1
Enrico 1
Don Ruy Gomez de Silva 1
Doktor 1
Count Walther 1
Claggart 1
Banquo 1
By company
Metropolitan Opera 15
San Francisco Opera 10
Lyric Opera of Chicago 7
Canadian Opera Company 2
Dallas Opera 2
Chicago Symphony Orchestra 1
Cleveland Orchestra 1
Opéra national de Paris 1
Opera Philadelphia 1
Philadelphia Orchestra 1
War Memorial 1
Washington Concert Opera 1
Washington National Opera 1
Role Alidoro
Angelina’s ashes
Kitsch is alive and well in Rossini’s La Cenerentola at the War Memorial.
Role Banquo
Lady willpower
Hie thee hither to the Lyric Opera House!
Role Bluebeard
Bloodless revolution
Bluebeard’s Castle and Erwartung at Canadian Opera Company deliver on fine performances even if Robert Lepage‘s production skimps on horror.
Girl next door
My first introduction to Béla Bartók’s one-act opera Bluebeard’s Castle was the musicologist Susan McClary’s infamous book Feminine Endings. Here, McClary likened her search of a feminist musicology to Judith’s journey through the seven doors; a journey that ends in Judith’s symbolic death.
Parable of the prodigious son
I’m old enough to remember when Yannick Nézet-Séguin could do no wrong.
Role Claggart
Miss me blond
From the technical standpoint San Francisco Opera’s Billy Budd was pretty much flawless.
Role Colline
Playing in the rafters
Opera took center stage on the final weekend of the Philadelphia Orchestra season.
Dreamers with empty hands
It’s autumn in New York, baby.
Queen of the New Year
Although the gold glitter cannons detonated at the end of the act were an ostentatious reminder that this was a celebration of the new year, it seemed that the only words on anyone’s lips as the audience filed out of the theater were “Viva Netrebko!”
You give me fever
Mortality is ugly—it smells, it makes uncomfortable noises, it takes its time; and then there is the overwhelming sense of dread and helplessness.
La vie de broham
Imagine the good fortune of attending La Bohème with someone who’s never seen it!
Role Count Walther
The Wurm turns
Luisa Miller snowballs toward disaster and death.
Role Doktor
Every snarl and shimmer
Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra reigned supreme at the opening night of Wozzeck on Friday evening, rendering every snarl and shimmer of Berg’s score with gripping intensity.
Role Don Ruy Gomez de Silva
Power and precision: ‘Ernani’ in Chicago
LOC’s Ernani is a satisfying evening of Verdi sung by four stars at the height of their powers.
Role Donner
In the River Rhine. In it.
It is always a pleasure to hear a great orchestra take on a major score that might sound half-muffled emerging from the pit of an opera house.
Gold diggers
Das Rheingold is the outlier among the Ring operas, an ensemble work with a fast-shifting plot, animated dialogue, fewer set pieces and less character development.
By Adriel
7 comments
Role Enrico
Sondra castle
By the end of the first act, it was clear to me that I was experiencing an artist performing at her absolute peak.
Role Escamillo
It takes a woman
The plight of two women, each from different backgrounds, was on full display in San Francisco opera houses last week.
Role Fiesco
Dogecoin
In sum: not a perfect Simon Boccanegra—is there such a thing?—but a grand and often great one.
Role Figaro
A crazier day
Saturday’s performance of Le nozze di Figaro at the Met mined the humor from Mozart’s divine setting of Beaumarchais’s play about a crazy day in the Almaviva household.
Role Filippo II
Married to their jobs
Ahead of their opening in Don Carlo in Dallas tonight, Christopher Corwin chats with Nicole Car and Étienne Dupuis — and offers a special edition of Chris’s Cache!
Role Friar Laurence
Sher on this shining night
Bartlett Sher’s “new to Chicago” production of Romeo et Juliette came to the Lyric Opera at Monday’s opening after appearances at Salzburg and Milan.
Role Giorgio
Doublet trouble
A messy new I puritani at the Met is a historic and historical disappointment.
Role King Philip
A cross to bear
A uniformly strong cast triumphs over a dull production of Don Carlo at the Dallas Opera.
Role King Philip II
C’est une vraie voix
Don Carlos returns to the Opéra National de Paris and it’s an unusually happy occasion
Role Mefistofele
The devil’s eye candy
There are shows with iconic characters, and there are shows with iconic characters playing iconic characters.
Faust of fury
“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.
Role Méphistophélès
Damned to hell
Only the singers, led by Benjamin Bernheim, can salvage a dismal La Damnation de Faust at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées.
Back to the future
After putting a hiatus on their awards in 2020 and 2021 (for reasons that are all too well-known to all of us), the Richard Tucker Foundation Gala returned on Sunday evening November 13 honoring soprano Angel Blue the 2022 Award winner.
Reframing
The production is at all times visually arresting, but it’s also extremely distracting.
Role Narbal
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.
Troy story
Lyric Opera of Chicago rose to the challenges mightily in its first-ever performance of Les Troyens.
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 Nick Shadow
Varying the song
The opera The Rake’s Progress, as many people know already, was inspired by a series of engravings and paintings of the same name by William Hogarth, showing the decline of a young man into depravity and insanity.
Role Oroveso
Zero gravitas
On the train ride home I was thinking that I don’t want to see or hear Norma ever again.
Running, jumping, or burning Gaul
Far be it from me to join the Schadenfreudian chorus of “Bye, Bye, Berti!” you may have been hearing in certain quarters, but the first thing I am duty-bound to report about San Francisco Opera’s Norma (of which three performances remain) is that they’ve hit the jackpot, coverwise.
Role Pistola
He is big
Falstaff, Verdi’s final opera, is exuberantly inventive, bubbling and roiling with ideas the 79-year-old composer was too impatient to develop.
Role Raimondo
Dark shadows
Those who want a rethought Lucia to allow the heroine more sense of agency will be especially confounded at Laurent Pelly’s reading.
Role Ramfis
A farewell to Frisell
Old opera productions at the end of their performing life can be sad affairs.
Role Simon
That time of year
One of the greats of classical music, Franz Joseph Haydn was a bit of an “also-ran” as an opera composer.
Role Speaker
Dark matter
In Schikaneder’s patriarchal cosmology, darkness is the province of emotional women—not just the erratic fury of the Queen of the Night, but the pathetic supplications of Pamina as well.
Role The Four Villains
Nice piece of Tales
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.
Role Zoroastro
Pilot program
Once again we got a very frustrating performance of Orlando; this time a beautiful and completely coherent production marred by some sub-optimal singing.
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).
