Barton glances
The annual Richard Tucker Gala is probably the event of the year to indulge your love of verismo staples and can belto screaming.
Christine Goerke
82 pieces since 2010 — in 18 roles, at 13 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
82
pieces
18
roles
13
companies
17
years
By role
By company
Role Aida
Role Amneris
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.
Role Armida
Home brew
An extraordinarily rich variety of opera happens locally, under the umbrella of New York Opera Fest.
Role Brünnhilde
In my end is my beginning
Die Walküre heralds the end of an era for the Los Angeles Philharmonic — and the arrival of a new generation of Wagnerians.
Winterstorms that go bump in the night
A hefty thunderclap shook Tanglewood’s Koussevitzky Shed just as Andris Nelsons raised his baton for the third act of the weekend’s concert Die Walküre.
Something With a ‘Ring’ to It
Cycle II represented an embarrassment of musical riches.
The end is the beginning of the end
At the Metropolitan Opera’s Götterdämmerung on Saturday afternoon, the fires which consumed the Gods burned lukewarm.
Teenager in love
Stefan Vinke’s Siegfried was not so much brawny and terrestrial, but heady and mercurial
Oh my goddess!
Die Walküre crystallizes the cycle’s questions, ideas, and stakes.
First action hero
Director David Pountney and his splendid designers have brought Lyric Opera of Chicago a visually spectacular Siegfried full of daring ideas.
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.
Cards on the table
The Canadian Opera Company scored a coup when they secured Christine Goerke for the revival of their Ring productions over the last three seasons
Trauermarsch
I can scarcely remember a performance where so many conflicting thoughts raced through my mind as happened Thursday night during the Met Orchestra’s “bleeding chunks” of Wagner’s Ring at Carnegie Hall.
A choice, not an ecosystem
Washington National Opera’s first Ring Cycle came to a bittersweet conclusion this past Sunday, closing the door on an extraordinary three weeks in the opera house and a remarkable musical and theatrical achievement for the company.
That ’70s show
Washington National Opera followed up Monday’s lavishly praised Die Walküre with a Siegfried that, if not quite rising to the summit of the previous installment, delivered a musically committed and eminently watchable version of this complicated work.
Special guest Heldenreizerin
WNO’s first complete Ring Cycle continued Monday evening with a revamped version of the Die Walküre first seen at the Kennedy Center in 2007.
Sag, welch wunderbare Träume
First seen in 2005, Siegfried makes a welcome return as a stand-alone production this season.
Role Cassandra
Troy story
Lyric Opera of Chicago rose to the challenges mightily in its first-ever performance of Les Troyens.
Role Dyer's Wife
Two ladies in the shade…
The simple fable at the heart of Die Frau ohne Schatten shouldn’t be difficult to parse, but Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s libretto juggles its vaguely Jungian, vaguely Arabian Nights symbolitry as if with intent to mystify and bewilder.
Role Elektra
Last dance
If it is true that there are few respectable ways for people over 40 without small children to celebrate Halloween, a performance of Richard Strauss’ pioneering horror opera Elektra belongs on the short list.
Dancer in the dark
Patrice Chéreau‘s Elektra brims with ideas beyond its eschewing of the opera’s standard, hysterical trappings.
The mania event
Christine Goerke‘s puzzling high register has become an increasingly troubling aspect of her singing. One just never knew what was going to come out from one moment to the next.
Seriously? Right in front of Mycenae?
You’ve got your “Night in the Museum,”and your “It’s All In Her Head” and your “Pantomimes of Childhood Trauma” and that’s all before halftime.
Aged in blood
Simply put, Christine Goerke is a stupendous Elektra.
Final chapter
None of my previous Elektra experiences prepared me for this stunning, overwhelming performance from the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence.
Role Elettra
A very little night music
The unevenly-beating Heart unfortunately proved less than the sum of its deluxe parts.
Role Fiordiligi
We’re the kids in America
Needing a Mozart palate-cleanser after the recent misbegotten Marriage of Figaro, I went back more than two decades for a Houston Così fan Tutte featuring then-rising Americans Christine Goerke, Joyce Di Donato, Richard Croft, and Nathan Gunn as the confused lovers.
Role Gretchen
Veni vidi vici
Mahler’s 8th Symphony is an enormous and enigmatic work.
Role Isolde
One night only
Christine Goerke‘s distracted, tentative Isolde turned out to be the least potent feature of what was an otherwise exciting and effective second act of Tristan.
Role Lidoine
Pragmatism and ideology
It doesn’t get more classic than John Dexter‘s Dialogues des Carmélites.
Role Marie
Hopelessly human
The Boston Symphony and Alban Berg’s “Wir arme Leut” spread musical riches at Carnegie Hall.
Role Marietta
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 Ortrud
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.
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.
Perfect is the enemy of the good
So I just got out of the Lohengrin prima at the ROH and I’m itching to share my thoughts.
Role Sieglinde
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.
Role Sieglinde; Brunnhilde
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 Turandot
Decadent genealogies
Arnold Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder and Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot are, in their different ways, the final decadent flowering of a musical tradition at its twilight.
Turandot doesn’t exist
It’s back to business as usual at the Met, for better and for worse.
Riddle me this
Turandot finally arrives on Trove Thursday, but it’s the setting by Ferruccio Busoni which predates by a decade the one by that other Italian guy, and it’s paired today with Arlecchino, the composer’s other commedia dell’arte-influenced short opera.
Orientation
There were plenty of Turan-do’s and only a few Turandon’ts at the Met’s Turandot Sunday afternoon.
Geopolitics Italian style
How Verdi’s opera might address this particular nightmare was unclear.
Ice storm
Two months after my last visit to this season’s sixteen-performance run of Puccini’s Turandot, I returned eager to witness the latest chapter in the sporadic Met career of Nina Stemme. Rising stars Anita Hartig and Alexander Tsymbalyuk also appeared in their roles for the first time at the Met, so Monday evening turned into a […]
Enigma variation
On Thursday evening Jennifer Wilson “finally” made a belated, disappointing Met debut as Turandot.
The unanswered question
Would exciting American dramatic soprano Christine Goerke be the next great ice-princess we have been waiting for?
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).
