Stop me if you’ve heard this one
Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, and a slew of their members of court are hanging out in the afterlife…
Christopher Maltman
17 pieces since 2011 — in 11 roles, at 6 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
17
pieces
11
roles
6
companies
16
years
By role
Role Beaumarchais
Drop dead diva
My first experience with John Corigliano’s music was in high school with the ear and mind blowing score he wrote for Ken Russell’s film Altered States.
Role Don Alfonso
The help
As Despina in the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Così fan tutte, Kelli O’Hara injects much needed vitality into an otherwise lethargic evening.
Role Ford
Radically giddy
Verdi’s Falstaff is a brilliantly written opera: funny, with a complex ability to operate across minutely shifting registers of farce and lyricism. It needs, ideally, a production and cast capable of executing both comedy and drama, irony and sincerity—often concurrently. In its current Met revival, happily, Falstaff has everything it needs.
Role Jupiter
Golden shower
Claus Guth mines urgent and contemporary commentary from Die Liebe der Danae in Munich.
Role Lescaut
Gone girl
Anna Netrebko‘s Manon was deeply unforgettable for its wide scope, control, and incredible virtuosity.
The rules of attraction
Is Manon Lescaut a cold, clinical tale of the splendors and pitfalls of transactional sex, or is it a romantic Italian opera at its most lush and melodic?
Role Mark
The beautiful doom is empty
The Met is on it with something something woker than woke: a noirish psychodrama of a frigid hysteric who seeks redemption via Freudian analysis!
Role Mark Rutland
A stolen life
“Trove Thursday” offers a broadcast from last year’s London world premiere of Nico Muhly’s Marnie.
Role Olivier
Everyone’s gone to the moon
The Met’s recent Ariadne auf Naxos and Elektra combo left me wanting more and more Richard Strauss, so Trove Thursday offers a complete Capriccio with Jonas Kaufmann (his one-and-only Flamand) and Christopher Maltman vying for Soile Isokoski.
Role Papageno
Beast in show
Christopher Maltman created a fun, coherent, often whimsical journey exploring the animal kingdom through a selection of animal songs.
Role Papageno; Don Giovanni
A very little night music
The unevenly-beating Heart unfortunately proved less than the sum of its deluxe parts.
Role Wotan
Get in the zone
Tamara Wilson and Stanislas de Barbeyrac are the standouts in Calixto Bieito’s underwhelming Die Walküre in Paris
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).