The premiere recording of David T. Little’s What Belongs to You reveals a work of both tenderness and artistic tenacity.
A classic German fairytale gets a modern update at the Staatsoper Berlin.
Les Arts Florissants present two ravishing programs in Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Barbara Strozzi links two sensuous programs by L’Arpeggiata and Catapult Opera.
In Jacopo Peri’s seminal Euridice, the Newberry Consort and Haymarket Opera made a compelling case for putting you in the room where it happened.
By giving Orfeo ed Euridice a happy ending, Gluck ruined a wonderful score.
A new production of Dialogues des Carmélites featuring Anna Caterina Antonacci proves that it’s hard to be an iconoclast in Venice.
John Yohalem reports on Catapult Opera’s satiating San Giovanni Battista
The Met doesn’t have the monopoly on Salome this spring — look no further than Catapult Opera’s San Giovanni Battista which opens in Brooklyn next month.
The plight of two women, each from different backgrounds, was on full display in San Francisco opera houses last week.
Patrick Mack on the iconic Ethan Mordden‘s career and his first book on opera in 30 years – and it appears that time has mostly stopped in the Mordden manse.
Karim Sulayman’s intentions are to demonstrate links and roots, in themes musical and poetic, crossing every boundary of culture, religion, nationality, genre.
It was as though they had released us from an enchantment and we all woke up giggling and surprisingly well rested.
Can György Ligeti‘s only opera be understood as the composer’s own grappling with trauma, death, and memory of a past life?
A work that skimps on profundity need not be devoid of entertainment value, and Madrid’s charismatic soloists and musicians more than capably deliver on this front.
Opera has always been Orpheus-obsessed.
I love recitals.
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.
Those of us in New York City who relish 17th century Italian vocal music were offered an enticing banquet over the past few weeks.
Rather than focusing on a narrative, Unholy Wars explores a series of timeless yet current themes: war, destruction, alienation, and what it means to be perceived as outsider—particularly from the Middle East—in the context of a violent world.
One wonders whether an obsession with metrics and measurement has the potential to create arts organizations that are more preoccupied with finding systems that quickly and efficiently tick the Arts Council’s boxes than with creating meaningful, impactful art.
Philippe Jaroussky mentioned introducing his encores that he has not appeared in New York in 12 years.
November in New York hosts two premieres dedicated to mythology’s greatest musician, which prompts Trove Thursday to present a vintage Monteverdi L’Orfeo with Judith Raskin and Gérard Souzay conducted by Leopold Stokowski (!) and a recent HIP London broadcast of Luigi Rossi’s L’Orfeo.
Over the past week New York City was blessed by two appealing 17th century presentations: John Blow’s Venus and Adonis from Opera Lafayette and La Storia di Orfeo courtesy of the Boston Early Music Festival.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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