Come sail away with me
On the heels of Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster film adaptation, John Danaher muses on operatic iterations of Homer’s Odyssey.
Claudio Monteverdi
44 pieces since 2008.
44
pieces
19
years
(A)nything (B)ut (C)armen
Calling from 2066, Brendan Latimer argues that the best way to save opera might be to just blow up the standard repertoire altogether.
A little tenderness
The premiere recording of David T. Little’s What Belongs to You reveals a work of both tenderness and artistic tenacity.
You’re as cold as ice
A classic German fairytale gets a modern update at the Staatsoper Berlin.
Old friends, new friends
Les Arts Florissants present two ravishing programs in Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Big time sensuality
Barbara Strozzi links two sensuous programs by L’Arpeggiata and Catapult Opera.
In the beginning
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.
Change my mind about how Orfeo should end
By giving Orfeo ed Euridice a happy ending, Gluck ruined a wonderful score.
By John Yohalem
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Changing habits
A new production of Dialogues des Carmélites featuring Anna Caterina Antonacci proves that it’s hard to be an iconoclast in Venice.
The head on the cake plate
John Yohalem reports on Catapult Opera’s satiating San Giovanni Battista
The Bible meets Edward Albee
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.
It takes a woman
The plight of two women, each from different backgrounds, was on full display in San Francisco opera houses last week.
Unnecessary performance problems
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.
Broken branching out
Karim Sulayman’s intentions are to demonstrate links and roots, in themes musical and poetic, crossing every boundary of culture, religion, nationality, genre.
In the middle, somewhat depressed
It was as though they had released us from an enchantment and we all woke up giggling and surprisingly well rested.
Macabre fascination
Can György Ligeti‘s only opera be understood as the composer’s own grappling with trauma, death, and memory of a past life?
Woman’s lib
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.
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.
Garden varieties
Those of us in New York City who relish 17th century Italian vocal music were offered an enticing banquet over the past few weeks.
Some unholy war
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.
“Oh, thoughtless crew! Ye know not what ye do!”
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.
The prodigal
Philippe Jaroussky mentioned introducing his encores that he has not appeared in New York in 12 years.
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).