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…
On Thursday evening Jennifer Wilson “finally” made a belated, disappointing Met debut as Turandot.
What does it mean anyway to get to know a diva, and why exactly would we wish to do such a thing?
Jungfer Marianne Leitmetzerin notes: while this performance of Janácek’s Jenufafeatures the same three principal singers from the legendary Carnegie Hall concert of 1988, the fact that it is a staged performance raises the temperature even higher.
Imagine the good fortune of attending La Bohème with someone who’s never seen it!
To some, Anne Schwanewilms will always be the soprano in the slinky black dress who replaced Deborah Voigt at Covent Garden a decade ago.
It’s been a bitterly cold winter in NY. When it’s bitterly cold, the air is dry.
Twenty years ago, a sad and lonely gay man sat down with a pair of scissors and a glue stick and said, “I think I’ll make a magazine.”
Before you depart the Met at the end of this season, Ms. Billinghurst, you have the chance to do some good for both the Met audience and James Levine.
For decades thousands and thousands have attended Handel’s Messiah (usually around Christmas or more appropriately near Easter) making it easily one of the most widely known works of classical music.
Last night, La Cieca finally got around to watching that documentary about the rocky road to the new Ring at the Met, and she has a thought or two about this whole brouhaha.
Nearly 30 years after a Handel opera last played there, Carnegie Hall presented The English Concert opening a three-year opera-oratorio project on Sunday afternoon with Radamisto.
Love grand opera but wary of a six o’clock curtain with five hours of music behind it? (And nothing is grander than Berlioz’s Les Troyens, eh?) Your dilemma has been solved. Show up at the Met at 7:30 or 8:00, whenever they have the first intermission.
Since 2010 I’ve been reading nothing but horror being heaped upon the Met’s new Ring. It’s been like a cross between a cruise ship size buffet spread of internet snarking and a slasher film re-cast with music critics.
You may remember, gentle readers, that last year about this time Peter Gelb decided to enter into an unholy alliance with Target to benefit their mountainous number of opera loving customers by pre-releasing two Met performances exclusively in their fine emporiums.
The Met has finally released the contents of the James Levine 40th Anniversary box sets separately for those of us who didn’t have $500 lying around.
I have been a devotee of Berlioz’s Les Troyens since I first discovered the Covent Garden recording conducted by Colin Davis.
On Saturday I attended the premiere performance of a new production of Ariadne auf Naxos at the Festspielhaus in Baden-Baden, Germany. It was Renée Fleming’s debut in the title role…
I half-wanted to dislike it; my expectations were very low. Renée Fleming in the Baroque, after her very uncertain recent outings in bel canto! Let’s face it; this year, her Rossini (Armida) and Donizetti (Lucrezia Borgia) did not cover her in glory. How, at this HD relay on December 3, would she cope with Handel’s…
At one time, the idea of a performance of La Gioconda conjured up images of over-the-top, competitive, passionate vocalism, and big personalities. As a vehicle for great singers (and especially a great protagonist), it was thrilling.
This mostly wonderful performance of Handel’s Theodora opened the 2009 Salzburg Festival in honor of the 250th anniversary of the composer’s death. Written at the beginning of the last decade of the composer’s life, it was a work that he held in very high regard even though he knew its subject matter would not excite. Only…
La Cieca was just sent an announcement about “James Levine: 40 Years at The Metropolitan Opera, an extraordinary insider’s view of the legendary conductor’s Met career, illustrated with vivid historic photographs…. Marking the 40th anniversary of Met Music Director James Levine’s company debut on June 5, 1971, the book celebrates his unparalleled artistic achievements through…
The annual Richard Tucker gala came and went at Avery Fisher Hall with the usual quota of gaffes, wardrobe malfunctions, no-shows, too-much-shows, substitutions and surprise guests (well, guest). And sandwiched between the routine, the egocentric and the just plain dull were moments of true dementia, the moments that we melomanes live and die for. Most…
Les Troyens is one of those things, or often two of those things, that should be a big event or it practically needn’t happen at all.* The keynote is grandiosity in the best way, from the subject to the musical demands (let’s include the implicit challenge of one singer performing both Cassandre and Didon—not because…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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