In its first production since departing the Kennedy Center, the Washington National Opera presents a new adaptation of “King of Ragtime” Scott Joplin’s opera Treemonisha.
Sherrill Milnes sits down with Brendan Latimer to talk about his life, career, and what he hopes to pass along to the next generation
An impressively well-rounded revival of Francesca Zambello‘s production of Porgy and Bess concludes the Washington National Opera season
If Zambello’s season-ending Turandot last year represented some of the best of what WNO can offer in the standard rep, this Fidelio was a regression to the mean.
In its first go-around in November 2022, Kevin Puts’s The Hours (libretto by Greg Pierce based on the novel by Michael Cunningham and the screenplay for the Stephen Daldry’s 2002 film was a box office bullseye for the Metropolitan Opera.
Cotton, a world-premiere song cycle commissioned by Philadelphia’s Lyric Fest, takes its audience on a journey through Black American history that extends from the Deep South to the contemporary urban landscape.
The film of The Hours failed to effectively weave together the novel’s trio of threads of interiority about suicide and secondarily literary creation. I wondered if an opera would stand a better chance at achieving that? Based on Tuesday’s diva-encrusted stage premiere of Kevin Puts and Greg Pierce’s The Hours, its creators didn’t pull it off either.
We watch Peter Grimes being made into a deviant— a process that can take place through the mechanism of the law, but often happens outside of it through social processes.
This was a great and happy event, but it wasn’t so much a musical one.
I still remember, and some of it quite vividly, what it was like to experience Achim Freyer‘s intense and groundbreaking Ring production all these years later.
Opera’s latest superstar, Angel Blue, in a compleat and enthralling portrayal, gloriously sung and rivetingly acted.
With the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Candide, they saved the best (of all possible worlds) for last.
The Met is on it with something something woker than woke: a noirish psychodrama of a frigid hysteric who seeks redemption via Freudian analysis!
“Trove Thursday” offers a broadcast from last year’s London world premiere of Nico Muhly’s Marnie.
I mean, how often does one get to hear Bernstein’s gorgeous, rollicking, and varied score nursed by a full orchestra and the artistic resources of an opera company?
Washington National Opera continued a focus on recent works this season with Terence Blanchard and Michael Cristofer’s 2013 opera Champion on the life of boxer Emile Griffith.
For better or worse, Decca’s new Norma recording
will ultimately be embraced—or dismissed—by those reacting directly to Cecilia Bartoli’s controversial portrayal.
Our left coast correspondent Baritenor reports: I would not call Grendel an opera for the faint-hearted. The libretto is well-written, but the score jumps to both ends of the operatic spectrum, going from lyrical to modernistic to lyrical again in the blink of an eye. Think Benjamin Britten on crack, if you will, only with…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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