This magic moment
Look, for one of the most-staged operas in the repertoire, Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte seems awfully difficult to stage.
Emanuel Schikaneder
11 pieces since 2010.
11
pieces
17
years
That indescribable feeling
Alma Deutscher’s quest for beautiful music permeates the score of her Cinderella from the hushed opening of the Overture.
Nooks and crannies
Nathan Hull was an operatic Quixote who did not go it alone, but inspired bands of optimists, giving proper employment to the many worthy New Yorkers mad enough to study voice and pleasure rare elsewhere to those of us thrilled to take it in.
Taking care of business
Not everyone is happy about the Beethoven sestercentennial.
You better sit down kids
If Sunday’s performance of Magic Flute at the Met demonstrated one thing, it is that opera targeted at children must be just as good as (if not better than) opera targeted at adults.
A grandeur night for singing
“Die Zauberflöte is an opera!” “No, it’s the first musical comedy!”
Dark matter
In Schikaneder’s patriarchal cosmology, darkness is the province of emotional women—not just the erratic fury of the Queen of the Night, but the pathetic supplications of Pamina as well.
You must meet my wife
The rewards of Leonore lie almost as much in the ensembles as the solo contributions.
Beyond the Valley of the Freemasons
An impresario with a hit on his hands—Emanuel Schikaneder, for instance, after the initial run of Die Zauberflöte—will crave nothing so much as an opportunity to hit the same bell.
Cloud nein
Although Walter Braunfels was among those German composers whose music was banned in their home country after 1933, and whose political rehabilitiation in 1945 was not accompanied by a commensurate revival of his music, his 1920 opera Die Vögel should need no special pleading on musical or dramatic grounds. Though Braunfels is traditionally described as […]
Words without song
Long ago, in a galaxy far away – I mean, the era before supertitles became common in opera houses around the world – you could always tell the text-mad opera fan. He was the one who arrived early to the theater and spent the remaining minutes to curtain hunched over his libretto booklet, trying to […]
Win a Free Ticket to Opening Night at the Met!
Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen star in the Met's new Macbeth. We're giving away one ticket, so screw your courage to the sticking place and enter now!
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).
