Teatro Nuovo pays tribute to a historic New York production of Don Giovanni with a talented ensemble.
Patrick Mack looks back on “a great, nay, historic evening,” Renata Scotto‘s 1981 performance of Il trittico, now newly available on Met Opera on Demand.
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.
When my editor suggested to me a round-up of my favorite recordings of Jacques Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann I was très, très, intrigued.
Chris’s Cache wishes Gundula Janowitz a happy 87th birthday today with three early live broadcasts of a favorite soprano in works by Pergolesi, Haydn, and Schumann.
This week Trove Thursday presents Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride in three stirring broadcasts starring Rita Gorr, Gré Brouwenstijn and Sena Jurinac
Were Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Horne 20th century opera’s ultimate same-sex pairing?
Off-and-on since last fall my PPP (Personal Pandemic Project) has been assembling a chronology of the American Opera Society. For 19 years beginning in 1951 it presented a remarkable series of concert performances of works unperformed by either the Met or New York City Opera.
During the 70s, Kiri Te Kanawa, particularly singing Mozart, became one of my favorite singers.
On this day in 1968 the Metropolitan Opera presented Tosca, the first new production of this work since 1917.
“Trove Thursday” offers Gemma di Vergy with the lovely, largely now forgotten Adriana Maliponte in the title role.
Les Pêcheurs de Perles with an impressive Francophone cast headed by the superb Nadir of Alain Vanzo, one of my favorite tenors.
When LaCieca asked me to choose my favorite live recording, I had to think… and think.
Whenever opera-lovers are canvassed about what neglected operas they hunger to see revived, the resulting lists inevitably feature a goodly number of grand operas, those once wildly popular monstrosities–particularly by Meyerbeer–written primarily for Paris in the mid-19th century.
According to Mary Garden’s autobiography, Claude Debussy first encountered the Scottish-born diva at the Opéra Comique. After rehearsing her at the piano in a few scenes from his newly completed opera, Debussy said to Garden: “To think that you had to come from the cold far North to create my Mélisande.” He then turned to…
To get straight to the point, the main attraction of this DVD is Renata Scotto. The Italian soprano, the first to perform all three heroines of Il trittico at the Met, is simply superb. She has élan in the moments of tension and a powerful, in-depth delivery. There is not a single word in the…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
×
Sign up for Parterre’s free newsletter.
Exclusive opera reviews, commentary, and top reads
delivered to your email weekly…ish.