A Pasolini-inspired Tosca at La Monnaie does not quite find the pleasure in the pain.
Wolf Trap Opera triumphs in a fizzy, fun Cenerentola.
Maria Kataeva makes a promising US debut in an otherwise uneven revival of Il Barbiere di Siviglia in San Francisco.
Michael Spyres talks to Kevin Ng about his winding path as a baritenor, which composer he wants to conquer next, and how he makes Wagner work in his voice — and in his native Ozarks.
Brendan Latimer hitches a ride with members of the “site-responsive opera” movement who are taking their shows out of the opera house — and out of the box.
San Diego Opera presents a strongly directed and cast revival of Il barbiere di Siviglia.
Juan Diego Flórez‘s charm and artistic sensibility remain as vibrant as ever, as seen at a recent Carnegie Hall recital.
It would be difficult to find a better description for Ambroise Thomas’s newly-recovered Psyché, recently heard in a new recording from Palazzetto Bru Zane, than the one uttered by her suitors: “Charmante Psyché!”
Offenbach‘s Robinson Crusoé is salvaged from obscurity.
Pacific Opera Project’s high-spirited revival of Fra Diavolo is both therapy and an escape.
A new production of La sonnambula at the Metropolitan Opera is musically charming if dramatically confounding.
A brilliant L’italiana in Algeri in Rome has Larry Wolff once again thinking about “singing Turks”
Although presented as an overview of the performance of Italian opera from the first half of the 19th century, Divas and Scholars is really an impassioned defense of musicology as a discipline and of Italian opera as a subject worthy of scholarly attention.
Buoyed by a cast of emerging stars, the Metropolitan Opera’s revival of Il Barbiere di Siviglia asserted a key trait of this ubiquitous buffo: it is a young person’s opera.
John Yohalem reports from the New York Dramatic Voices performance of Act III of Die Walküre
Apologies in advance to Key’mon Murrah, whose rather extraordinary Marian Anderson award recital with pianist Brian Zeger at the Kennedy Center on December 17 demands some general musing.
There are two problems to address – problems of the sort the arts thrive on addressing.
Judith Malafronte on firebrand pedagogues, the old-school singing manual revival, and what many voice teachers are getting wrong.
Washington National Opera’s second full-run offering of the season, a new production of Verdi’s perennially appealing Macbeth, premiered last Wednesday at the Kennedy Center.
Lisette Oropesa, a product of the Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Program, has not been seen much on the stage of the Met in recent seasons.
When asked to express some “thoughts” here about Verdi’s Il trovatore, my immediate thought was “hmm… not a lot to think about there.”
Only by knowing what went on around the great composers is it possible to truly understand why they are great and why their operas have come down to us (and why dozens of other titles have been left behind).
I suspect Carolina Uccelli was tough.
As an opera fanatic who was baptized by the blood of Leontyne Price, the Messa da Requiem by Giuseppe Verdi appeared on my radar fairly soon after I started delving into the operatic canon.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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