Come ye addicts of melody! After long eclipse, Bel Canto shines again!
Luisa Miller snowballs toward disaster and death.
Rossini’s Semiramide is a highly original and imaginative work of theater that impresses for its creative and beautifully scored orchestration, incisive recitatives and ensembles, and theatrically intriguing characters.
The musical director of the Opera Royal de Wallonie at Liege is currently experiencing the early phase of a promising international career in music.
“Trove Thursday” features its two favorite baritones in a pair of comforting settings of the Requiem.
La Traviata offered a cast of fresh debutantes and an uncommonly strong musical performance that could hardly be bettered.
Amore Opera, an old-fashioned, adventurous little company that performs ambitious and sometimes delectably obscure but worthy repertory at the Riverside Theatre, is now (through Sunday) presenting Un ballo in maschera.
I’d like to create a pasta dish in honor of Ambrogio Maestri’s art.
A return to Amore Opera’s production of Meyerbeer’s Dinorah to hear the second cast underlined two conclusions.
Although Gustav Mahler never wrote an opera, his colossal Eighth Symphony “The Symphony of a Thousand” may give us some glimpses of what a Mahler opera might have sounded like
Tenor Matthew Polenzani and pianist Julius Drake’s performance left this listener in a a state of euphoria.
Since 1985, from the Chicago Symphony at Carnegie Hall to the Welsh National Opera visiting BAM and from Chicago Lyric to New York City Opera to the Met, I’ve never encountered a bad Falstaff—or one that didn’t astound and delight me.
There are, on rare occasions, moments in a live performance where some intangible symbiotic relationship between audience and performer creates an instant that borders on the sublime.
Claudio Abbado passed away on the 20th of January five years ago, just months before I began my Ph.D.
Diana Damrau‘s performance as Violetta was the work of a very ordinary artist, one susceptible to vocal flubs, poor intonation, and an all too banal approach operatic performance.
Anna Netrebko sang throughout with a palpable sense of joy and ease in vocal production, never a hint of strain or any moment forced.
Logistically, a large-scale revival of the operas of Giacomo Meyerbeer is an unreasonable request, much less an expectation.
With Liber scriptus came the biggest discovery for me, the vocal talent of Elena Stikhina.
I hardly know where to heap my praise first.
Verdi’s Attila is hardly a rarity in Italy the way it is in the United States.
America’s longest-standing theatrical lightning rod, Robert Wilson premiered his ethereal, time-collapsing production of Le trouvère.
Tanglewood may bring the classical music crowd to Lenox, but for opera, it’s all about neighboring Pittsfield, Mass.
Next, I asked Marko Mimica which basses he prefers to listen to on recordings.
I have a confession to make. I have been taking Rigoletto for granted.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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