Christopher Corwin and Andrew Lokay provide dual perspectives on the National Symphony Orchestra‘s performances of Puccini’s triple-bill.
Old pros Gregory Kunde and Pier Luigi Pizzi anchor a new staging of Stiffelio co-produced by three theaters in Emilia-Romagna.
Looking back, this Stiffelio in Piacenza is the one I cherish the most.
Grand Tier Grab Bag looks forward to a big week for Umberto Giordano by sharing Sondra Radvanovsky and Gregory Kunde performing the final duet from Andrea Chénier.
Shirin Neshat‘s Aïda in Paris is a typical instance of what happens when an artist is brought in to direct an opera.
My sister Julie celebrates an important birthday later this month which reminded me—as I also recalled I visiting her while she was living in Prague—that I should unearth Bohuslav Martin?’s Julietta with Lucia Popp and Dénes Gulyás for this week’s Trove Thursday.
Let’s all cast our minds back to March of 2020. Or, better, let’s not.
For nearly 70 years, New York City was the world capital of concert opera thanks first to the American Opera Society, then to Eve Queler’s Opera Orchestra of New York.
Erato’s irresistible Rossini collection Amici e Rivali is hands down my favorite vocal CD of 2020, featuring the inspired bravura sparrings of Lawrence Brownlee and Michael Spyres.
Robert Wilson is many things: a visionary (certainly); an iconoclast, artist, director, and designer of sets, lighting, costumes, movement (and furniture). Yet his work is never boring (well, at least not intentionally).
Trove Thursday goes mini-epic with Gustave Charpentier’s naturalistic slice-of-life of fin-de-siêcle Paris in a rare 1999 Renée Fleming performance of Louise co-starring Jerry Hadley, Samuel Ramey and Felicity Palmer.
Many now have scads more time for listening so Trove Thursday will offer several epic operas during May beginning with Rossini’s Guillaume Tell (this week aka Guglielmo Tell) in a concert performance featuring Giuseppe Taddei in the title role and Teresa Zylis-Gara and Franco Bonisolli as the war-crossed lovers.
Austin McCormack‘s lascivious choreography outshone a tepid and tedious staging of Saint-Saëns’s old-testament epic.
A double-barreled “Trove Thursday” birthday salute to Renée Fleming who turns 60 today.
Kevin Newbury‘s familiar production of Bellini’s Norma with its most frequent leading lady, the American Sondra Radvanovsky.
The beautiful singing here is less in the sound than in the way the voice moves.
For her third solo recording, Olga Peretyatko summons the two men who launched her career less than a decade ago
Which operatic character could be best described as a spider?
The legendary Canadian heldentenor died on Friday. He was 88.
It appears that Mariame Clément’s conception of Don Pasquale is that the opera should be retitled Malatesta.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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