A favorite art song performance from CKurwenal A favorite art song performance from CKurwenal

I listen to about as much art song as I do opera and could have filled every day of April with favorite selections.

A favorite art song performance from Timothy Gray A favorite art song performance from Timothy Gray

Wolfgang Holzmair‘s performance was amazing in its personal and intimate approach.

What belongs to us What belongs to us

Kevin Ng sits down with PEN/Faulkner Award-winning novelist and critic Garth Greenwell to talk about sex, queerness, and the “promise of opera.”

Between the sheets Between the sheets

Ms. Damrau unleashed a Blitzkrieg of charm upon her audience.

Bolder sister Bolder sister

Brigitte Fassbaender‘s sound is piquant and, I’d hazard to guess, instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with her work.

We love you, Ms. Hannigan We love you, Ms. Hannigan

Could Barbara Hannigan be Joni Mitchell’s classical counterpart?

A free soul A free soul

To be honest, I have never seen anything quite like Matthias Goerne in recital. He seemed so wonderfully free.

Barge and in charge

Some things, like hearing an evening of chamber music on a barge in the East River, sound better on paper than they actually are. And some things work exactly the opposite way: for example, the composer David del Tredici. Bargemusic presented soprano Courtenay Budd in a program of two song cycles from the 1990s by…

The Memory of Singing

Austrian mezzo Angelika Kirchschlager left an incomplete impression as a Lieder singer Sunday night, in a quirky recital program of Brahms, Wolf, Mahler and Reynaldo Hahn, with pianist Warren Jones. Suffering from a cough and swallowing some words, Ms. Kirchschlager succeeded more in gesture than details. Breezing through Brahms’ songs “Meine liebe ist grün,” “Über die Heide,” and “Salome,” faux-naïve songs…

Zara Dolukhanova 1918-2007

The legendary mezzo-soprano of the Russian Soviet period, Zara Dolukhanova, died last week at the age of 89. Though she excelled in brilliant Rossini roles in the opera house, her greatest success was as a recitalist. Dolukhanova’s broad repertoire included music from arie antiche to Prokofiev and Stravinsky; unusually for Soviet-era singers, she often included…