Married to their jobs
Ahead of their opening in Don Carlo in Dallas tonight, Christopher Corwin chats with Nicole Car and Étienne Dupuis — and offers a special edition of Chris’s Cache!
Ivo van Hove
19 pieces since 2015 — at 5 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
19
pieces
5
companies
12
years
The best things I saw in 2025 were Nina Stemme and Les Arts Florissants
I can’t say 2025 was my best operagoing year; apart from a superb Fille du régiment, most of my good nights at the opera were decidedly mixed affairs.
By Cornelia
Comment
The replacements
Second casts in Don Giovanni and Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera offer mixed blessings.
Change my mind about Regietheater
Carmen Paddock and Mr. Portafiori aren’t getting the hype behind Ivo van Hove, Krzysztof Warlikowski, and Calitxo Bieito
Born to command
Audacious star performances elevate safe direction in Richard II and The Seagull on London’s West End
The best way to spread Christmas cheer
Back to Brussels last Sunday for my third new opera of the season (after The Time of our Singing, also at La Monnaie, and Picture a day like this, at the Opéra Comique): Mikael Karlsson’s Fanny and Alexander, with a libretto by Royce Vavrek.
Stage animal control
Following Gundula Janowitz and Janet Baker, Chris’s Cache sends birthday greetings to another favorite diva—Karita Matilla—with a quartet of broadcasts.
Nun of a kind
“None of that sentimental crap, okay?”
Crazy extremes
Simon McBurney’s Die Zauberflöte, the second new production of the Met’s May Mozart Miracle, opened on Friday to rousing near-unanimous cheers.
Nervous system theater
Like a sommelier of male entitlement, Peter Mattei paired with precision moves from a wide-ranging vocabulary of gesture.
Those monsters look like us
“This used to be a funhouse… but now it’s full of evil clowns / It’s time to start the countdown…. I’m gonna burn it down”
A crazier day
Saturday’s performance of Le nozze di Figaro at the Met mined the humor from Mozart’s divine setting of Beaumarchais’s play about a crazy day in the Almaviva household.
Myth me blind
“Spring has sprung,” announces MasterVoices’ director Ted Sperling with a smile at the beginning of Part III. And indeed, even the doomsayers among us (and I count myself one) can’t help but feel signs of cautious optimism, as the world we knew slowly but noticeably begins to re-emerge.
Don’t turn the light on!
There are a number of fine elements in this film, and a couple that are exceptional—but I can’t get over the wrongness of its look.
Ghost “Story”
Time to stop being coy, I think. You and I had quite different takeaways on the show, didn’t we?
Constant surveillance
It’s 2020, Ivo’s the new Ethel Merman, and I caught a preview of his fourth Broadway show and first Broadway musical, West Side Story.
The harsh untruth of the camera eye
Ivo van Hove really seems to be everywhere lately.
New blood
I was shocked to realize I hadn’t seen Don Giovanni at the Met since Michael Grandage’s stultifying production opened in 2011.
Haunted mountain
Beginning with the dark, ominous music of the prelude of Charles Wuorinen and Annie Proulx’s opera Brokeback Mountain, we know we are in for a very different and far less sentimental version of the work than was had with Ang Lee’s iconic 2005 film.
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).