Christopher Corwin speaks to rising bass-baritone Le Bu about his journey from Yancheng, China to the Met (with a stop in Wichita) and what important roles await him.
This performance of Mahler’s Symphony N°8 at the Bozar in Brussels will probably be my last ever Mahler concert.
In 2011, Sondra Radvanovsky‘s Tosca proved promising; fourteen years later, it was absolutely magnificent, a completely satisfying musical and dramatic embodiment of a challenging role by an artist at the peak of her powers.
Anticipating the first new local Aïda in thirty-six years, Chris’s Cache revisits Verdi’s popular opera in four unusually interesting in-house recordings from the Met 1961-1976.
On this day in 1979 the Metropolitan Opera presented a new production of Verdi’s Don Carlo.
On October 14, 1979 I spent my birthday attending my first all-star opera gala, thrilled at the chance to hear some of the great singers I’d only experienced on LPs, broadcasts or via my pirate reel-to-reel tapes.
In the month and a half leading to Bernard Haitink’s passing on October 21, my AirPods constantly channeled a musical festival of sorts centered on the Dutch giant’s expansive discography.
It’s back to business as usual at the Met, for better and for worse.
Pauline Tinsley, who died May 11, made few commercial recordings; Trove Thursday offers the thrilling English soprano in excerpts over nearly two decades from nine works ranging from Handel to Richard Strauss.
There were plenty of Turan-do’s and only a few Turandon’ts at the Met’s Turandot Sunday afternoon.
Wagner’s Ring is an artistic masterpiece that is peerless in its ability to continually reveal layers of musical, theatrical, and philosophical insight
The proceedings took the virtue of longevity too much to heart; the night stretched on interminably.
By the end of the first act, it was clear to me that I was experiencing an artist performing at her absolute peak.
From the perspective of current identity politics, Puccini’s Turandot is a disaster of epic proportions.
I finally get to complete my personal operatic Top Ten this week with Igor Stravinsky’s only full-length opera, The Rake’s Progress.
It is always a pleasure to hear a great orchestra take on a major score that might sound half-muffled emerging from the pit of an opera house.
Anticipation of events like the Metropolitan Opera’s 50th Anniversary bash turns me back into the newly opera-soused kid who begged his parents to let him watch the highlights of the Bing Gala on the family color television.
Pretty Yende was still hanging around after her last Barbiere and she knows the role of Elvira, having sung it in Zurich last June.
Les Pêcheurs de Perles with an impressive Francophone cast headed by the superb Nadir of Alain Vanzo, one of my favorite tenors.
With February 14th falling on a Sunday, there will be no Valentine’s Day Met performance this year.
On Thursday evening Jennifer Wilson “finally” made a belated, disappointing Met debut as Turandot.
Between them, Maria Guleghina, Marcello Giordani, James Morris and John Del Carlo have nearly 150 combined years of service on stage.
If you had told me 20 years ago that at some point in the future I would have over 550 of the Metropolitan Opera’s performances, audio and video, at my command with the touch of a button I would say my eulogy had just been read and I’d been taken to my reward.
Would exciting American dramatic soprano Christine Goerke be the next great ice-princess we have been waiting for?
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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