Malin Byström is a radiant water nymph in the Bayerische Staatsoper‘s house-of-horrors-set Rusalka.
Baritone John Brancy smoothly traverses the American songbook at Carnegie Hall.
Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s Grammy-winning Intelligence makes a largely successful East Coast debut at Virginia Opera.
Like Type 2 Diabetes, symptoms of YAS (Yuletide Aversion Syndrome) commonly creep up on gay men after manopause.
The 25th anniversary revival of Dead Man Walking at San Francisco Opera is most moving in its quietest moments
Pride weekend events at San Francisco Opera and Festival Opera are fabulous starts to the Bay Area summer
A starry concert Aïda in Baltimore proves unusually polished
parterre box celebrates the beginning of Pride Month with a throwback to one of the queerer events in recent operatic memory: a bit of Carmen starring Jamie Barton and Stephanie Blythe!
If you thought that opera was the final bastion against technicolor illumination and drag, first of all Why? Second of all San Francisco Opera begs to differ, and they’re sending in the heavy artillery for Pride Weekend on June 27th. Yes, the War Memorial Opera House will be aglow. Tal Rosner’s projections and Justin A.…
It was, at least, a jolly good show. Whether or not it actually suited Stravinsky’s music or Auden and Kallman’s text, is another question.
The Richard Tucker Foundation Gala has always been a big annual celebration of the voice with an emphasis on big-voiced singers in big repertoire (not much Wagner usually, though…). Like so many reliable operatic institutions it has struggled for survival after the pandemic.
Rare is the revival of Il trovatore that boasts five first-rate singers, and such an occasion should be treasured. And so, at the Met last Saturday, it was.
Opera has always been Orpheus-obsessed.
Since I began regularly attending performances at Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1999, I have been a great admirer of director Francesca Zambello’s productions.
Boston Symphony Orchestra recently confirmed an infinitely renewable contract upon Andris Nelsons, its music director since 2014. To understand why, one needed little more evidence than the outfit’s recent visit to Carnegie Hall.
“None of that sentimental crap, okay?”
It doesn’t get more classic than John Dexter‘s Dialogues des Carmélites.
Step aside, Texas: “Everything is bigger at Aida” is the motto of the Met’s second attempt at retiring Sonja Frisell’s colossal production.
My impression was of a very fine singer performing a role that was slightly too large for him.
Trove Thursday previews next week’s BBC Proms presentation of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius with a 2008 broadcast conducted by Colin Davis with Sarah Connolly, Ben Heppner and Gerald Finley.
When was the last time the Metropolitan Opera mounted a new production that was musically outstanding yet the direction and/or design mostly sucked?
In their realization of Alcina, Harry Bicket and his ensemble recreated a dramatically vivid and musically nuanced character study out of the opera’s central figures.
After the break the ladies stepped up their game so much that it elevated the night into legendary status: definitely one for the books!
For those pining for Puccini with the Met out of commission. Trove Thursday steps up with the composer’s brief first opera Le Villi with Krassimira Stoyanova, José Cura and Franz Grundheber, led by Simone Young.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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