Back-to-back casts in the Metropolitan Opera’s revivals of Madama Butterfly and La traviata offer ample opportunity for soprano-gazing.
Le nozze di Figaro in Santa Fe is a light and kindly revival while The Turn of the Screw is crisp and atmospheric
The Santa Fe Opera’s fine first Die Walküre finds Wagner in America at a crossroads.
Gregory Spears’ latest opera Castor and Patience, with a libretto by former US Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winner Tracy K. Smith, was commissioned by Cincinnati Opera to celebrate its centennial season in 2020.
Dramaturgically, The Hours is a mixed bag: I wouldn’t discard it, but I would want to fix it. But simply as an evening of gorgeous music and singing, it’s cordon bleu.
I’ve heard starrier performances, but none that made a more powerful case for this masterwork.
Tenor Matthew Polenzani and pianist Julius Drake’s performance left this listener in a a state of euphoria.
Since 1985, from the Chicago Symphony at Carnegie Hall to the Welsh National Opera visiting BAM and from Chicago Lyric to New York City Opera to the Met, I’ve never encountered a bad Falstaff—or one that didn’t astound and delight me.
At Friday’s opening of Otello, there was a good deal of interesting going on, though not all of it necessarily onstage.
It had something for everyone who loves loud chesty singing and smoky soft-singing: from Tchaikovsky to Rachmaninoff to Strauss…
Anna Netrebko sang throughout with a palpable sense of joy and ease in vocal production, never a hint of strain or any moment forced.
With only a few weeks left to slice up our pumpkins and track down the perfect Luigi for our Mario, the timing seems right for a pair of Gothic operas set in a crypt.
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.
While the celebrity-studded, expensively-dressed audience gathered for the gala opening of the Metropolitan Opera’s 2015-2016 season seemed genuinely enthralled by Monday evening’s performance of Otello, it was more likely swept away by the power of Verdi’s genius than by Bartlett Sher’s puzzling, inert new production.
The Cleveland Orchestra’s premiere performance of Janacek’s Cunning Little Vixen proved to be both a critical and audience success.
Falstaff, Verdi’s final opera, is exuberantly inventive, bubbling and roiling with ideas the 79-year-old composer was too impatient to develop.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
×
Sign up for Parterre’s free newsletter.
Exclusive opera reviews, commentary, and top reads
delivered to your email weekly…ish.