It is no wonder Bernard Herrmann relishes the wistful lyricism in Barber’s masterwork, as Herrmann’s score for Vertigo is among the most beautiful and haunting of all film scores ever composed.
He has conducted some of my favorite opera recordings.
Elsa Dreisig, Jonas Kaufmann, and Malin Byström lead recent album releases.
From one Mister Snow to another, I salute him.
Anna Pirozzi makes a welcome return to the Metropolitan Opera, but Turandot remains as thorny as ever.
The air held a real charge that night in SF’s War Memorial Opera House.
A well-known Met Aïda with a starry cast from 1967 is TildyDiva’s Favorite Verdi Performance
To celebrate the 100th anniversary performances of Turandot at the Met starting next week, Patrick Dillon gives a listen to seven versions of “Signore, ascolta!” for Perspectives on an Aria.
Golda Schultz soldiers through illness at the New York Philharmonic.
Christina Nilsson‘s successful Met debut as Aïda was for me one of the shining highlights of the 2025 season.
Leontyne Price in her early prime is soaring and radiant in traditional Christmas songs.
When I first listened years ago as a baby opera queen to Tebaldi‘s 1971 “Christmas Festival,” I could not get over just how enfeebled she sounded.
Christmas should be over the top, opulent, a little sad, utterly sincere, and ever so vulgar.
Like Type 2 Diabetes, symptoms of YAS (Yuletide Aversion Syndrome) commonly creep up on gay men after manopause.
This month’s theme – “Opera singers celebrate the holidays” – conjured up a vast lexicon of memories of growing up in the 1960s and early 1970s.
For me, one of the greatest recordings is the Von Karajan Il trovatore. You have four incredible singers in their top form.
Mexican soprano Gilda Cruz-Romo died on 28 June at the age of 85 and Chris’s Cache remembers her with live recordings of a frequent role and a rather rare one: a last-minute Met Tosca plus perhaps her only stab at the Cherubini Medea.
Jessica Pratt’s last-minute Norma in Milan might well be the stuff of legend
The Comet/Poppea at this summer’s Running AMOC* festival at Lincoln Center is a thrilling, startling, deeply moving experience
In a satanic panic, this week Chris’s Cache presents trio of performances of Mefistofele
As a beginning freshman in college at CSU Long Beach, I was cast in my first opera – the chorus for L’Elisir d’amore ( performed in English as “The Elixir of Love”).
I was just moderately excited when LA Opera announced that French tenor Benjamin Bernheim would be coming to concertize at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, 90210.
As for complete recordings of Il trovatore, which was discussed at some length last week, there are at least 200 of them, both studio and live.
Patrick Mack on the iconic Ethan Mordden‘s career and his first book on opera in 30 years – and it appears that time has mostly stopped in the Mordden manse.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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