La forza del destino concluded its run at the Metropolitan Opera with a significant cast change.
While you may need to bring along your Dramamine, the Met’s new production of La forza del destino, does—eventually—spin fast enough to achieve escape velocity.
How many hours of our lives are spent looking back?
Nothing says “diva” like an insane recital program.
In any case, we probably got as good a Tannhäuser cast as could be assembled these days.
Chris’s Cache wraps up November with Régine Crespin’s Chicago Leonore; two rare Met Fidelios headed by Christa Ludwig and Hildegard Behrens; and a concert performance with Birgit Nilsson led by Leonard Bernstein, plus a final twist: excerpts of Carol Vaness in Leonore.
I’ve never had a better time in an opera house.
Leos Janacek’s 1904 opera Jenufa could be a rather grim affair.
On October 20th, a wet but warmish Friday night, the Metropolitan Opera opened this season’s revival of Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera in David Alden’s 2012 production.
The great archetypal image of an opera singer is a towering Wagnerian soprano who shatters entire panes of glass the moment she opens her mouth.
Out of sheer morbid curiosity last evening I pulled up the “orders” page of my Amazon account and searched Otello to discover that over the past 11 years. I’ve ordered 15 items with that title (one as recently as last night!)
If April is the cruelest month, it may be that spring’s arrival brings far too many things to do and see.
The current Met revival of Der Rosenkavalier, while not perfect, has much to feel joyful and excited about.
In Richard Strauss’s Arabella, the heroine is consumed with finding the right man—der Richtige—but who is the right Arabella?
This tenor must be the finest classical singer in the world today.
To conclude its triumphant season, last week the Met Orchestra performed its annual Carnegie Hall concerts under music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin and once again performed superbly.
A Trove Thursday Mega-Post © featuring the wonderful American soprano Erin Morley in Orff’s Carmina Burana and Richard Strauss’s Brentano Lieder, plus extended live excerpts from Handel’s Orlando, Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail, and Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots.
Nina Stemme’s Elektra always seemed the sanest individual onstage never quite giving over to obsession or hysteria with a good line in mordant sarcasm and contempt.
This sterling revival shows the Metropolitan to be surviving well and in good shape.
Minutes into “An die Nacht,” the first song Friday night, I realized how much I’d missed being enveloped in that seductive Straussian combination of a soprano (or two or three) rising higher and higher over a surging orchestra.
Last night’s cast of Die Meistersinger at the Met, dominated by the irascible, unbeatable duo of Michael Volle and Johannes Martin Kränzle as Sachs and Beckmesser, did much to enliven Otto Schenk’s creaky, nearly 30-year-old production.
The crown jewel of this year’s Munich Festival is undoubtedly Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, which opened the Festival on June 29 and will close the Festival with an “Opera for All” screening on July 31.
Though the formal recorded aria recital is the ultimate calling card of an artist, the invitation to the spectator to receive, listen, and critically behold of the offerings (on fire or burnt), they are but a souvenir and there are a few drawbacks inherent with the presentation.
Proudly and vividly on display was Anna Netrebko’s unique and glamorous ability to wear the music like a parade of couture gowns—some more sparkly than others, some a more flattering fit, but all thoughtfully chosen and laced into with care.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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