Brundibár at the Opéra Comique combines whimsy with historicity to sobering effect.
Matthias Pintscher’s Nuit sans aube at the Opéra Comique conjures up plenty of atmosphere — but not much else.
One of the highlights, if not the highlight, of No-Met-February was an all-Ravel evening presented by the Juilliard Orchestra.
Earlier this month the opera world was stunned to learn of the death of Belgian soprano Jodie Devos who died of breast cancer at just 35, and Chris’s Cache remembers her with a broadcast from last November of Devos as Ophélie in Hamlet, her only US appearance.
Why did I mostly want to close my eyes and just listen?
Roberto Alagna’s physical and vocal embodiment of Don José lent his particular narrative a complication I hadn’t anticipated.
I wondered if there truly is a future for opera other than as an overpriced museum piece for an aging audience who likes their sets lavish, their productions non-challenging, and their singers telegenic.
What could go wrong? As it turned out: just about everything!
Renée Fleming makes her belated “Trove Thursday” debut as Sandrina in a rare early performance of Mozart’s La Finta Giardiniera.
Tack on a little symphonic Beethoven and some particularly zany hosting patter from Bernadette Peters, and you start to lose focus, or at least some sense of, um, what matters mostly.
Idomeneo proved enormously moving while a much more complicated Così fan Tutte went for shallow romantic hijinks stripping that work of its darkly ambiguous disturbing view of love.
The unevenly-beating Heart unfortunately proved less than the sum of its deluxe parts.
The surprises, and puzzles, of Dmitri Tcherniakov‘s production of Don Giovanni in this DVD of a performance at the Aix-en-Provence festival begin before a note has been played or the curtain has risen.
I have to confess that I overheard that line during the intermission of the Met’s new production of Amboise Thomas’s seldom-performed Hamlet based on Shakespeare’s oft-performed play. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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