Zémire et Azor, André-Ernest-Modest Grétry‘s riff on “Beauty and the Beast”, gets a rare outing in the Berkshires.
Matthew Travisano has such doubts about Douglas Cuomo‘s opera recently seen at Opera Parallèle.
A new production of Parsifal at San Francisco Opera stirred something deep inside Michael Anthonio about how music soothes the soul
In his new production that opens at San Francisco Opera this weekend, Matthew Ozawa is creating a Parsifal for the cancel culture age.
Ahead of tomorrow’s Live in HD, Michael Steinberg talks Leonore, Salome, and the “endemic misogyny” of Claus Guth‘s new production
A stylish and funny Così fan tutte at LA Opera is a pretty glam affair, according to Patrick Mack.
Fidelio, which opened last week at the Metropolitan Opera, will always be relevant, I fear.
Mahler’s 8th Symphony is an enormous and enigmatic work.
Michael Anthonio crunches the numbers on San Francisco Opera’s recent seasons and goes straight to the top to General Director Matthew Shilvock for a look at where SF Opera has been and where it’s headed
Can György Ligeti‘s only opera be understood as the composer’s own grappling with trauma, death, and memory of a past life?
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.
To get right to the point, the performance did not come together despite some good elements and was a major missed opportunity.
Despite the ever-increasing media coverage of San Francisco’s “doom loop,” June 2023 will be forever remembered as the time where San Francisco was the opera capital of the United States.
Sondra Radvanovsky has an unconventional voice that is suited to unconventional characters and is best used in rangy, difficult music. The lack of lush beauty was no deficit in depicting Medea’s jealousy and vengeful rage.
This tenor must be the finest classical singer in the world today.
Why is so twinkling, tuneful a score so little known?
Ludwig van Beethoven’s “rescue opera” Fidelio was presented by San Francisco Opera as their first new production of the season last Thursday in reinterpreted fashion.
We are in the midst of a titanic Beethoven onslaught prompted by the unstoppable need to commemorate the composer’s upcoming 250th birthday.
Not everyone is happy about the Beethoven sestercentennial.
Opéra Royal revives Grétry’s Richard Cœur-de-lion, one of the finest examples of the opéra comique genre.
David Lang’s Prisoner of the State, which was premiered on Thursday night by the New York Philharmonic, places the issue of mass incarceration front and center, foregrounding the violence of the prison system, both physical and psychological.
Tenor Matthew Polenzani and pianist Julius Drake’s performance left this listener in a a state of euphoria.
We humans tend to dislike uncertainty, therefore there is something comforting going to opera revivals; you know exactly what you are going to get.
Siegfried is, in a sense, The Ring’s odd one out.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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