Malin Byström is a radiant water nymph in the Bayerische Staatsoper‘s house-of-horrors-set Rusalka.
Elsa Dreisig, Jonas Kaufmann, and Malin Byström lead recent album releases.
Don’t expect any sweeping statements from Franz Welser-Möst ‘s polished, if dramatically inert, Fidelio.
Jonas Kaufmann has a new lieder album called Doppelgänger, but the contents of the album vary depending on how you purchase it.
Claus Guth mines urgent and contemporary commentary from Die Liebe der Danae in Munich.
Chris’s Cache offers ten more sopranos singing Strauss‘s Vier letzte Lieder: Sena Jurinac, Gundula Janowitz, Jessye Norman, Roberta Alexander, Edith Mathis, Helen Donath, Malin Byström, Christiane Karg, Jacquelyn Wagner, and Corinne Winters.
Patrick Mack reviews yet another Puccini album from Jonas Kaufmann
Not in my wildest dreams could I have come up with anything more homosexual than the sight of Almodóvar muse Rossy de Palma in a stage-length wedding gown onstage Madrid’s Teatro Real.
When our friends at Naxos and C Major announced near-dueling releases of Puccini’s “shabby little shocker,” I was ready with my critic’s pen dipped in bile.
It’s been eight decades since darling Aix-en-Provence was under attack—its last formal invasion, at least by non-operagoers, was in 1942 during the German occupation of southern France. But on Friday, the town was besieged once again by its annual festival, with two dazzling premieres that examined the cruel and constructive dimensions of war and revolution.
In Richard Strauss’s Arabella, the heroine is consumed with finding the right man—der Richtige—but who is the right Arabella?
Although stripped down, this comedy of manners was far from boring due to well-choreographed movements and actions of the characters.
Even those of us who consider Guillaume Tell Rossini’s greatest opera understand why it has not been his most frequently staged.
This may be Karita Mattila’s greatest role.
I always think of Don Giovanni as half of the greatest opera ever written. Or, actually, about 2/3 of the greatest opera ever written.
About this evening: the opera we saw was Arabella, written by a gentleman named Mr. Richard Strauss.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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