I could not wrap what’s left of my mind around the concept of “filth and dementia” in opera
Just in time for this month’s theme of filth or dementia, a review of Terrence McNally‘s Master Class from Central City Opera.
While it may not be top-tier Rossini, Teatro Nuovo’s mounting of Il turco in Italia is still good summer fun.
Fifty some years ago I stumbled on to John Barbirolli‘s recording of matchless Elgar & V-Williams music for strings and discovered my go-to conductor for life.
He has conducted some of my favorite opera recordings.
Greek National Opera’s Medea in the ancient theater at Epidaurus is an intermittently rewarding exercise in nostalgia.
John Danaher pays an operatic tribute to the writings of James McCourt, an author who captured the spirit of opera as queer and dangerous like no other.
After success at the Met as Turandot and before a historic Medea, soprano Anna Pirozzi talks to Harry Rose about her voice, her repertoire, and where her “second explosion of career” is taking her.
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.
I feel that the best years of Maria Callas’s vocalità, when we hear such a unique freedom and generosity in her singing, were captured in her early recordings.
Like probably all of us, there are so many different things I could have submitted for a favorite Verdi performance.
For all his undeniable precision and discipline, I still find Toscanini’s tempi rushed and unyielding and his lack of rubato a chilly turnoff.
Diana Soviero chats with Roger Pines about six decades of performing, four decades of teaching, and how she’s handing the tradition off to the next generation.
Ursula Sturgeon looks at the furry opera company HowlAria and discovers that maybe one man’s Callas recording collection is another man’s fursuit.
For me, one of the greatest recordings is the Von Karajan Il trovatore. You have four incredible singers in their top form.
Suck it, Joseph Kerman: Puccini’s “Shabby Little Shocker” has outlived you and will probably bury us all.
In the pursuit of clowning, Anthony Roth Costanzo’s Galas may have lost sight of “the seriousness of the theme.”
Ross Wassermann tracks the development of “Che farò senza Euridice?” — and “J’ai perdu mon Eurydice” — for this month’s Perspectives on an Aria
It’s Norma, darling. We know.
Jessica Pratt’s last-minute Norma in Milan might well be the stuff of legend
A brilliant L’italiana in Algeri in Rome has Larry Wolff once again thinking about “singing Turks”
For Niel Rishoi, a new CD of Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi by Eleonora Burrato for Pentatone can’t help but invite unflattering comparisons
The Met doesn’t have the monopoly on Salome this spring — look no further than Catapult Opera’s San Giovanni Battista which opens in Brooklyn next month.
Some of you may remember the 1987 thriller Someone to Watch Over Me.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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