Günther Groissböck’s ridiculously entertaining Baron Ochs and Sir Simon Rattle’s enthralling conducting soared highest during a mostly excellent revival of Der Rosenkavalier.
At Friday night’s performance of La Bohème at the Met, the cast seemed to lean into (and gamble upon) the production’s enduring popularity.
I can’t think of an opera this year that I’ve enjoyed as much as Tuesday’s Met Macbeth, thanks especially to the smashing house debut of Italian soprano Anna Pirozzi as its blazing Madame M.
My blood sure boiled at this revival of the Met’s utterly punchable production of Macbeth.
“Tame” seemed to be the appropriate adjective to describe San Francisco Opera’s Carmen.
We are the elusive, the mysterious, the ever-courted Millennial Audience, Mr. Darcy to the marketing department’s Mrs. Bennet.
Friday night’s Rigoletto at the Metropolitan Opera revealed once again a predictable dissonance between the performances on stage and Michael Mayer’s production.
At the Metropolitan Opera on Saturday night, Mozart’s opera never sounded fresher, a superstar cast shining new light on one of the composer’s all-too-seldom-performed scores.
Tenor Matthew Polenzani and pianist Julius Drake’s performance left this listener in a a state of euphoria.
Iolanta was crowned on Thursday evening by Sonya Yoncheva’s haunting portrayal of the blind title character.
Alexander Birch Elliott‘ s dynamic if gauche Zurga added some pizzazz to an otherwise bland evening.
Those readers who know my musical tastes will not be shocked to find that I have a somewhat conflicted view of Mozart’s operatic works.
A Met HD cinema broadcast of Puccini’s Tosca on Saturday, 27 January, concluded the first run of a production marked by upheaval in the ten months between its announcement and its New Year’s Eve premiere.
Touting an austere, governessy program—the hour-and-change Schubert/Müller cycle, Die schöne Müllerin—Jonas Kaufman fulfilled his long-awaited, high-profile return to Carnegie Hall last night.
Good singing and a dramatically potent (if conservative) production were an unbeatable combination in the Metropolitan Opera’s season premiere of Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore.
Der Rosenkavalier (on Blu-ray and DVD) is from the Met HD broadcast which also happened to be the final performance of the run, becoming a true souvenir of the farewells of its two leading ladies.
Psychology is encoded in the composer’s vocal lines more than his librettist’s words.
Usually the longer I know a work the more I look forward to rediscovering it, but that’s just not the case with the Verdi Requiem.
Lyric Opera of Chicago’s spectacularly colorful and glitzy new production of The Pearl Fishers opened on Sunday.
Verdi’s Rigoletto returned to Lyric Opera of Chicago, a rousing performance both musically and dramatically.
A poster outside Carnegie Hall proclaimed “Mahler Well Met” and to some degree it proved to be true.
If everything you see is great, you are either new to opera or chronically easy to please.
Anticipation of events like the Metropolitan Opera’s 50th Anniversary bash turns me back into the newly opera-soused kid who begged his parents to let him watch the highlights of the Bing Gala on the family color television.
Any production of Der Rosenkavalier that can transform the usually excruciating first half of the third act into a hilarious romp already has my vote.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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