Drink me
Chris’s Cache offers Nadine Sierra and Xabier Anduaga, the stars of the upcoming production of La sonnambula, in a performance of another favorite bel canto opera
Nadine Sierra
39 pieces since 2014 — in 11 roles, at 7 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
39
pieces
11
roles
7
companies
13
years
By role
Role Adina
Role Amina
The best thing I saw in 2025 was La sonnambula
Easily the Met’s new Sonnambula, where cast and production team delivered a gorgeously sung and well thought out concept for a libretto often derided for its simplicity.
By Bel Raggio
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Psychic gestures
Rolando Villazón opens up about his production of La sonnambula, how he develops characters, and what makes opera dance.
Ain’t no mountain high enough
A new production of La sonnambula at the Metropolitan Opera is musically charming if dramatically confounding.
Role Countess
Married to the mobcap
I have an idea (soon to be angrily debunked in the comments section) that Le nozze di Figaro is rarely a source of unalloyed bliss to the chronic operagoer.
Role Gilda
The clown of God
Rigoletto is the perfect opera. The story is straightforward and powerful; none of the action occurs backstage or between scenes or twenty-seven years before curtain rise; and the ethical anvil lands not once but twice, on the title character singing, “La maledizione!” The curse!
A view to a kill
You’d want to expect that every Met retread would draw the same curiosity, the same large crowds, to Lincoln Center.
Role Juliet
Get this Pati started
Politics and romance entangled in a spectacular fashion at San Francisco Operas’s Roméo et Juliette.
Role Juliette
A fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes
It’s not hard not to feel jaded about Romeo and Juliet.
Role Lucia
Stained class
With no disrespect to Nadine Sierra, who as Lucia acquits herself honorably if not magically in vocal terms, the undisputed cause célèbre here is director Simon Stone.
All my Edgardos
Well that’s a terrible place to start a review, and it’s not quite fair to SFO’s Lucia di Lammermoor, but…
I wake up screaming
Töt erst sein Weib!” shrieks Anja Kampe as Leonore during the very first moments of Andreas Homoki’s ingenious production of Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio, at Opernhaus Zürich.
Role Maria
I would they had changed voices too!
Chris’s Cache follows up its Gounod R&J installment with a widely varied quintet of additional Romeos and Juliets
Role Musetta
La vie de broham
Imagine the good fortune of attending La Bohème with someone who’s never seen it!
Role Susanna
Let your love flow
Saturday afternoon’s performance of Le Nozze di Figaro at the Met was awash with contradictions.
Role Violetta
Three faces of Violetta
Christopher Corwin surveys the three Traviata casts — led by Lisette Oropesa, Rosa Feola, and Ermonela Jaho — at the Met this spring.
On a par with tuberculosis
Come back, Big Clock! We need you more than ever!
Win a Free Ticket to Opening Night at the Met!
Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen star in the Met's new Macbeth. We're giving away one ticket, so screw your courage to the sticking place and enter now!
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).
