Staring into the abbess
Dan Johnson gives an inside look at the creation of Sarah Kirkland Snider‘s rapturous new opera Hildegard which opens at New York’s PROTOTYPE Festival next week.
Nico Muhly
19 pieces since 2010 — at 1 company, most often at English National Opera.
19
pieces
1
company
17
years
By company
Big time sensuality
Barbara Strozzi links two sensuous programs by L’Arpeggiata and Catapult Opera.
Frick in the sheets
The Jupiter Ensemble with Lea Desandre and Anthony Roth Costanzo offers sleek and sexy HIP inaugurates the Frick Collection’s new Stephen A. Schwartzman Auditorium
The eras tour
She can’t put her foot on the gas the way she used to but there’s still plenty of fuel in that tank.
I’ll remember April
If April is the cruelest month, it may be that spring’s arrival brings far too many things to do and see.
Unhappy ‘Hours’
The film of The Hours failed to effectively weave together the novel’s trio of threads of interiority about suicide and secondarily literary creation. I wondered if an opera would stand a better chance at achieving that? Based on Tuesday’s diva-encrusted stage premiere of Kevin Puts and Greg Pierce’s The Hours, its creators didn’t pull it off either.
You aren’t any good to me dead
The Murder of Halit Yozgat by Ben Frost and Petter Ekmann is flavorsome in its use of sound, vocal and otherwise, to explore the elements of the story, to keep you tied in, and guessing.
‘Glass’ dismissed
Yet there remain some memories and impressions I know we’d both like to share—on a few stage performances, memorable in various ways, so how about one more roundup?
House of the setting sun
When a work is named for its lovers one might legitimately expect that pair to dominate its performance but in my experience that is never the case with Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande.
Trauma queens
Though barely a week old, 2019 has already provided New Yorkers with an essential, breathtaking music drama focusing on two women struggling for their very survival.
The beautiful doom is empty
The Met is on it with something something woker than woke: a noirish psychodrama of a frigid hysteric who seeks redemption via Freudian analysis!
A stolen life
“Trove Thursday” offers a broadcast from last year’s London world premiere of Nico Muhly’s Marnie.
Medium cool
Nico Muhly has set himself the task of presenting Winston Graham’s elusive heroine Marnie on the operatic stage.
When this cruel war is over
Jarrett Ott is a star. That is the only surprise takeaway from the well-intended snore, Cold Mountain.
A whiter shade of pale
While the celebrity-studded, expensively-dressed audience gathered for the gala opening of the Metropolitan Opera’s 2015-2016 season seemed genuinely enthralled by Monday evening’s performance of Otello, it was more likely swept away by the power of Verdi’s genius than by Bartlett Sher’s puzzling, inert new production.
Wunderkinder in mirror are larger than they appear
Composer Nico Muhly took a break between operatic world premieres to order a daiquiri and talk to our own JJ about height, haters and flight path. [Capital New York] (Photo: Peter Ross)
Two ghosts
The ENO was filled with ghosts last week. Spectral, possibly illusory figures fleetingly materialized in the Internet chatrooms that provide the setting for much of Nico Muhly’s new opera Two Boys, and brutal boarding school memories came back to troubled life in director Christopher Alden’s dark take on Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Opera with a whiskey back
On Friday, April 16th, American Opera Projects and Opera on Tap presented a triple bill of new works at Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO, including what is essentially a pastiche, a collection of songs, and a one act opera. There were highs, there were lows; there was booze and opera in the same room. I […]
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).
