On Thursday evening Jennifer Wilson “finally” made a belated, disappointing Met debut as Turandot.
Simply put, Christine Goerke is a stupendous Elektra.
Would exciting American dramatic soprano Christine Goerke be the next great ice-princess we have been waiting for?
Bohuslav Martinu’s The Greek Passion has had a rough life.
So what’s up with Nina Stemme’s Stimme?
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.
I think the sturdier of you will enjoy Nina Stemme’s Elektra from Saturday night at Wiener Staatsoper.
At the Opernhaus Zürich, the coat check is not optional.
To some, Anne Schwanewilms will always be the soprano in the slinky black dress who replaced Deborah Voigt at Covent Garden a decade ago.
Coming as Peter Gelb did from the music industry, opera lovers hoped that he would display a more distinctive knack for casting and an improved talent pipeline than Joe Volpe offered during the waning years of his tenure.
La Cieca is going to go out on a not very long limb here and say that Dick Johnson in La fanciulla del West is a great role for Jonas Kaufmann and may well turn out to be one of his three or four greatest.
Strange as it is to encounter two such disparate works presented with the identical production concept, it’s odder still that the opera you’d think would be the slam dunk is anything but.
Could Marek Janowski do for Wagner what the early music movement did for the Baroque and Classical repertory?
Wagner is becoming an important calling card for Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Theatre.
Midway through his traversal of Wagner’s 10 mature operas for PentaTone, we’ve learned this about Marek Janowski:
Sneaking in under the wire during the final week of May were two highpoints of New York’s opera season: the Cleveland Orchestra’s Salome with a stunning Nina Stemme and operamission’s revelatory US stage premiere of a complete edition of Handel’s first opera Almira.
Here goes with the End of the Gods and the End of these Ring reviews: Götterdämmerung was more of a mixed bag than the other operas, but still left a powerful impression. This was where Zambello’s choice to steer clear of heavy spectacle was most evident to me. The cost in grandeur was offset by…
Take a Wild Ride with a Valkyrie!! Yes, that’s what all the signs say around Old Baghdad-by-the-Bay…. So, fasten your seatbelts, y’all, it’s going to be a bumpy night! As it turned out, Die Walküre was an unexpectedly wonderful ride, marking the debut of someone who could be a very important new Brünnhilde, Nina Stemme.…
I checked back in on the Met’s revival of Ariadne auf Naxos yesterday, after a messy first night one week ago that left much to the imagination. Tenor Lance Ryan had been sick that night, and the cover who took his place was not much healthier, throwing the whole cast into a panic mode that…
La Cieca preens proudly to present a peerless pair of protégés (left to right) Squirrel and Maury D’Annato. The bromancers attended (or one should say “took in”) last night’s Ariadne auf Naxos at the Met, and as of early this afternoon they were still deconstructing.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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