Ilana Walder-Biesanz discovers how Houston Grand Opera is celebrating 250 years of America and 100 years of Carlisle Floyd with a new production of Of Mice and Men.
Houston Grand Opera’s 2025 Breaking the Waves was absolutely my highlight of the year!
As Messiah season begins, Christopher Corwin reports on two of Handel’s forays into the Old Testament.
James Gaffigan, the incoming Music Director of Houston Grand Opera, strikes a balance between New World precision and Old World flair in repertoire, staging, and wine
Breaking the Waves and Tannhaüser at Houston Grand Opera are a can’t-miss doubleheader of sex and miracles.
For the opening night of Il Trovatore, Houston Grand Opera’s new production aimed high, bringing together a star-studded cast and a fresh, contemporary take on Verdi’s intense drama.
Needing a Mozart palate-cleanser after the recent misbegotten Marriage of Figaro, I went back more than two decades for a Houston Così fan Tutte featuring then-rising Americans Christine Goerke, Joyce Di Donato, Richard Croft, and Nathan Gunn as the confused lovers.
On June 16, San Francisco Opera concluded their excellent Centennial Season with a heartfelt 100th Anniversary Concert, featuring a starry cast, three conductors (including current and former Music Directors) and the SF Opera Orchestra and Chorus.
Dame Ethel Smyth’s third opera, The Wreckers, opened at Houston Grand Opera on October 28 and runs through November 11.
Concerts at Wolf Trap, mixed bags in more ways than one, provided fleeting glimpses of the old normal as moments of frisson mingled with more familiar monotony.
Trove Thursday goes mini-epic with Gustave Charpentier’s naturalistic slice-of-life of fin-de-siêcle Paris in a rare 1999 Renée Fleming performance of Louise co-starring Jerry Hadley, Samuel Ramey and Felicity Palmer.
All about the life of Lorenzo Da Ponte, but depicted as an opera performed as a dress rehearsal for an opera.
Saturday night, Lyric Opera of Chicago gave us a wonderful evening of vocalism in honoring Renée Fleming’s 25th anniversary at Lyric.
Looking at the Houston Grand Opera’s 2018/19 season, I think Hurricane Harvey subconsciously must have had an impact on the choice of operas.
There comes a time where everything falls into place, and more importantly, when your head and heart are also in the right mindset. That’s when when the opera becomes cathartic, life-changing experience.
With Christmas Eve 2016 falling on a Saturday, the Met offers contrasting orchestral splendors at noon and 6 p.m.
If I’d gotten an hour less sleep you’d now find me mixing everything up and writing about Mrs. Lovett making her entrance on a bronze horse like Peter the Great.
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.
Having heard a bit of the opening night broadcast and read some decidedly mixed reviews, I was totally unprepared for the remarkable performance of Donizetti’s Anna Bolena that I attended on December 15 at Chicago Lyric Opera.
Zofia Posmysz spent two years as a prisoner in Auschwitz—and she’s still alive and standing pretty tall, in New York for the Lincoln Center Festival God bless her.
Having recently reviewed Glass’s The Perfect American on this site and participated in spirited discussions about the film Saving Mr. Banks, it is perhaps not surprising that Walt Disney should spring to my mind as I watched the Unitel Classica video
of Die Zauberflote from the floating stage of the Bregenzer Festspiele.
André Previn‘s A Streetcar Named Desire, with the “People’s Diva” herself in the iconic role of the unstable Blanche DuBois.
“Time and tide wait for no one” pontificates Myrtle the barmaid, setting the tone for André Previn’s opera about fleeting romance but enduring love: Brief Encounter. Loosely based on the play Still Life by Noël Coward and the screenplay for the film Brief Encounter by Coward and David Lean, this opera (now on CD) tells…
Let me take you back, Parterreians, to the spring of 2009. Shortly before the Met’s new La sonnambula opened, murmurings began to be heard, rumors began to circulate. After the open dress rehearsal, reports were filed as opera fans looked on in horror. At the première, a shell-shocked audience rained down boos on the production…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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