Les Arts Florissants present two ravishing programs in Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Those of us in New York City who relish 17th century Italian vocal music were offered an enticing banquet over the past few weeks.
Two short theatrical works and one sacred piece from the beguiling oeuvre of the guy who didn’t write Louise
Two of France’s leading Early Music ensembles recently visited New York City to perform music by some of the 17th century’s leading composers.
If April is the cruelest month, it may be that spring’s arrival brings far too many things to do and see.
Trove Thursday celebrates Pride with a Bible-based homoerotic sort-of opera not by the guy who wrote “Depuis le jour”: Charpentier’s David et Jonathas with Mark Padmore, Laurent Naouri and Jaël Azzaretti led by Emmanuelle Haïm.
French early music group Ensemble Correspondances offered two of the year’s very best concerts.
Four fine Handel-centric concerts from the Morgan Library to Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center proved a bracing antidote to pervasive Messiah-mania.
Sometimes the fates conspire, preventing an artist from recording the role for which he is his generation’s touchstone.
I had my head in my hands groaning in disbelief instead of joining in the general applause around me.
Scheming Anne-Sofie von Otter offs her brother and sons before the opera even begins? You bet!
Can a surfeit of pleasure become—in the end—unsatisfying?
“Trove Thursday” provides a live broadcast of Mozart’s rarely performed cantata Davide Penitente by Les Arts Florissants conducted by William Christie.
Many large opera companies these days host valuable young artist programs dedicated to helping singers negotiate the difficult transition between leaving the conservatory and becoming full-time performing artists.
What must have raced through the mind of the none-too-comely Spanish Infanta when she learned that the opera to be performed during the celebrations for her 1745 wedding to the French Dauphin revolved around the comeuppance of an ugly yet vain water nymph tricked into believing Jupiter was her ardent suitor?
For one week every two years since 1981 the eyes—and ears—of those interested in period performance turn to the Boston Early Music Festival, particularly to its opera centerpiece, but that organization doesn’t rest on its laurels in between festivals.
You have only until Sunday to catch the most heart-breaking moments seen on New York City operatic stages this season.
Every year New York City opera-lovers eagerly anticipate the autumn because it means that summer is finally over and we can get back to serious opera-going, and this September promises “The Battle of the A’s.”
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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