Baritone John Brancy smoothly traverses the American songbook at Carnegie Hall.
Two recent Paminas feature in concerts at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall.
Second casts in Don Giovanni and Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera offer mixed blessings.
Music for New Bodies at Lincoln Center’s Running AMOC* Festival proves Matthew Aucoin really is everything he’s made out to be
An impressive cast blurs binaries as John Adams‘s ambitious Antony and Cleopatra arrives at the Met
Christopher Cerrone and Stephanie Fleischmann‘s opera at the Prototype Festival re-sets Rashomon in the Pacific Northwest and binds its characters into a hellish cycle of violence with a dark, hypnotic score
Antony and Cleopatra was an auspicious start to San Francisco Opera’s second century, a performance that seems to improve as I continue to think about it.
While it must be admitted that Elza van den Heever doesn’t have an ideally warm and agile Handel voice, she evidenced fierce control over her instrument and skillfully built a powerful portrait of the courageous Rodelida fighting for her survival.
Last night’s cast of Die Meistersinger at the Met, dominated by the irascible, unbeatable duo of Michael Volle and Johannes Martin Kränzle as Sachs and Beckmesser, did much to enliven Otto Schenk’s creaky, nearly 30-year-old production.
The program was set around themes of loss, of unfulfilled wishes, the endurance of loss, triumphant or depressed.
“Trove Thursday” presents a complete Prodanà Nevesta (aka Die Verkaufte Braut, of course) by Smetana plus extended excerpts from a broadcast of Spontini’s La Vestale in its rarely heard original French version.
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.
Celebrating Lenny’s 100th this year has made Candide ubiquitous at opera houses worldwide.
I really wished to avoid joining the pig pile of derision that has fallen on SF Opera’s premiere of John Adams and Peter Sellars’ Girls of the Golden West.
Among several fine productions at Aix this summer, Dmitri Tcherniakov’s brilliantly conceived and executed Carmen proved a game changer.
The best part of Paul Appleby’s recital for the Philadelphia Chamber Society came in his last two groups.
Director Barrie Kosky’s Glyndebourne 2015 production of Handel’s 1739 oratorio Saul (released on Opus Arte DVD) shows imagination as well as a strong cast and design team.
Trove Thursday” presents Béatrice et Bénédict in a 2009 performance featuring Joyce DiDonato and Charles Workman and conducted by Sir Colin Davis.
The no-star, slapstick revival of John Dexter’s 37-year-old production of Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail that opened Friday night proved James Levine’s tenure as Music Director of the Met will end in two weeks with neither a whimper nor a bang.
Tenor Paul Appleby’s onstage persona is as American as apple crisp, and he possesses the untroubled confidence of a politician.
With a primary color, projection-heavy English-language Magic Flute that’s going to feel like a matinee whenever you see it, the SFO season has lived up to its initial promise.
My memory is fading but the events I recall most vividly of the last season seem largely to have been concert performances.
You will be happy to hear that Michael Fabiano was the unrivaled star of the Richard Tucker Foundation Gala tonight.
Ambiguity. That’s the theme of the operas of Benjamin Britten (ennobled as Baron Britten of Aldeburgh).
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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