My soul is eager for this kind of pain My soul is eager for this kind of pain

Ross Wassermann tracks the development of “Che farò senza Euridice?” — and “J’ai perdu mon Eurydice” — for this month’s Perspectives on an Aria

Mediocrities everywhere Mediocrities everywhere

The production style exposed Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus for what it’s always been: a piece of lowbrow camp masquerading as highbrow art.

The Prussians are coming The Prussians are coming

Sometime in 1753, Frederick The Great of Prussia, following a tiff with his great friend Voltaire, began writing an opera libretto in French prose that was to elucidate his ideas about the role of an enlightened monarch.

starkers scheite schichtet mir dort

Need you ask who discusses the subject of nudity in opera (among other performing arts) in today’s Times? [W]hen nudity seems called for and natural, it can lend disarming humanity to a drama. There was, for example, Richard Greenberg’s “Take Me Out,” at the Public Theater in 2002, about a superstar baseball player who reveals…