Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer‘s bubbly The Judgement of Paris brings a distinctly Californian terroir to operatic comedy.
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s concert Rigoletto hits some vocal turbulence
I’ve looked to Sherrill Milnes many a time for insight and guidance whenever I’ve added a new Verdi role to my repertoire.
Back-to-back casts in the Metropolitan Opera’s revivals of Madama Butterfly and La traviata offer ample opportunity for soprano-gazing.
William Parker‘s career launch coincided with the closet door fully opening for American male classical vocalists; the cruel irony is that Will was also an early AIDS casualty, gone in 1993 at 49.
Baritone Quinn Kelsey’s recital of English-language art songs in partnership with pianist Craig Ketter was a worthy celebration of Vocal Arts DC’s 35th-anniversary season.
Music Director Eun Sun Kim is at the center of the repertory, and a long Wagner arc is now officially underway
This week, Parterre Box shares Quinn Kelsey and Jennifer Rowley in a duet from a Verdi opera rumored to be returning to New York this time next season.
Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci at Lyric Opera of Chicago are hysterical in all the wrong ways.
A starry concert Aïda in Baltimore proves unusually polished
Some people were introduced to the art form listening to the Met’s NBC broadcasts on a glowing tube radio or watching acid-trip animated adaptations on the BBC or seeing Elmer Fudd sing, “Kill the Wabbit.” I came to opera through simulated drive-by shootings soundtracked by The Marriage of Figaro.
I had been hopeful that 2024 would end, if not on a high note, then one that was at least in tune.
After an uneven gala performance of Tosca on Tuesday, I’m not sure what the Met means by “celebrating Puccini.”
Later this month the Met at last revives its striking Herbert Wernicke production of Die Frau ohne Schatten, prompting a Chris’s Cache preview of three live recordings of Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s fanciful if knotty masterpiece.
The Richard Tucker Foundation Gala has always been a big annual celebration of the voice with an emphasis on big-voiced singers in big repertoire (not much Wagner usually, though…). Like so many reliable operatic institutions it has struggled for survival after the pandemic.
Rigoletto is the perfect opera. The story is straightforward and powerful; none of the action occurs backstage or between scenes or twenty-seven years before curtain rise; and the ethical anvil lands not once but twice, on the title character singing, “La maledizione!” The curse!
This Sunday marked a muted return of the Richard Tucker Foundation Gala, which had the dubious distinction of the fourth edition not to feature a prizewinner and perhaps the first not to provide complete orchestral and choral accompaniment for its performers.
On October 20th, a wet but warmish Friday night, the Metropolitan Opera opened this season’s revival of Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera in David Alden’s 2012 production.
In sum: not a perfect Simon Boccanegra—is there such a thing?—but a grand and often great one.
In the five short years that I’ve been in New York, I have seen that crusty old Franco Zeffirelli production of La bohème more times than I can count on one hand. And there are certainly times when that peeling mise-en-scène really shows its age.
After putting a hiatus on their awards in 2020 and 2021 (for reasons that are all too well-known to all of us), the Richard Tucker Foundation Gala returned on Sunday evening November 13 honoring soprano Angel Blue the 2022 Award winner.
The main reason to see this revival is Benjamin Bernheim’s Duca.
LOC’s Ernani is a satisfying evening of Verdi sung by four stars at the height of their powers.
To conclude its triumphant season, last week the Met Orchestra performed its annual Carnegie Hall concerts under music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin and once again performed superbly.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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