Don’t go in the basement
Malin Byström is a radiant water nymph in the Bayerische Staatsoper‘s house-of-horrors-set Rusalka.
Richard Strauss
180 pieces since 2006.
180
pieces
21
years
The juice is on the loose
The bonkers, bewildering Die ägyptische Helena begets a suitably lush musical and creative treatment at Bard SummerScape.
Extravagant minimalism
Ahead of his new production of Die Frau ohne Schatten, Barrie Kosky chats with Kevin Ng in Aix about pretty much everything — except the details of his new Frau.
Sister, sister, oh so fair
Conductor Eun Sun Kim and soprano Elza van der Heever play to their strengths in a piercing revival of Elektra at San Francisco Opera.
Were you silent or were you silenced
A new production of Die schweigsame Frau at the Berlin Staatsoper has precious little to say.
La voix surhumaine
Barbara Hannigan mesmerizes as both a brilliant vocalist and a proficient opera conductor in a double bill of Strauss and La voix humaine with the New York Philharmonic.
Heaven, here within my heart
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra explores love and death in an intense, intelligent program featuring soprano Corinne Winters.
Where imitation ends
Daring reimaginings of Cocteau and Wilde take the stage at the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Darkling I listen
Golda Schultz casts darkness in an alluring light in an intimate recital at the New Orleans Opera Festival.
Lady in the dark
Golda Schultz and Jonathan Ware present Dark Matter(s), an intriguing program of songs, at the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society.
“I don’t play a wilting flower very well”
Jennifer Holloway, star of Salome at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, talks with Christina Colanduoni about re-launching her career as a soprano and how her Salome is “just trying not to disappear under everybody else’s rule.”
Look to your laurels
A Strauss rarity receives a ravishing concert performance at Seattle Opera.
You’re as cold as ice
A classic German fairytale gets a modern update at the Staatsoper Berlin.
Settling scores
Tobias Kratzer digs beneath the surface of Strauss‘s Intermezzo in an excellent new DVD from Deutsche Oper Berlin.
The offal truth
“Call me traditional, but I want to see a silver platter!”
Follow your bliss
In recital for the Los Angeles Opera, tenor Ben Bliss makes the case for the next stage of his career.
Let’s do the time warp again
Tobias Kratzer‘s time-traveling Arabella from the Deutsche Oper Berlin, now available on DVD, turns the opera’s problems into its strengths.
Sing out, Louise
Christof Loy‘s Louise in Aix-en-Provence scratches at the urban– and operatic– unconscious
A matinée, a Pinto play
Perhaps a piece of Mahler’s? For Wagner Month, Chris’s Cache offers the unexpected collaboration Die drei Pintos, started by Wagner-predecessor Carl Maria von Weber and completed by one of Wagner’s followers, Gustav Mahler
Golden shower
Claus Guth mines urgent and contemporary commentary from Die Liebe der Danae in Munich.
He plays the violin
This Bard production, led by Leon Botstein, makes the strongest possible case musically, dramatically and visually for Smetana’s opera Dalibor.
Visible storage
Performances of Pittori fiamminghi and Madama Butterfly in picturesque Castell’Arquato were a fine way to honor Luigi Illica, the city’s native son
Breaking the box
Jacquelyn Stucker talks to Kevin Ng about repertoire, tearing down the Fach system, and what it takes to make music from baroque to George Benjamin her own.
You can go your own way
Eli Jacobson on a luscious evening of early Strauss with Guntram at Carnegie Hall
Win a Free Ticket to Opening Night at the Met!
Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen star in the Met's new Macbeth. We're giving away one ticket, so screw your courage to the sticking place and enter now!
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).
