Anita Rachvelishvili and Quinn Kelsey towered over an otherwise pedestrian if still exciting Il Trovatore.
Headlining the Met’s current revival of both Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci, Roberto Alagna was operating on all cylinders Monday evening.
Handsome singing by Roberto Alagna and extremely heavy makeup on Barbara Frittoli highlight these excerpts from Adriana Lecouvreur in Monte Carlo.
In Andrea Chenier an unexpected Canadian star-tenor relishes beheading alongside a far less well-known Italian diva: Jon Vickers and Ilva Ligabue.
“Trove Thursday” presents a performance from 40 years ago: an inspired Renata Scotto as Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur.
“Trove Thursday” celebrates the thrilling Finnish soprano Karita Matilla in the ultimate diva role.
A brilliant production of La Juive like that of Peter Konwitschny generalizes the message that mindless hate does not pay and the mindless mob is always the enemy of civilization.
Massenet’s La Navarraise in a live performance featuring Rita Gorr as Anita and George Shirley as Araquil.
>What does a great opera production do, and what does a bad production fail to do?
While D.C. Wagnerians wait for Nina Stemme’s Brünnhilde to arrive next week, “Trove Thursday” presents the erstwhile Valkyrie of another compelling diva: Anna Caterina Antonacci as Brunehild, the heroine of Ernest Reyer’s Sigurd, a French grand opera also based on the Nibelungenlied.
Sir Richard Eyre’s new Manon Lescaut at the Met Friday night demonstrated no particular aptitude for opera.
With February 14th falling on a Sunday, there will be no Valentine’s Day Met performance this year.
A “lone voice in the wilderness” booed Barbara Frittoli’s calamitous Nedda.
Angela Gheorghiu‘ s idiosyncratically alluring, sometimes maddening, always fascinating Floria Tosca inevitably became the evening’s unmissable raison d’être.
Piotr Beczala, Soile Isokoski and Kwangchul Youn star in this 2009 performance of Faust from the Wiener Staatsoper, idiomatically conducted by Bertrand de Billy.
The Deutsche Opera an Rhein production of Handel’s Xerxes (which is shared with the Berlin Komische Oper), though I saw it three nights ago, has taken a while to settle down in my brain.
In his first appearance on the stage of Paris’ Palais Garnier, Roberto Alagna, as the newly knighted Rodrigue, was confronted with a profound dilemma.
One of the major complaints about the five year casting system (as well as the shared productions by different companies) is that operatic events are rarely surprises anymore.
The Salzburg Festival has long had the image of this place where for a little over a month, the very best singers are brought together with the very best conductors and the very best directors to create the very best productions the opera world has to offer.
Once upon a time, a man and a woman met. He could sing, she could sing. They fell in love, got married, and became a power couple to rival Billary.
The crossover album: a hint that that an artist has either exhausted all the repertory at her command and owes her record label a new release or that her waning vocal resources really shouldn’t be taxed much further than an octave.
I suspect most New York City opera-lovers had long since given up hope that the fascinating soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci would ever return to their city.
I’ve always had a certain affection for Roberto Alagna.
Ah, the “themed” recital disc! Sometimes it’s a special treasure in a collector’s trove showing off the lesser known skills of a beloved performer; more often, an object of mirth and ridicule toward those who’ve been ill-advised or have already committed most of their repertoire in the studio and are now starting in on someone…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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