Troy and Troy again
For those with Odyssey fever, this week’s Grand Tier Grab Bag item features a performance of another ancient epic: Les Troyens with Russell Thomas.
Russell Thomas
40 pieces since 2014 — in 21 roles, at 15 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
40
pieces
21
roles
15
companies
13
years
By role
By company
Lyric Opera of Chicago 5
Metropolitan Opera 5
San Francisco Opera 4
Washington National Opera 3
LA Opera 2
Canadian Opera Company 1
Houston Grand Opera 1
L.A. Opera 1
Los Angeles Opera 1
Los Angeles Philharmonic 1
Palau Les Arts 1
Seattle Opera 1
Staatsoper Hamburg 1
Tanglewood 1
Washington Concert Opera 1
Role Aeneas
Role Canio
Beyond the wail
Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci at Lyric Opera of Chicago are hysterical in all the wrong ways.
Role Carlo
Family values
A regular day in 2018 Washington, D.C., or Verdi’s Don Carlo?
The girl next door
>Verdi’s marvelous yet neglected Luisa Miller finally returns to the Met later this month after an absence of a dozen years so “Trove Thursday” provides a preview.
Role Carlos
‘Don’ or dinner party
A revival of Peter Konwitschny’s rightly legendary Don Carlos and Dmitri Tcherniakov’s confounding new Salome: both turned out to be unforgettable!
Role Cavaradossi
Same as it ever was
I must confess to feeling a bit of “Tosca fatigue” as I entered the Lyric Opera of Chicago house for Wednesday’s matinee of the Puccini standard.
Going Hollywood
The Hollywood Bowl is truly the preeminent musical venue in Los Angeles.
Role Don Carlo
Back to the future
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.
We’ll always have Paris (or maybe not)
The revival of Don Carlo(s) which opened on November 3 restored the translated Italian text and the cut 1882 four-act revision not seen at the Met since Rudolf Bing’s last season in 1972.
Role Emperor
Trick mirror
A recent conversation with a friend who has loved Die Frau ohne Schatten for twice as long as I have been alive revealed that we both had some unresolved questions about the plot.
Role Ernani
Power and precision: ‘Ernani’ in Chicago
LOC’s Ernani is a satisfying evening of Verdi sung by four stars at the height of their powers.
Role Florestan
The big cube
Ludwig van Beethoven’s “rescue opera” Fidelio was presented by San Francisco Opera as their first new production of the season last Thursday in reinterpreted fashion.
Role Ismaele
Conversion narrative
Blood-and-guts singing is the reason to see Nabucco at the Metropolitan Opera this season.
Role Loge
In the River Rhine. In it.
It is always a pleasure to hear a great orchestra take on a major score that might sound half-muffled emerging from the pit of an opera house.
Role Manrico
Great Chicago fire
If sheer clarion vocalism is what draws you to the opera, then hie thee to Lyric Opera of Chicago’s rousing revival Of Verdi’s Il Trovatore, the oddly plotted but musically sublime opera that opened last night in the David McVicar production, originally seen in 2006.
Role Mario Cavaradossi
Crate expectations
Not a few eyebrows arched on social media when L.A. Opera appropriated the hashtag “Fight like a girl” on street level poster adverts all over town for the revival of their 2013 production of Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca.
Role Oedipus
Crossroads
When LA Opera finally decided to put a toe in the water and mount its first production since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, it was Igor Stravinsky‘s opera/oratorio Oedipus Rex.
Role Otello
Candid theatricality
Out of sheer morbid curiosity last evening I pulled up the “orders” page of my Amazon account and searched Otello to discover that over the past 11 years. I’ve ordered 15 items with that title (one as recently as last night!)
General, not specific
While Russell Thomas admirably goes toe to toe with Otello (and Otello) in a thoughtful and self-aware way, the assumption feels like a work in progress if not an outright mismatch with his vocal gifts.
The evil that men do
The Canadian Opera Company’s new production of Otello is a collection of welcome returns.
Role Pollione
Occult following
Radvanovsky delivered a vocal and histrionic performance that should be the gold standard Norma for years.
The rite stuff
Remember that time you went to the opera and the entire evening was perfection?
Text appeal
What makes Norma such a high-profile role in the soprano repertory?
Running, jumping, or burning Gaul
Far be it from me to join the Schadenfreudian chorus of “Bye, Bye, Berti!” you may have been hearing in certain quarters, but the first thing I am duty-bound to report about San Francisco Opera’s Norma (of which three performances remain) is that they’ve hit the jackpot, coverwise.
Role Radames
Unqualified triumph
Since I began regularly attending performances at Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1999, I have been a great admirer of director Francesca Zambello’s productions.
Role Roberto Devereux
Drama, Queen
Lightning struck again here when, after a wait of 39 years, San Francisco Opera unveiled a new production of Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux.
Role Rodolfo
Reason to believe
I was extraordinarily happy Monday evening to encounter Angel Blue and Russell Thomas as Mimi and Rodolfo.
Role Tannhäuser
Sex power god
Breaking the Waves and Tannhaüser at Houston Grand Opera are a can’t-miss doubleheader of sex and miracles.
Role Tito
Take the long way Rome
Russell Thomas’s opening aria, “Del piu sublime soglio” displayed an intense attention to the text and some surprisingly beautiful piano phrasing that I’ve never heard risked before and it brought wonder and gooseflesh.
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).
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