Don’t expect any sweeping statements from Franz Welser-Möst ‘s polished, if dramatically inert, Fidelio.
Das Wunder der Heliane fuses sex with the sacred at a simmering performance at the Opéra National du Rhin.
Anticipating the titanic arrival of Lise Davidsen‘s Isolde in New York in March, Parterre Box is thrilled to share a bit of her debut opposite Clay Hilley recorded in Barcelona last week.
Grand Tier Grab Bag highlights La Scala’s opening night prima donna Sara Jakubiak with an excerpt of her Chrysothemis recorded last year.
Tobias Kratzer‘s time-traveling Arabella from the Deutsche Oper Berlin, now available on DVD, turns the opera’s problems into its strengths.
Are Beethoven’s symphonies overplayed? Yes, but for a reason. While this justification may sound cliché, Beethoven’s humanist universalism is a sentiment that feels urgent in an era of widespread polarization and pessimism.
The New York Philharmonic podium has been occupied the past two weeks by Finnish conductors once thought to be top contenders for the ensemble’s music directorship.
If it is true that there are few respectable ways for people over 40 without small children to celebrate Halloween, a performance of Richard Strauss’ pioneering horror opera Elektra belongs on the short list.
My sister Julie celebrates an important birthday later this month which reminded me—as I also recalled I visiting her while she was living in Prague—that I should unearth Bohuslav Martin?’s Julietta with Lucia Popp and Dénes Gulyás for this week’s Trove Thursday.
Remember that time you went to the opera and the whole evening was like magic? Saturday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion probably ranks among my greatest nights in the theater and I’m finding the superlatives in my thesaurus inadequate to the task.
In the opera world, one of the pieces that underwent a multitude of changes in its reception was undoubtedly Richard Wagner’s longest and most Germanic opera, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
Bard SummerScape’s concert staging of Die Tote Stadt emerged triumphant thanks to Clay Hilley and Sara Jakubiak.
What we really need, some seem to believe, is fuller representation of the 19th century.
Think of it as the anti-Puritani.
In any narrative, the unmentioned—the unmentionable—will always be more alarming than that which is carefully described.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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