30 pieces since 2014 — in 21 roles, at 10 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
The San Francisco Opera became the first US opera company to present a full-blown production indoors on its home turf this season when they ushered the US opera audience into 2021-22 Season on Saturday September 21 with a stellar performance of Giacomo Puccini’s perennial favorite Tosca.
Washington National Opera’s second full-run offering of the season, a new production of Verdi’s perennially appealing Macbeth, premiered last Wednesday at the Kennedy Center.
I have found myself truly bewildered by some of the online reviews of the Glimmerglass production of Verdi’s Macbeth.
La bohème at The Santa Fe Opera feels warmed over in more ways than one.
Second casts in Don Giovanni and Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera offer mixed blessings.
“This used to be a funhouse… but now it’s full of evil clowns / It’s time to start the countdown…. I’m gonna burn it down”
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.
Washington National Opera followed up Monday’s lavishly praised Die Walküre with a Siegfried that, if not quite rising to the summit of the previous installment, delivered a musically committed and eminently watchable version of this complicated work.
Happily, this Rheingold, which returned to the Kennedy Center Saturday night to open the first of three complete cycles, has been shorn of its clumsier gestures.
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.
For opening night of the new LA Opera season Placido Domingo decided to return to one of his best Verdi showcases, Don Carlo, only this time as the baritone, Rodrigo the Marquis di Posa, instead of the title character.
Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Don Carlos was a real feast of good singing and orchestral grandeur.
Die Walküre heralds the end of an era for the Los Angeles Philharmonic — and the arrival of a new generation of Wagnerians.
The Santa Fe Opera’s fine first Die Walküre finds Wagner in America at a crossroads.
At tonight’s performance of Aida at the Met, the Triumphal Scene horses suddenly panicked and tried to bolt from the stage. I can’t say I blame them.
Sondra Radvanovsky returned for her 29th Met Aïda Thursday night (but only her second Aïda.)
My memory is fading but the events I recall most vividly of the last season seem largely to have been concert performances.
While you may need to bring along your Dramamine, the Met’s new production of La forza del destino, does—eventually—spin fast enough to achieve escape velocity.
In an ingenious stroke of double casting, the Met’s new Forza del destino brings back the Marquis of Calatrava—father of the heroine Leonora, unintentionally killed in the opening scene by a bullet from her lover’s pistol—as Padre Guardiano, Father Superior of the monastery that will take her under its protection as a hermit in Act 2.
Saturday’s Washington National Opera premiere of a new version of Philip Glass and Christopher Hampton’s Appomattox had everything going for it but the opera.
Washington National Opera rounded out its season opening weekend with a one-night-only performance entitled “Gods & Mortals: A Celebration of Wagner” the evening after the premiere of its new production of Fidelio.
La forza del destino concluded its run at the Metropolitan Opera with a significant cast change.
At the first intermission at last night’s Met revival of Aida, I turned to my companion and said, “So… what about the Aida? I thought she was supposed to be good.”
Do you ever wonder how easy it is to invent a Christmas tradition?
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!
Lyric Opera of Chicago has opened its new season with a revival of its tried and true 2006 production of Verdi’s sixteenth opera, Rigoletto, one of his most tuneful and dramatic works (I attended the Sunday matinée performance).
On Thursday June 30th, San Francisco Opera closed their summer season with a one-night-only special concert celebrating Eun Sun Kim’s first season as the Caroline H. Hume Music Director, in an aptly named concert “Eun Sun Kim Conducts Verdi.”
Luisa Miller snowballs toward disaster and death.
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).
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!
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