Cri du coeur
Sondra Radvanovsky returned for her 29th Met Aïda Thursday night (but only her second Aïda.)
Sondra Radvanovsky
88 pieces since 2006 — in 14 roles, at 12 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
88
pieces
14
roles
12
companies
21
years
By role
Role Aïda
Neigh sayers: Frightening the Horses
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.
Role Amelia
Unmasked
It is quite unusual to stage a new indoor production in the middle of summer in Italy when so many outdoor venues are open, but general manager of La Scala Stéphane Lissner – who will leave next year – decided to close the first half of this Verdi-Wagner year with a beloved hit of il cigno di Busseto.
The man in the ironic mask
The realization of the opera Un ballo in maschera by Verdi and the librettist Antonio Somma is almost as famous as the opera itself.
The man behind the mask
Recently your doyenne engaged in an email-based interview with David Alden, director of the Met’s new production of Un ballo in maschera, opening on Thursday.
Un wallow in maschera
Chicago’s opera community has been abuzz about this production of Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera ever since the 2010-11 Lyric Opera season was announced. A sumptuous production owned by San Francisco opera, major female stars, a solid male cast of experienced Verdians, and stage direction by the legendary Renata Scotto—what more could one ask?
Mano a mano
I attend the opera intent on enjoying myself. If the music is not my favorite, there is always something to like, be it a colleague’s individual performance, the discovery of a newcomer, nifty stagecraft or costumes, observing the movement skills of the various singers, or in worst-case scenarios, observing the audience’s boredom, carefully notating the […]
Role Anna Bolena
Sondra castle
By the end of the first act, it was clear to me that I was experiencing an artist performing at her absolute peak.
Don’t axe me why
The Metropolitan Opera’s much vaunted so-called “Tudor Ring” of three royal operas by Donizetti got off to a bumpy start Saturday afternoon with a revival of Anna Bolena that stubbornly refused to cohere either musically or dramatically.
Let’s make it regal
Having heard a bit of the opening night broadcast and read some decidedly mixed reviews, I was totally unprepared for the remarkable performance of Donizetti’s Anna Bolena that I attended on December 15 at Chicago Lyric Opera.
Role Elisabetta
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.
Screen queen
This season’s Met Donizetti Tudor Trilogy concluded with Roberto Devereux, given its penultimate performance by HD transmission Saturday, April 16. It is good to see these works finally given here; they are too important, too crucial a part of the operatic repertory to have been ignored for as long as they have.
I want your Essex
During its first-ever Roberto Devereux Thursday evening one felt transported back to the Volpe years: four of the Met’s biggest stars shining in an opulent (if occasionally perverse) but reassuringly non-challenging production paid for by Sybil B. Harrington.
Role Gioconda
Thoughts on La Gioconda: the others
Yes, there were other Giocondas if not of quite the same distinction. Chronologically…
Role Lady Macbeth
Lady willpower
Hie thee hither to the Lyric Opera House!
Role Leonora
Married to their jobs
Ahead of their opening in Don Carlo in Dallas tonight, Christopher Corwin chats with Nicole Car and Étienne Dupuis — and offers a special edition of Chris’s Cache!
Expect opera, pay less
You may remember, gentle readers, that last year about this time Peter Gelb decided to enter into an unholy alliance with Target to benefit their mountainous number of opera loving customers by pre-releasing two Met performances exclusively in their fine emporiums.
Role Lisa
Skeleton key
Original Director Richard Jones and revival director Benjamin Davis have created a staging that veers wildly between fascinating and fatally flawed.
Role Maria Stuarda
Queen for a D
Friday’s season premiere at the Met of Donizetti’s opera about the doomed Scottish queen proved surprisingly satisfying and a genuine success for Sondra Radvanovsky.
Role Medea
The scorned mother of us all
Seeing Sondra Radvanovsky as Medea at Lyric Opera of Chicago sprawled across the floor, soaked in her children’s blood, is proof that we’re witnessing an utterly haunting singer-actor.
Medea
“Sondra Radvanovsky has an unconventional voice that is suited to unconventional characters and is best used in rangy, difficult music,” as heard on today’s Met broadcast.
How do you solve a problem like ‘Medea’?
Sondra Radvanovsky has an unconventional voice that is suited to unconventional characters and is best used in rangy, difficult music. The lack of lush beauty was no deficit in depicting Medea’s jealousy and vengeful rage.
Role Norma
Zero gravitas
On the train ride home I was thinking that I don’t want to see or hear Norma ever again.
“Norma,” bis
Sir David McVicar’s inept and dreary new production of Bellini’s Norma proved to be more satisfying than it had been on opening night when it returned to the Met Friday evening thanks to its new leading ladies Angela Meade and Jamie Barton
Sgombra è la sacra megaplex
I suspect that David McVicar’s new production of the Metropolitan Opera’s Norma had its most congenial showing as a totality, specifically in the HD format at the movie theater.
Better call Gaul
Bellini’s Norma Monday evening didn’t at all improve on the production it was replacing.
For me and my Gaul
I first went bonkers for Bellini’s masterpiece during the previous century when the Met remounted it for Joan Sutherland.
Mitigated Gaul
Kevin Newbury‘s familiar production of Bellini’s Norma with its most frequent leading lady, the American Sondra Radvanovsky.
Occult following
Radvanovsky delivered a vocal and histrionic performance that should be the gold standard Norma for years.
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 Roxane
Nose candy
The indisputable star of the new Naxos DVD of Franco Alfano’s Cyrano de Bergerac, filmed at the Palau de les Arts ‘Reina Sofia’ in Valencia and directed by Michal Znaniecki, is, as in all other stage, operatic and film adaptations of the Cyrano story, the enormous prosthetic nose worn by the title character. The nose […]
Role Tosca
One-woman Brutus and Cassius
Anna Pirozzi and Luca Salsi reunite in blazing form in Tosca at the Teatro San Carlo
Shocker and awe
In 2011, Sondra Radvanovsky‘s Tosca proved promising; fourteen years later, it was absolutely magnificent, a completely satisfying musical and dramatic embodiment of a challenging role by an artist at the peak of her powers.
A certain theatrical precision
Sondra Radvanovsky was a force of nature as Tosca on Thursday night at the Met.
Charisma and chemistry
For this revival of Tosca Teatro Real has configured several casts with some of the best singers in the world: Sondra Radvanovsky, Maria Agresta, Anna Netrebko, Joseph Calleja, Michael Fabiano, Yusif Eyvazov, Jonas Kaufmann, Carlos Álvarez, Gevorg Hakobyan and Luca Salsi.
Atonement
Sondra Radvanovsky changed my opinion of her through a single performance—I’ll never think of her the same way again; the power of her singing overwhelmed my previous impressions.
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 Turandot
The 2023 Turandot is so overrated
The recent highly hyped studio recording of Puccini’s Turandot left me greatly disappointed.
By Moe Rear
153 comments
Hear the trumpets sound!
Frankly I thought Sondra Radvanovsky had reached her pinnacle with her Norma but I was apparently mistaken. I’m happy to say her Turandot is completely next-level.
Light up my Rameau
For those who complain (not entirely unfairly) that Handel operas are “just a string of da capo arias,” I sometimes mutter to myself, “Have they ever tried Rameau?”