parterre box celebrates the beginning of Pride Month with a throwback to one of the queerer events in recent operatic memory: a bit of Carmen starring Jamie Barton and Stephanie Blythe!
Operettas always seem to be on the menu for New Year’s Eve, so Chris’s Cache joins in with a broadcast of Offenbach’s delicious La Grande-duchesse de Gérolstein featuring Stephanie Blythe in the title role.
On October 20th, a wet but warmish Friday night, the Metropolitan Opera opened this season’s revival of Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera in David Alden’s 2012 production.
To paraphrase Terence Blanchard’s Champion, what makes an opera an opera?
This is likely the best Giargiari Bel Canto competition year in my experience, evidenced in several important ways.
The Met’s Cinderella is a charming adaptation of Massenet’s opera. Frothy, fun, and enchanting, it is a magical holiday treat for the whole family to enjoy.
A good time seemed to be had by all though I don’t recall seeing a single child in attendance.
What does the opera singer of the future look like?
Sunday is Handel’s 335th birthday, an event Trove Thursday celebrates with Rodelinda, Regina de’Longobardi, one of the composer’s most popular works.
A hefty thunderclap shook Tanglewood’s Koussevitzky Shed just as Andris Nelsons raised his baton for the third act of the weekend’s concert Die Walküre.
La Fille du Régiment, Donizetti’s half-spoken ode to La France about a girl raised by a division of daddies, is at once infamous and beloved for the string of nine high C’s capping act one.
The proceedings took the virtue of longevity too much to heart; the night stretched on interminably.
Isn’t it nice to know a lot? And a little bit not.
Opera Philadelphia’s O18 Festival continues through the weekend, but Friday represented a finale of sorts with the last two premieres.
“Fricka is on fucking vacation.”
Soprano Patricia Racette is superb in La Voix Humaine, a work that she makes absolutely her own.
Soprano Ashley Marie Robillard and mezzo Siena Licht Miller evoke a journey to Paris, Venice, Berlin, and London.
It would be hard to imagine a more apt and poignant metaphor for the ambitious O18 Festival than the world premiere of Lembit Beecher and Hannah Moscovitch’s Sky on Swings.
Why, only now, Cendrillon is having its premiere at the Met is a puzzling question.
Skirting the leafy, patrician Berkshires of Western Mass, and flush with wine coolers and white people, pastoral Tanglewood doesn’t much resemble the dark Nibelung settings of Norse myth.
Anticipation of events like the Metropolitan Opera’s 50th Anniversary bash turns me back into the newly opera-soused kid who begged his parents to let him watch the highlights of the Bing Gala on the family color television.
Tancredi, given on February 10th, was a credit to Opera Philadelphia, who offered a well-considered and compelling production.
The 2016 Richard Tucker Award recipient is Tamara Wilson.
A semi-staging of Dido and Aeneas starring Broadway divas and frequent collaborators Kelli O’Hara and Victoria Clark seemed a screwy idea at best.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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