The best thing I saw in 2025 was Vanessa
“Let me look around once more. Who knows when I shall see this house again?”
By Peter Russell
Comment
Susan Graham
60 pieces since 2008 — in 20 roles, at 12 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
60
pieces
20
roles
12
companies
19
years
By role
Role Baroness
Role Countess Geschwitz
The leggy movie
This Met’s second production of Berg’s 1935 opera was the hot topic of November 2015.
Half a million marks
Unlike my friend Greg Freed, who entertainingly wrote of his ambivalence about seeing Il trovatore in a movie theater this season, I have embraced the Met Live in HD transmissions as a part of the modern operagoing experience.
Cherchez la femme (fatale)
Lilith. Pandora. Circe. Salome. “La Belle Dame sans Merci.” Carmen. Brigid O’Shaughnessy: the eternal “femme fatale” still fascinates us.
Role De Rocher's mother
‘Dead Man,’ stumbling
The opera is relentlessly obvious, a work that repeatedly turns to tired tropes and canned characters to fill up its nearly three hour run time.
Role DeRocher's mother
Act of contrition
The 25th anniversary revival of Dead Man Walking at San Francisco Opera is most moving in its quietest moments
Role Desirée
Remember, darling?
During the 1970s, Stephen Sondheim composed Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures and Sweeney Todd–five richly varied masterpieces of musical theater in a nearly miraculous burst of creativity.
Role Dido
Troy story
Lyric Opera of Chicago rose to the challenges mightily in its first-ever performance of Les Troyens.
No place like Rome
Love grand opera but wary of a six o’clock curtain with five hours of music behind it? (And nothing is grander than Berlioz’s Les Troyens, eh?) Your dilemma has been solved. Show up at the Met at 7:30 or 8:00, whenever they have the first intermission.
Role Didon
Not since Ilium
As I mentioned in a previous post, one of my two favorite operas is Les Troyens,
Role Donna Elvira
Anna Caterina Antonacci should have made it to the Met
The one who got away was Anna Caterina Antonacci, a thrilling performer.
By Last Castrato
68 comments
Undead of the night
For those pining for Puccini with the Met out of commission. Trove Thursday steps up with the composer’s brief first opera Le Villi with Krassimira Stoyanova, José Cura and Franz Grundheber, led by Simone Young.
Role Geneviève
Slow simmer
This was by far my most satisfying experience with Pelléas et Mélisande for a multitude of reasons and I encourage anyone who’s even mildly curious to find their way to the Music Center for a very rich experience.
Role Hanna Glawari
Angel of the mourning
The most distinct pleasure of The Merry Widow at the Metropolitan Opera was the polished, yet warm, performance of Susan Graham as Hanna Glawari.
Role Joe De Rocher's mother
“Haven’t we all suffered enough?”
Sunday’s matinee at Lyric Opera of Chicago was my first experience of Heggie and McNally’s 2000 opera Dead Man Walking. It certainly won’t be my last.
Role Jordan Baker
Good gracious, Great Gatsby!
The first opera to be performed in the 21st century at the Metropolitan Opera, thankfully after the lack of total destruction from the Y2K bug, was the recently premiered The Great Gatsby by John Harbison. Commissioned to mark James Levine’s 25th anniversary with the company, the recording of this New Year’s Day broadcast is now […]
Role Komponist
Composer’s intentions
A live broadcast of the prologue to Ariadne auf Naxos featuring Julia Varady, a favorite sopranos in a role she sang only rarely.
Role Larina
High and dry
Ilana Walder-Biesanz reports from The Santa Fe Opera, where Tobias Picker‘s latest opera falls short, a new Rodelinda scintillates, and sumptuous singing abounds across the entire repertoire.
Onegin, off again
The Ralph Fiennes production of Eugene Onegin at the Paris Opera is just…fine.
Role Marguerite
Montag mit Marguerite
Berlioz apparently couldn’t decide if his was an oratorio or an opera, so he labeled it a “légende dramatique.” Since its 1846 Paris premiere, it remains on both opera stages and in concert halls, with its first Met staging in 1906.
point counterpoint
Cher public, who else but La Cieca brings you such in-depth arts coverage that you get not one but two reports from spies at the dress rehearsal of the Met’s new La Damnation de Faust ? After the jump, eyewitness accounts of the Lepagerie from Our Own Gualtier Maldè and Sanford.Â
Role Marquise of Berkenfield
Avec la victoire, l’instant du bonheur
Buoyed by a strong cast, The Metropolitan Opera continues its autumn bel canto streak with a winning revival of Donizetti’s La fille du regiment.
Role Old Baroness
She has come, she has come
I’ve been waiting (nearly) 20 years for another encounter with Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti’s Vanessa.
Role Orlofsky
Out of hell
One can only pray that “three strikes, you’re out” applies at the Met. If so, we can rest easy that Jeremy Sams won’t be getting any new assignments.
Role Sister Helen
Nun of a kind
“None of that sentimental crap, okay?”
Role Witch
Stranger with candy
Saturday night I navigated the Music Center concourse, or what’s left of it with it’s seemingly eternal construction to the main plaza, wending my way to the Dorothy Chandler for the opening night of LA Opera’s Hansel and Gretel.
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).
Win a Free Ticket to Opening Night at the Met!
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!
