With help from the Met’s invaluable performance archive, here is a look back at just some of what you could have seen, and perhaps did see, on October 31st through the years at the Met.
Few things in opera are more exciting than a beloved young singer taking on a new role, especially in a new Fach.
Think of it as the anti-Puritani.
Once again, beloveds, we approach the Milanese shrine that simultaneously attempted to cultivate and destroy the career of Maria Meneghini Callas.
f you like opera to look like a museum, the Arena di Verona’s latest video of Aida should jump to the top of your wish list.
For better or worse, Decca’s new Norma recording
will ultimately be embraced—or dismissed—by those reacting directly to Cecilia Bartoli’s controversial portrayal.
C-Major continues their full frontal attack on the Verdi catalogue with this release of I Masnadieri which, I’m thrilled to report, does not hail from the Teatro di Regio in Parma like the previous aspirants. We’ve travelled south to Naples and the Teatro di San Carlo and we’re all the better for it as the…
It’s kind of shocking, when you really think about it, that the kind of international operatic model that the Royal Opera now operates on barely existed only 50 years ago. Until around 1960 most of the performances at the Covent Garden were given in English and the casting choices were enough to make the Vicar…
Only because I am a member of the You Can Never Have Too Much Callas School of Opera Listening can I recommend EMI’s new release The Callas Effect. The beautifully packaged production is the size of a small paperback book and consists of two CDs with 29 arias sung by Callas plus a new 70-minute…
[This article originally appeared in the print zine precursor to this site, one of a series of surveys of live recordings by critic Leila de Lakmé.] Leyla Gencer. The very name is exotic. She was an artist of Turkish ancestry who, during the 1950s and 60s, held her own despite the presence of Maria Callas,…
“Legendary maestro Tullio Serafin once said that trying to perform Bellini’s Norma without a great soprano is as futile as attempting to cook risotto without rice. This month, the Metropolitan Opera experimented with such a recipe with less than palatable results.” Our Own JJ reviews Hasmik Papian‘s Druidess in Gay City News.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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