Wedding from hell
Les Arts Florissants (lightly) stages two Charpentier rarities as a summer wedding gone wrong.
William Christie
80 pieces since 2010 — at 7 companies, most often at Les Arts Florissants.
80
pieces
7
companies
17
years
The best things I saw in 2025 were Nina Stemme and Les Arts Florissants
I can’t say 2025 was my best operagoing year; apart from a superb Fille du régiment, most of my good nights at the opera were decidedly mixed affairs.
By Cornelia
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Old friends, new friends
Les Arts Florissants present two ravishing programs in Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Georges has Georges
A double bill of rare Bizet works in Paris is not something any of us needs to do more than once
Kevin Ng says you must watch Marie Antoinette
Sofia Coppola‘s cult classic Marie Antoinette is best known for blending a whimsically baroque visuals with a post-punk score.
By Kevin Ng
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Aged in oak
When the birthdays start to pile up in the double digits in big round numbers, you start to examine your past and review what you have done with your life.
Playing midwives to an egg
Nigel Wilkinson reports on Teodor Curentzis and Peter Sellars‘s new production of Rameau‘s Castor et Pollux in Paris.
Les Arts Florissants
William Christie curates an evening of French Baroque music in a live broadcast from Carnegie Hall.
Quand sur la plage
What can you say, other than that everything was fab?
Neither fish nor fowl
Nigel Wilkinson reviews Kris Defoort‘s kaleidoscopic, unsettling new opera in Brussels.
A woman scorned
Marc-Antoine Charpentier and Thomas Corneille’s Médée is a monument of the 17th century French baroque lyric tragedy.
Myth and meaning
Two short theatrical works and one sacred piece from the beguiling oeuvre of the guy who didn’t write Louise
Garden party
Two of France’s leading Early Music ensembles recently visited New York City to perform music by some of the 17th century’s leading composers.
Blond ambition
This showcase concert gave notice that countertenor Hugh Cutting is among the most promising artists of his generation.
I’ll remember April
If April is the cruelest month, it may be that spring’s arrival brings far too many things to do and see.
Behold the happy pair
Beverly Sills and Renée Fleming perform 30 years apart the same work with the same orchestra in the same venue!
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?”
Old masters
Jordi Savall and William Christie, 80 and 77 respectively, stand as the two senior masters whose recordings and appearances have done the most over the past decades to build a healthy local enthusiasm for pre-Classical music.
A place in the shade
Next Wednesday is the composer’s 337th birthday, so Trove Thursday previews this spring’s most enticing Handel performance with two very different live versions of his delightful Serse,.
Playing the diva vs. being the diva
In the last weeks of January, as the Metropolitan Opera season wound to a close (prior to the winter hiatus) two striking sopranos were thrust into the limelight.
Fascinating but frustrating
Now, through the auspices of the Metropolitan Opera, we have Sonya Yoncheva—and if anything, the diva-dom has been kicked up a notch!
Terracotta puppets of the gods
Dancing sheep! Flying sheep! Flying sheep who dance!
Love sex magic
By an astounding coincidence, on Monday night Handel’s third and fourth extant operas were being performed simultaneously across the street from each other at Lincoln Center.
The bad and the beautiful
“Trove Thursday” offers Offenbach’s irreverent La Belle Hélène featuring the beauteous Véronique Gens.
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).