Festival d’Aix-en-Provence confronts the living and the dead — and its own future — through audacious productions and an intimate world premiere.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, leading the Met Orchestra, and Joyce DiDonato continue their exploration of Mahler at Carnegie Hall.
David Fox and Dan Johnson report on Yannick Nézet-Seguin‘s recent performances of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Philadelphia and New York.
A muted production challenges a talented cast in San Francisco Opera’s Idomeneo
Christopher Corwin on three stylish sopranos delighting audiences live in New York and on recording in a trio of new releases.
Huw Montague Rendall’s new release Contemplation has been spinning in both my car and home players repeatedly for months now.
Fidelio, which opened last week at the Metropolitan Opera, will always be relevant, I fear.
Instead of giving laurels to a performance already praised since a long time, my choice will be Don Giovanni, Metropolitan Opera, May 2023.
Christina Colanduoni on Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Le Nozze di Figaro
Mahler’s 8th Symphony is an enormous and enigmatic work.
Opera has always been Orpheus-obsessed.
Like a sommelier of male entitlement, Peter Mattei paired with precision moves from a wide-ranging vocabulary of gesture.
In a lovingly curated program of art songs, Ying Fang and the pianist Myra Huang presented pieces hailing from four different national traditions.
All things were, indeed, made new again, when Boston’s venerable Handel & Haydn Society brought Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro to the stage, their first time doing so in its entirety, as their 2,576th concert on Thursday.
Michael Spyres’s nobly moving Idomeneo wasn’t just a bravura triumph: singing strongly throughout, he brought more colors to his portrayal of the tortured king than I had experienced from others in the Ponnelle production.
Saturday’s performance of Le nozze di Figaro at the Met mined the humor from Mozart’s divine setting of Beaumarchais’s play about a crazy day in the Almaviva household.
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.
There is sensory overload, and very little humanity.
This was a great and happy event, but it wasn’t so much a musical one.
Trove Thursday previews Massenet’s Werther—due to return next month at the Met—with a 1984 Paris performance starring two marvelous protagonists, Tatiana Troyanos and Alain Vanzo.
Pretty is its own reward.
Ryan McKinny’s Don is subtler, slyer, smoother, with a sharp wit and sense of dark humor that gives added dimension to the role.
Lyric Opera of Chicago’as Don Giovanni lands smack dab in the middle of our current debate about wanted or unwanted sexual advances and outright sexual abuse.
“Trove Thursday” features its two favorite baritones in a pair of comforting settings of the Requiem.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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