Parterre Box previews Kathryn Lewek‘s upcoming Salome with clips of her as another unhinged lady of antiquity.
Madama Butterfly confronts anime, virtual reality, and weeaboos in Matthew Ozawa‘s bold production at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
Austin Opera’s moving production of Fiddler on the Roof grounds itself in lived tradition, to great effect.
Dan Johnson gives an inside look at the creation of Sarah Kirkland Snider‘s rapturous new opera Hildegard which opens at New York’s PROTOTYPE Festival next week.
In his new production that opens at San Francisco Opera this weekend, Matthew Ozawa is creating a Parsifal for the cancel culture age.
On Friday, June 21st, Opera Parallèle – the Bay Area nomadic, contemporary opera company – together with the Presidio Theatre unveiled their final production of the season, the West Coast premiere of Gregory Spears and Greg Pierce’s Fellow Travelers, an adaptation of Thomas Mallon’s 2007 novel of the same name.
Earlier this month the opera world was stunned to learn of the death of Belgian soprano Jodie Devos who died of breast cancer at just 35, and Chris’s Cache remembers her with a broadcast from last November of Devos as Ophélie in Hamlet, her only US appearance.
Chris’s Cache wraps up November with Régine Crespin’s Chicago Leonore; two rare Met Fidelios headed by Christa Ludwig and Hildegard Behrens; and a concert performance with Birgit Nilsson led by Leonard Bernstein, plus a final twist: excerpts of Carol Vaness in Leonore.
On June 16, San Francisco Opera concluded their excellent Centennial Season with a heartfelt 100th Anniversary Concert, featuring a starry cast, three conductors (including current and former Music Directors) and the SF Opera Orchestra and Chorus.
Chris’s Cache sends Renata Scotto a valentine ahead of her 89th birthday next week with rare in-house recordings of eight (!) mid-career performances spanning 1971-1977.
Gregory Spears’ latest opera Castor and Patience, with a libretto by former US Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winner Tracy K. Smith, was commissioned by Cincinnati Opera to celebrate its centennial season in 2020.
Trove Thursday offers Mozart’s Requiem with Lucia Popp, Christa Ludwig, Peter Schreier and Walter Berry conducted by James Levine from the 1981 Salzburg Festival.
Blind Injustice is a masterpiece, brilliant theater.
Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt in a 1967 Vienna broadcast appropriately featuring three American stars: John Alexander, Marilyn Zschau, and George London.
I found Fellow Travelers intellectually and politically riveting, musically thrilling, and profoundly moving. It was a triumph.
Composer Gregory Spears is a unique example of this maxim that one must be “deeply rooted in tradition in order to innovate with integrity.”
“Trove Thursday” presents a performance from 40 years ago: an inspired Renata Scotto as Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur.
Due to bandwidth limits “Trove Thursday” must post some more modest offerings in months with five Thursdays.
Cincinnati Opera presented the world premiere Fellow Travelers Friday and I’m here to tell you that not only does the opera have legs, it has balls.
This past Tuesday, Cincinnati Opera presented its first world premiere in over 50 years with Morning Star by Ricky Ian Gordon and William Hoffman.
Nathan Gunn (not really pictured) made his debut as Eugene Onegin in Cincinnati Opera’s production of Tchaikovsky’s opera last night. He certainly has the physicality for the part and the vocal potential. In this performance he sang well and expressively but without the heft to fully project over the orchestra.
[La Cieca is happy to present a guest review by Our Own Lindoro Almaviva.] Cincinnati Opera makes a good case for the 4 act version of Don Carlo. I think it is a great idea that they used projected titles to give us the background of the opera (since we lose the Fontainebleau scene). This…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
×
Sign up for Parterre’s free newsletter.
Exclusive opera reviews, commentary, and top reads
delivered to your email weekly…ish.