The outdoor recitals that the Metropolitan Opera presents in New York City Parks every summer are a wonderful way to showcase rising young stars and promising beginners from the Met’s Lindemann Program.
Bergamo hosts an annual Donizetti festival, Salzburg presents a Mozart-woche every January, and of course there is Bayreuth for Wagner. But Handel gets two festivals every spring, and this year I was finally able to attend one of them.
Final opera of the season. Little-known opera. A revival. So, you can probably skip it, right?
I’m old enough to remember when Yannick Nézet-Séguin could do no wrong.
On June 11th, the Met Orchestra returned to Carnegie Hall with a diverse program led by music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
As an opera fanatic who was baptized by the blood of Leontyne Price, the Messa da Requiem by Giuseppe Verdi appeared on my radar fairly soon after I started delving into the operatic canon.
There were, of course, other Chénier recordings beyond the truly great ones…
Opera took center stage on the final weekend of the Philadelphia Orchestra season.
Quite simply, the singers are not around today who are steeped in the tradition of verismo, or for that matter the later part of the 19th century.
The score for Innocence was menacing yet comforting, and, essentially, violent and peaceful at the same time
You can imagine my surprise at encountering an almost wholly traditional staging with one teensy difference.
Peter Sellars’s rarely radical climate epic Shall We Gather at The River brought together a superb collection of musical talent for an unfortunately incoherent night of sacred song.
Doing my research for these “thoughts” ahead of a starry revival in London that opened yesterday, I came across the following review for the Opening Night of the 1962-63 Season.
Matthew Polenzani strode into the Park Avenue Armory’s Board of Officers Room last Monday evening and was received like a beloved friend–and indeed that is what he is to many of New York’s opera-goers.
Washington National Opera’s final production of the season, seen May 22, is also its high point: a new Turandot directed by Francesca Zambello, updated to the 20th century and featuring the world premiere of a completion of Puccini’s score by composer Christopher Tin and playwright and screenwriter Susan Soon He Stanton.
It has been a great season for prolific Bay Area composer Jake Heggie.
Opera has always been Orpheus-obsessed.
“What a day, what a day for an Auto-da-fe!” and it’s also always a good day for Candide, so Chris’s Cache presents a pirate recording of a 1971 staging starring Mary Costa, Frank Porretta, and William Lewis.
Erin Morley closed Vocal Arts DC’s season on May 13th with a recital in the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater, partnered by pianist Gerald Martin Moore.
In 1982 I saw Turandot at the San Francisco Opera, the year after I became an opera fan, and it was my first live opera.
To bring a well-known story to the stage, many methods are available.
On May 2, Rebecca Herman‘s conceptualizing of Carmen was a significant departure from the traditional depiction of a marginalized “other,” maintaining a traditional staging in Seville.
Swiss soprano Regula Mühlemann made her New York recital debut at Weill Hall on May 8.
The Cunning Little Vixen, Leos Janacek’s late-career opera—a wonderous work with an almost miraculous sense of charm and poignance—has found significant success in conservatories.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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