It’s nasty world, Shostakovich seems to say, where life alternates between boring and terrifying.
Sondra Radvanovsky has an unconventional voice that is suited to unconventional characters and is best used in rangy, difficult music. The lack of lush beauty was no deficit in depicting Medea’s jealousy and vengeful rage.
A troika of operas by Rachmaninoff: Aleko , The Miserly Knight and Francesca da Rimini , courtesy of Odyssey Opera.
Robert Carsen‘s legendary production of Eugene Onegin finally arrives in San Francisco.
With the phenomenal cast that stacked Paris Opera’s production of I Capuleti e i Montecchi , it was easy to overlook the quirks of Bellini’s opera and get lost in the pleasures of glorious bel canto singing.
Rodrigo is a ball-breaking role, but Lawrence Brownlee makes the demands sound easy—tossing in additional high notes and audaciously decorating cabalettas as if it were the easiest thing in the world.
My impression was of a very fine singer performing a role that was slightly too large for him.
The worst criticism perhaps was the gleeful Schadenfreude noting Edita’s voice wasn’t as under her command as it used to be.
Emily D’Angelo, in a moment of subversion, sang the entire program wearing casual trousers, a vest, and chunky combat boots, her cropped hair slightly mussed, and wearing only light make-up.
Surrounded by security and greeted by a bevy of cameras, Su Majestad la Reina Sofía brought a bit of excitement to an evening that didn’t end up being all that musically rewarding.
LA Opera sent out an email warning that the production “contains depictions of blood, violence, and drug use, as well as strobe lights and a gunshot effect in Act III.”
Antony and Cleopatra was an auspicious start to San Francisco Opera’s second century, a performance that seems to improve as I continue to think about it.
This tenor must be the finest classical singer in the world today.
The New York City Opera has become an elusive “now you see it, now you don’t” presence in the New York opera scene since the departure of main sponsor and chairman of the board Roy G. Niederhoffer in 2019.
Trove Thursday previews next week’s BBC Proms presentation of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius with a 2008 broadcast conducted by Colin Davis with Sarah Connolly, Ben Heppner and Gerald Finley.
Monteverdi’s late Homeric masterpiece Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria isn’t often performed in the United States.
Having had many memorable encounters with these characters before, I had been looking forward to encountering them again in an ambitious contemporary Oresteia, but I left the Armory feeling that writer-director Robert Icke just didn’t get it.
It is perhaps a misperception to suggest that Die Schweigsame Frau is stronger in the uncut version.
This week’s Trove Thursday—Kodály’s Háry János in a 1955 RAI broadcast in Italian led by famed Hungarian conductor Ferenc Fricsay—may be a bit brief as C-19 finally arrived last week chez CC.
This Traviata remained firmly Beltway-bound and by the time I had gotten home, the 45-minute traffic jam to leave the parking lot was eminently fresher in my mind than the evening’s performance.
Only three years separate the creation of The Most Happy Fella (1956) and The Sound of Music (1959), but there’s a proverbial ocean between these two Golden Age musicals are being performed at prestigious festivals this summer.
A trip to Mediterranean climes came through musically, as the Boston Symphony Orchestra presented a largely satisfying concert performance of Don Giovanni on July 16.
Beverly Sills and Renée Fleming perform 30 years apart the same work with the same orchestra in the same venue!
The always elegant Véronique Gens has recently returned often to her earliest roots in the French baroque.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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