Play well
Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson’s 1949 musicalization of Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country has found a tentative home on the opera stage.
East Coast
We have begun to celebrate the different ways
Nixon in China is one of several titles that when I tell people that it’s on my Top Ten Favorite list of operas, I get strange looks.
Wrecking ball
Sir Richard Eyre’s new Manon Lescaut at the Met Friday night demonstrated no particular aptitude for opera.
Il core vi dono
With February 14th falling on a Sunday, there will be no Valentine’s Day Met performance this year.
French tickler
The concert presented by Opera Lafayette at the Alliance Française last Friday and Saturday was devoted to music of witty, short-lived Emmanuel Chabrier, notably Une Éducation Manquée.
I don’t sleep, I dream
Bellini blossomed over us like a love fest.
When this cruel war is over
Jarrett Ott is a star. That is the only surprise takeaway from the well-intended snore, Cold Mountain.
Love hears, love knows, love answers
This week “Trove Thursday” brings a rare in-house recording of a visit to the Metropolitan Opera House by the Staatsoper Hamburg presenting Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress with a deluxe cast
Blackberry winner
Washingtonians enjoyed a happy reunion this past Sunday with David Daniels.
The double negative has led to proof positive
La Cieca thinks she knows who the murderer is.
Queen for a D
Friday’s season premiere at the Met of Donizetti’s opera about the doomed Scottish queen proved surprisingly satisfying and a genuine success for Sondra Radvanovsky.
Hello from the other side
A woman reads from the Bible. There is a dance scene in a tavern. The discovery of blood gives away the protagonist.
Sweet bird
Anna Moffo made some of the most entrancing records ever. Their appeal is to “voice fanciers.” (I understand. We’re a despised group.) But Moffo’s best work renders us helpless.
Ihre hochfürstliche Gnaden, die Frau Fürstin Feldmarschall!
God, I love that photo of Lisa della Casa. She can sing, too!
For the birds
A “lone voice in the wilderness” booed Barbara Frittoli’s calamitous Nedda.
“Tosca” at the Séance
New York City Opera has officially launched its “renaissance” at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater last night with a production of Puccini’s Tosca that should please a lot of older, conservative audiences, if not the adventurous operagoers that City Opera courted in the past.
After dark
The Canadian Robert Carsen would appear to love the theater to the point of fixation.
Everytime we say goodbye
Gather around while I play Ghost of New Year’s Eve past!
As on through the seasons we sail
Trove Thursday looks forward to spring via Haydn’s beguiling oratorio Die Jahreszeiten (The Seasons) in a splendid rendition from the 1981 Salzburg Festival with Ileana Cotrubas, Francisco Araiza and José van Dam, James Levine conducting.
Ice storm
Two months after my last visit to this season’s sixteen-performance run of Puccini’s Turandot, I returned eager to witness the latest chapter in the sporadic Met career of Nina Stemme. Rising stars Anita Hartig and Alexander Tsymbalyuk also appeared in their roles for the first time at the Met, so Monday evening turned into a […]
Throne away
WNO premiered Better Gods, an hour-long work by composer Luna Pearl Woolf and librettist Caitlin Vincent on Friday evening.
Heaven must be missing 14 angels
The Hänsel und Gretel discussions over the holidays plunged me down a YouTube rabbit hole.
Embroidered silk
Maria Agresta‘s delicately-acted, sumptuously-sung seamstress transformed what might have been just an average Wednesday night revival into something finer.
Rescue me
Fidelio but with an unhappy ending, Bedrich Smetana’s stirring Dalibor opens 2016’s “Trove Thursday” in a 1968 German-language broadcast from Bavarian Radio.
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).