Few things in opera are more exciting than a beloved young singer taking on a new role, especially in a new Fach.
So what’s up with Nina Stemme’s Stimme?
I can’t think of another 20th century opera which has grown so fast in popularity so long after its composition than Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.
Beginning with the dark, ominous music of the prelude of Charles Wuorinen and Annie Proulx’s opera Brokeback Mountain, we know we are in for a very different and far less sentimental version of the work than was had with Ang Lee’s iconic 2005 film.
Celebrating Simon Keenlyside, the most popular artist on your alte Jungfer’s Mixcloud Web site.
Töt erst sein Weib!” shrieks Anja Kampe as Leonore during the very first moments of Andreas Homoki’s ingenious production of Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio, at Opernhaus Zürich.
Theater an der Wien did justice to Bizet earlier this season with a cast starring Diana Damrau, Dmitry Korchak, and Nathan Gunn.
Many large opera companies these days host valuable young artist programs dedicated to helping singers negotiate the difficult transition between leaving the conservatory and becoming full-time performing artists.
Contemporary stagings of Parsifal tend to be spare, abstract affairs scrubbed of religious associations, knights in armor and, sometimes, a grail.
Although she began her career nearly 25 years ago recording and performing lots of baroque music, I was surprised to see German soprano Dorothea Röschmann promoted as the star attraction of an all-Purcell concert Sunday at Carnegie Hall.
No surprises this week: back to normal with what is perhaps the world’s most favorite opera: Puccini’s La bohème.
Jonas Kaufmann in a wifebeater is but one of the attractions of the Salzburg Festival production of Cavalleria rusticana, a telecast of which you can peruse after the jump.
I think the sturdier of you will enjoy Nina Stemme’s Elektra from Saturday night at Wiener Staatsoper.
If works like Salome and Erwartung defined modernism in the first decades of the 20th century, Die Tote Stadt and Palestrina represented the regressive avant garde.
A confession: I have a real love/ hate relationship with Mozart’s Die Zauberflote.
As the world knows, Anja Harteros dropped out of this series of Don Carlo for a stab at Aïda in Rome. Illness sidelined Ramón Vargas from the title roles in both Don Carlo and Werther. While Wiener Staatsoper has been plagued with cancellations all season (even substituting L’elisir d’amore for La Juive at the last…
Christian Thielemann’s spirited, precise conducting and the superb, sumptuous playing of the Staatskapelle Dresden are the finest features of this strongly cast performance of Strauss’s Arabella.
James Conlon, Music Director for the LA Opera, often does the pre-game lecture in the huge open space on the second floor lobby of the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion and it’s almost always a standing room only crowd.
“Go while the going is good. Knowing when to leave may be the smartest thing anyone can learn,” sings Fran in Promises, Promises, the 1968 Hal David/Burt Bacharach musical which apparently Edita Gruberová has never seen.
Renée Fleming is one of the most polarizing figures to be discussed here on an ongoing basis.
At the Opernhaus Zürich, the coat check is not optional.
James Levine turns 72 this year. Even though his health has improved considerably in the past year and he may continue to conduct for a decade or more, it seems inevitable that he will step down as the Met’s Music Director sometime in the next few years to assume the role of Conductor Laureate.
Newton’s Third Law of Motion states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Karita Mattila is a gift to this planet.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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