Would you say I have a plethora of piñatas?
Domingo Hindoyan makes an auspicious debut as LA Opera’s Music Director against a distractingly busy production of Carmen.
Los Angeles Opera
Anime sante degli avi
Madama Butterfly confronts anime, virtual reality, and weeaboos in Matthew Ozawa‘s bold production at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
Death becomes her and him
El último sueño de Frida y Diego at the Lyric Opera of Chicago is a visual and sonic wonder, but a weak libretto dampens its effect.
They do the sand dance, don’t you know?
Akhnaten has lost none of its power or glitz at the Los Angeles Opera.
Any recording of Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny is so overrated
It’s always surprised me how so many performances of the major Brecht/Weill collaborations seem to have zero clue of how to handle either Weill’s music.
By Cornelia
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Stealing fire
Esa-Pekka Salonen and The Los Angeles Philharmonic serve a feast for all five senses.
Staring into the abbess
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.
Follow your bliss
In recital for the Los Angeles Opera, tenor Ben Bliss makes the case for the next stage of his career.
Paris is always a good idea
Though perhaps showing its age, a storied production of La bohème nonetheless makes a welcome return to the Los Angeles Opera
It all began tonight
West Side Story opened LA Opera’s 40th anniversary season with fury and flair
Rigoletto
Quinn Kelsey, René Barbera, and Lisette Oropesa star in a performance recorded in Los Angeles this spring.
Blue Saturday
A grand concert from Angel Blue has Patrick Mack wondering, “where’s her crossover album?”
The Women are like that
A stylish and funny Così fan tutte at LA Opera is a pretty glam affair, according to Patrick Mack.
Mixte blessings
I was just moderately excited when LA Opera announced that French tenor Benjamin Bernheim would be coming to concertize at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, 90210.
My Verona
It surprises even me how some operas have eluded me in live performance even after lo, these many years. One of them is Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette.
Star of the shoji screen
My vision may have been slightly blurry at the end.
Sweet dream or a beautiful nightmare
Don’t cry for me, Birgit Nilsson
The eras tour
She can’t put her foot on the gas the way she used to but there’s still plenty of fuel in that tank.
Four frightened people
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.
“I just sing whatever I can get my throat around”
Rachel Willis-Sørensen might be the greatest American soprano right now who doesn’t sing much in America.
Dinosaur surviving the crunch
I have a confession and you may need to sit down for it: Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita was one of the gateway drugs to my eventual opera fandom.
Champagne tastes
Oh, La traviata, how do I love thee? Let me count the recordings.
Small but mighty
One of the first things James Conlon did when he took over the reins as Music Director of LA Opera was create the “Recovered Voices” project, producing operas that had been suppressed by the Nazis.
A three-hour tour
We may all be armchair Handelians, but some of us are more used to it than others.
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).