They call me the wanderer
Kent Nagano‘s and the Richard-Wagner-Akademie‘s historically informed Ring Cycle takes on Siegfried in Dresden
Metropolitan Opera
All about her stepmother
A new recording by the London Symphony Orchestra is the latest landmark in a spring full of Janácek‘s Jenufa
Sea no evil
A muted production challenges a talented cast in San Francisco Opera’s Idomeneo
Charm city offensive
A starry concert Aïda in Baltimore proves unusually polished
Do you believe in life after opera?
Opera Director and Detroit Opera Artistic Director Yuval Sharon begins his recent book A New Philosophy of Opera by imagining a future – some forty to fifty years from now – in which opera ceases to exist as an art form.
Married to the mob
Contrasting approaches to Regie duke it out in Cavalleria rusticana & Pagliacci and Rusalka in Munich
This summer I’m reading Divas and Scholars
Although presented as an overview of the performance of Italian opera from the first half of the 19th century, Divas and Scholars is really an impassioned defense of musicology as a discipline and of Italian opera as a subject worthy of scholarly attention.
By Alben Barg
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Faust or famine
In a satanic panic, this week Chris’s Cache presents trio of performances of Mefistofele
The Queen of Spades
The final Saturday Matinee Broadcast of the 2024-25 season, live from New York
Höchste Lust!
Yannick Nézet-Séguin leads the Philadelphia Orchestra, Stuart Skelton, and Nina Stemme in a Tristan und Isolde for the ages
Antony and Cleopatra
The final live weeknight broadcast of the 2024-25 season from New York
Many happy returns
The Met’s mostly successful revivals of The Queen of Spades and La bohème showcase the returns of Sonya Yoncheva and Corinne Winters
Entrance of the Willis
Rachel Willis-Sorensen is the winner of the 2025 Beverly Sills Award, per the Met press office
Reconcilable differences
Cameron Kelsall reports on a transcendent Jenufa from the Cleveland Orchestra
Antony and Cleopatra
John Adams‘s newest opera in a live broadcast from New York
Promising young women
Ahead of her return to the Met, soprano Corinne Winters chats with Kevin Ng about her repertoire, overcoming biases about her voice type, and how she plans to play “energetic, young women” as long as she can.
Sweet birds of youth
Buoyed by a cast of emerging stars, the Metropolitan Opera’s revival of Il Barbiere di Siviglia asserted a key trait of this ubiquitous buffo: it is a young person’s opera.
Up stares, down stares
Ahead of tomorrow’s Live in HD, Michael Steinberg talks Leonore, Salome, and the “endemic misogyny” of Claus Guth‘s new production
Sexual orientalization
An impressive cast blurs binaries as John Adams‘s ambitious Antony and Cleopatra arrives at the Met
Concerto barocco
Christopher Corwin on three stylish sopranos delighting audiences live in New York and on recording in a trio of new releases.
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).