Let’s not forget that it’s only been two years since the Met mounted its first-ever opera by a Black composer.
Two problematic 1990s Donizetti daughters
This Sunday marked a muted return of the Richard Tucker Foundation Gala, which had the dubious distinction of the fourth edition not to feature a prizewinner and perhaps the first not to provide complete orchestral and choral accompaniment for its performers.
Chopping up the action and dutifully showing each plot point may work in a film but in an opera, where every piece of marginal dialogue must be set to music, it feels like a chore.
In Handel’s Rodelinda, a usurped monarch, believed dead, returns to avenge his deposition and reclaim the woman he loves.
I hate to say I nearly cringe at the thought of Gioachino Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia.
On October 20th, a wet but warmish Friday night, the Metropolitan Opera opened this season’s revival of Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera in David Alden’s 2012 production.
It’s autumn in New York, baby.
On this day in 1965 soprano Renata Scotto made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Cio-Cio San
On February 10 of this year was the 100th anniversary of the birth of the great Italian basso Cesare Siepi. I found that this milestone was scarcely noted in the opera press.
Zack Woolfe of The New York Times remembers James Jorden
How appropriate that the Met should present this supposedly “Jewish” opera after many in the audience had just spent twelve days immersed in the genuine article over the High Holy Days.
One got a sense that the Met and the maestro directed most of the rehearsal and preparation toward the opening night premiere of the Heggie opus
On this day in 1965 soprano Mirella Freni and tenor Gianni Raimondi made their Metropolitan Opera debuts in La bohème.
“None of that sentimental crap, okay?”
Bay Area composer Mason Bates’s and librettist Mark Campbell’s contemporary opera about the life of the tech mogul Steve Jobs came home “to the place where it all began” in spectacular fashion
David Devan may be leaving the company, but there can be no better living tribute to him than this extraordinary work, which in 90 minutes gives us everything we could want from a new opera
Power struggles, prejudice, feuds and revenge abound in San Francisco at the moment.
The great archetypal image of an opera singer is a towering Wagnerian soprano who shatters entire panes of glass the moment she opens her mouth.
When our friends at Naxos and C Major announced near-dueling releases of Puccini’s “shabby little shocker,” I was ready with my critic’s pen dipped in bile.
Chris’s Cache offers up a quintet of intriguing “forgotten” Leonora-Azucena pairings from the 1970s.
Franco Bonisolli from age 28 to 33 in complete operas by Mozart, Cimarosa, Donizetti and Massenet.
Recent discussion about the merits of Le Prophète has prompted Chris’s Cache to unearth a pirate recording of Meyerbeer’s opera with Marilyn Horne, Rita Shane and Guy Chauvet led by Charles Mackerras, along with an earlier collaboration of the mezzo and conductor: Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice in which Horne goes to hell to get back Adriana Maliponte with the help of Judith Blegen.
Before rehearsals for Madama Butterfly started, Phil Chan sat down with the box to chat about his production, opera’s cultural appropriation problem, and why the last thing he’s trying to do is cancel Puccini.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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