Leonie on the Nile
Leonie Rysanek, would have turned 90 today.
Metropolitan Opera
Stage beauty
>What does a great opera production do, and what does a bad production fail to do?
The elephant in the room
At the election-eve Jenufa at the Met, Trumpism made an unexpected, if timely appearance.
Trouble in Thebes
What to do with all those glorious short operas: play them alone or find companion pieces?
Search for Tamara
The 2016 Richard Tucker Award recipient is Tamara Wilson.
The lady is a camp
Verdi’s Macbeth gets true blood-and-guts treatment from Guillermo Sarabia and the legendary Marisa Galvany.
Rock, star
The centerpiece of Janácek’s Jenufa was the performance of Karita Mattila as the murderous Kostelnicka.
Rooting for the underdoge
“Take a good deal of trouble with it, because it is a fine subject, delicate and full of pathos.”
Higher and higher
The good news is that the first concert was devoted to the exceptional artistry of Lawrence Brownlee.
Hell and back
A simply gorgeous performance of Gluck’s Orphée et Euridice starring Juan Diego Flórez.
Mark, missed
Thoughtless direction stifled the epic drama.
Sex and violets
Adriana Lecouvreur with the 1970s dream cast of Montserrat Caballé, José Carreras, and Fiorenza Cossotto.
Period piece
Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s production of L’Italiana in Algeri for the Met remains steadfastly ignorant of postcolonial theory.
Strike up the banned
Jonny spielt auf, the second opera by 26-year-old composer Ernest K?enek, was such a huge success after its 1927 Leipzig premiere that in the following season it was performed 491 times in Germany alone.
Geopolitics Italian style
How Verdi’s opera might address this particular nightmare was unclear.
No view from the bridge
Mariusz Trelinski unveiled a rather gloomy, though musically satisfying, Tristan und Isolde.
The upper depths
The Teatro di San Carlo in Naples is a pearl itself and this presentation proffers some of the best that company has to offer.
“Something great in itself”
Now we have considered the three “winners” in the Tristan competition, let’s turn to the also-rans, or, to be more optimistic, the runners up.
I saw three ships
“Never in my life having enjoyed the true happiness of love I shall erect a memorial to this loveliest of all dreams…”
One night of love
Your alte Jungfer’s requisite Kuschelkatze (pictured) arrived on my doorstep in Mariahilf with the name of Tristan.
Devil’s advocate
Just 85 years ago, four of Italy’s greatest opera stars gathered at Teatro all Scala for an historic event: the first-ever recording of Arrigo Boito’s sole complete opera, Mefistofele.
Mighty real
Anna Netrebko‘s artistry is both subtle and thrilling.
That’s how they did it
Idomeneo proved enormously moving while a much more complicated Così fan Tutte went for shallow romantic hijinks stripping that work of its darkly ambiguous disturbing view of love.
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).