The Metropolitan Opera yesterday afternoon was an uncommonly cozy place, as the auditorium was packed to the rafters with friends and family members of the nine National Council Audition Finalists.
Just discovered: a Swedish documentary about Birgit Nilsson.
“Michael Volle is not into bling,” begins an article in ACT-O, the glossy magazine of the Grand Théâtre de Genève.
Imagine two tenors releasing French opera aria collections at the same time without duplicating a single track!
Mr. Peabody, that Leonardo among canines, claimed she was suffering from toothache.
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.
My first experience with John Corigliano’s music was in high school with the ear and mind blowing score he wrote for Ken Russell’s film Altered States.
Karita Mattila is a gift to this planet.
The Met’s planned premiere of Iolanta/Bluebeard’s Castle was cancelled due to the Great Blizzard That Wasn’t.
A Countertenor Cabaret, starred no fewer than 14 of these once-rare songbirds, in the cabaret space of the Duplex on Sheridan Square.
What does it mean anyway to get to know a diva, and why exactly would we wish to do such a thing?
At what moment does a “rising star” become simply a “star”?
Vittorio Grigolo in the title role of the Met’s revival of Les Contes d’Hoffman is the opera version of the charming homeless drunk.
It seems almost comical to think now but the designer-director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, who died in 1988, was at one time considered the height of regie-theatre scandal.
For my 2014 retrospective, I’ve chosen two shows from the past year that are returning in 2015 and that really shouldn’t be missed by NY-based-and-visiting parterriani.
New York City isn’t a bad place to live, operatically-speaking.
My memory is fading but the events I recall most vividly of the last season seem largely to have been concert performances.
2014 was a year of lemons into lemonade.
Last week, Moody’s Investor Services delivered yet another piece of yet another piece of bad news for the Metropolitan Opera.
Verdi must have gotten tired of tossing and turning by now and has gone back to resting in peace.
Olga Peretyatko has officially left the chorus.
Clemency tends to get a bad rap these days, as polities demand swift action by leaders whose mandates to govern are violently threatened by “terrorists.”
A Birnam Wood of Macbeths and Ladys has come traipsing through New York this year.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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