A new production of La sonnambula at the Metropolitan Opera is musically charming if dramatically confounding.
Suck it, Joseph Kerman: Puccini’s “Shabby Little Shocker” has outlived you and will probably bury us all.
Kevin Ng sits down with PEN/Faulkner Award-winning novelist and critic Garth Greenwell to talk about sex, queerness, and the “promise of opera.”
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay was, somehow, a fun night at the opera—just not one that felt specifically operatic.
When Angela Meade and Michael Fabiano first sang Lucia together as students at AVA few would have predicted that they would go on to sing Turandot 16 years later.
The moral stench seeps through Peter Gelb‘s decision to partner with the Saudi government, but what new sources of funding for the Met don’t have red flags?
Ross Wassermann tracks the development of “Che farò senza Euridice?” — and “J’ai perdu mon Eurydice” — for this month’s Perspectives on an Aria
Nowhere are the contradictions between Wagner’s small-mindedness, his meanness of spirit, and his human insight on clearer display than in Hans Sachs monologue Wahn, Wahn überall Wahn in the third Act of Mesitersinger.
My recollections of Hurricane Katrina, which made landfall in Louisiana twenty years ago today, come with a pair of odd bookends: it starts with Verdi’s Don Carlo and ends with Puccini’s Il trittico.
Chris’s Cache offers Nadine Sierra and Xabier Anduaga, the stars of the upcoming production of La sonnambula, in a performance of another favorite bel canto opera
I’d long ago given up on my Goldilocks search for a “just right” complete Tristan und Isolde recording starring Jon Vickers, my hands-down tenor of choice.
Richard Lynn bravely asks what we’re hoping to get out of the continued Peter Gelb-bashing — and whether our expectations of him have ever been fair
I’d never heard Götterdämmerung in a live performance until 1985 at The Dallas Opera. OMG, so long ago!
It took me a while to “warm up” to Wagner.
Christof Loy‘s Louise in Aix-en-Provence scratches at the urban– and operatic– unconscious
R.B. Schlather‘s shadowy production with Heartbeat Opera at the Williamstown Theatre Festival proves that Vanessa might be coming into its own at last
Sherrill Milnes sits down with Brendan Latimer to talk about his life, career, and what he hopes to pass along to the next generation
The groundbreaking director and designer of works like Einstein on the Beach died earlier today at his home in Water Mill, New York
This Bard production, led by Leon Botstein, makes the strongest possible case musically, dramatically and visually for Smetana’s opera Dalibor.
Mexican soprano Gilda Cruz-Romo died on 28 June at the age of 85 and Chris’s Cache remembers her with live recordings of a frequent role and a rather rare one: a last-minute Met Tosca plus perhaps her only stab at the Cherubini Medea.
A North American debut of a respectable French Baroque ensemble, an ebullient presentation of La fille du régiment, and an afternoon soiree in Wine Country proved to be the hottest (yet affordable!) tickets around here this Summer.
In the 1847 version of Macbeth, the forces of Teatro Nuovo lacked the thunderous punch this music can pack, but provided a pleasant ride
Carmen Paddock and Mr. Portafiori aren’t getting the hype behind Ivo van Hove, Krzysztof Warlikowski, and Calitxo Bieito
It’s Norma, darling. We know.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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