Riccardo Muti is a great opera conductor
I trust, fellow Parterre readers, that we can all agree that Riccardo Muti is a great opera conductor.
Midwest
Turkish delight on a moonlit night
While it may not be top-tier Rossini, Teatro Nuovo’s mounting of Il turco in Italia is still good summer fun.
Aix tremendae, salva me
Festival d’Aix-en-Provence confronts the living and the dead — and its own future — through audacious productions and an intimate world premiere.
Fifty percent illusion
Opera Theatre of Saint Louis does its best to give magic in its summer productions of Roméo et Juliette and A Streetcar Named Desired.
On the party platform
Don’t expect any sweeping statements from Franz Welser-Möst ‘s polished, if dramatically inert, Fidelio.
The Parterre Box Guide to Opera Theatre of St. Louis
Free museums, cheap lodging, toasted ravioli, and an opera company that takes risks the big houses won’t. A guide to Opera Theatre of St. Louis and the city around it.
Un paio in tre
Christopher Corwin and Andrew Lokay provide dual perspectives on the National Symphony Orchestra‘s performances of Puccini’s triple-bill.
By Christopher Corwin and Andrew Lokay
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The poetry is in the pity
Klaus Mäkelä unexpectedly joins the foray for The Cleveland Orchestra‘s performances of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem.
Heaven, here within my heart
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra explores love and death in an intense, intelligent program featuring soprano Corinne Winters.
Asp and you shall receive
A first-time operagoer is lured to Thaïs at Opera Idaho by the promise of a new experience… and Neil, the Burmese python
By Drew Godbehere
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For my next trick
The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra under conductor Stéphane Denève plays up the schtick in a concert performance of The Magic Flute – and obscures Mozart’s magic in the process.
Faith in their hands shall snap in two
Franz Welser-Möst leads a rigorous, if emotionally staid, performance of Verdi‘s Requiem at Carnegie Hall.
Stealing fire
Esa-Pekka Salonen and The Los Angeles Philharmonic serve a feast for all five senses.
Everything is “and,” not “or”
James Gaffigan, the incoming Music Director of Houston Grand Opera, strikes a balance between New World precision and Old World flair in repertoire, staging, and wine
To our glorious dead
The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra offered a rending reading of Britten‘s massive War Requiem with an eclectic trio of soloists.
I’m never gonna dance again
A starry cast is hampered by Christof Loy‘s dour production of Rusalka in Barcelona
All about her stepmother
A new recording by the London Symphony Orchestra is the latest landmark in a spring full of Janácek‘s Jenufa
Girl of summer
parterre box looks forward to the official start of summer tomorrow with a wistfully pointed performance of Samuel Barber‘s “Knoxville: Summer of 1915” by soprano Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha
Masc et femme fatale
parterre box celebrates the beginning of Pride Month with a throwback to one of the queerer events in recent operatic memory: a bit of Carmen starring Jamie Barton and Stephanie Blythe!
Reconcilable differences
Cameron Kelsall reports on a transcendent Jenufa from the Cleveland Orchestra
Die Sterne des Himmels werden zur Erde fallen
Chris’s Cache highlights the erstwhile Chicago Symphony Orchestra @ Carnegie series with not one but two starry operas conducted by Georg Solti: Salome with Birgit Nilsson and a performance of Moses und Aron
Girl next door
My first introduction to Béla Bartók’s one-act opera Bluebeard’s Castle was the musicologist Susan McClary’s infamous book Feminine Endings. Here, McClary likened her search of a feminist musicology to Judith’s journey through the seven doors; a journey that ends in Judith’s symbolic death.
Afraid of their own shadows
Later this month the Met at last revives its striking Herbert Wernicke production of Die Frau ohne Schatten, prompting a Chris’s Cache preview of three live recordings of Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s fanciful if knotty masterpiece.
Seria processing
You probably won’t leave Idomeneo ready to burst out in song, but what the opera lacks in melodic immediacy it makes up for in sheer virtuosity.
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).