I trust, fellow Parterre readers, that we can all agree that Riccardo Muti is a great opera conductor.
While it may not be top-tier Rossini, Teatro Nuovo’s mounting of Il turco in Italia is still good summer fun.
Festival d’Aix-en-Provence confronts the living and the dead — and its own future — through audacious productions and an intimate world premiere.
Opera Theatre of Saint Louis does its best to give magic in its summer productions of Roméo et Juliette and A Streetcar Named Desired.
Don’t expect any sweeping statements from Franz Welser-Möst ‘s polished, if dramatically inert, Fidelio.
Christopher Corwin and Andrew Lokay provide dual perspectives on the National Symphony Orchestra‘s performances of Puccini’s triple-bill.
Klaus Mäkelä unexpectedly joins the foray for The Cleveland Orchestra‘s performances of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem.
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra explores love and death in an intense, intelligent program featuring soprano Corinne Winters.
A first-time operagoer is lured to Thaïs at Opera Idaho by the promise of a new experience… and Neil, the Burmese python
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.
Franz Welser-Möst leads a rigorous, if emotionally staid, performance of Verdi‘s Requiem at Carnegie Hall.
Esa-Pekka Salonen and The Los Angeles Philharmonic serve a feast for all five senses.
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
The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra offered a rending reading of Britten‘s massive War Requiem with an eclectic trio of soloists.
A starry cast is hampered by Christof Loy‘s dour production of Rusalka in Barcelona
A new recording by the London Symphony Orchestra is the latest landmark in a spring full of Janácek‘s Jenufa
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
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!
Cameron Kelsall reports on a transcendent Jenufa from the Cleveland Orchestra
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
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.
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.
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.
On June 11th, the Met Orchestra returned to Carnegie Hall with a diverse program led by music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
×
Sign up for Parterre’s free newsletter.
Exclusive opera reviews, commentary, and top reads
delivered to your email weekly…ish.