Now, you would think nothing could please gaycentric La Cieca more than yesterday’s New York Times profile of the Met’s new music director…
Roberto Alagna’s physical and vocal embodiment of Don José lent his particular narrative a complication I hadn’t anticipated.
Cellist Leah Coloff’s one-woman cabaret act ThisTree finds its place among a lineup of Prototype Festival miniatures this week that seem to plumb the depths of womanly distress.
At tonight’s performance of Aida at the Met, the Triumphal Scene horses suddenly panicked and tried to bolt from the stage. I can’t say I blame them.
While 4.48 Psychosis is an intricately-crafted, deeply moving portrait of human agony, Pancho Villa from a Safe Distance lacks the creative clout to realize its artistic ambitions.
Though barely a week old, 2019 has already provided New Yorkers with an essential, breathtaking music drama focusing on two women struggling for their very survival.
Alban Berg’s compact yet potent oeuvre has long played an outsized role in shaping my understanding of music’s aesthetic evolution.
Use bodily force and get your friends to one of the next five performances of the Met’s new production of Adriana Lecouvreur. It is everything!
We close 2018 with Le Comte Ory with an enviable nearly all-Italian cast of prime-time Rossini specialists: Mariella Devia, Cecila Bartoli, Ewa Podles, William Matteuzzi, Claudio Desderi and Pietro Spagnoli.
In addition to Jessye Norman, this event paid homage to the shamefully obscure soprano Sissieretta Jones—once billed as “The Black Patti.”
Heretofore I’d avoided the Met’s abridged, English-language holiday presentations.
Philadelphia is a city famous for its musical institutions—so, of course, at this time of year Messiah performances abound.
French early music group Ensemble Correspondances offered two of the year’s very best concerts.
On this day in 1937 soprano Zinka Milanov made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Leonora in Il trovatore.
At Friday’s opening of Otello, there was a good deal of interesting going on, though not all of it necessarily onstage.
The long evening didn’t achieve the degree of celebration it should have.
At one point I spent a couple of months on the dole and dollar record shopping had a number of obvious virtues as a pastime.
Four fine Handel-centric concerts from the Morgan Library to Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center proved a bracing antidote to pervasive Messiah-mania.
L’Arlesiana in a vibrant live performance from a dozen years ago with Giuseppe Filianoti, Latonia Moore and Marianne Cornetti.
It had something for everyone who loves loud chesty singing and smoky soft-singing: from Tchaikovsky to Rachmaninoff to Strauss…
At the opening of the Scottish Opera’s 2017 production of Turnage’s opera Greek, I was very sorry I’d missed Anna Nicole.
I wondered if there truly is a future for opera other than as an overpriced museum piece for an aging audience who likes their sets lavish, their productions non-challenging, and their singers telegenic.
Diana Damrau‘s performance as Violetta was the work of a very ordinary artist, one susceptible to vocal flubs, poor intonation, and an all too banal approach operatic performance.
Anna Netrebko sang throughout with a palpable sense of joy and ease in vocal production, never a hint of strain or any moment forced.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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