The Met is on it with something something woker than woke: a noirish psychodrama of a frigid hysteric who seeks redemption via Freudian analysis!
He returned. He sang. He didn’t get hanged.
“Berlioz Takes a Trip” proclaimed the free psychedelic buttons available at Carnegie Hall Monday referring to Symphonie Fantastique,the evening’s surefire crowd-pleaser.
Venomous fishwife Norman Lebrecht has gleefully seized upon the death of beloved diva Montserrat Caballé to use her scarcely-cold cadaver as a club to attack (who else) Peter Gelb.
Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America provides ample fodder for the legions of amateur opera sleuths seeking to confirm their theory of “Who Killed City Opera?”
As opera’s reigning tenor-superstar, Jonas Kaufmann can pretty much do whatever he wants and a sizable adoring public will lap it up.
It’s surprising to read that, as of this writing, La fanciulla del west has only had 105 performances at the Metropolitan Opera.
Carnegie Hall’s season opener last night fetched the usual glitterati.
The conclusion of our Fanciulla del West video overview in three parts looks at a trio of performances from the 2010s.
Puccini’s Girl closes out the 20th century and gallops into the 21st.
“Are we Team Guelf or Team Ghibelline?”
Opera Philadelphia’s O18 Festival continues through the weekend, but Friday represented a finale of sorts with the last two premieres.
Hunger was the note of the night, a sentiment shared between the audience and Proving Up, a lean and hungry one-act telling a story of drought and desperation on the post-Civil War Western frontier.
Anna Netrebko is the greatest performing artist singing opera today. Nobody else comes close; she makes me love her in a way that verges on the erotic.
I braved the alarming and majestically colorful wall-graffiti-art of Bushwick to attend Bullfight Boylesque, which runs to October 28.
On Tuesday we got one of the Met’s inveterate classics, which meant yet another opportunity to gaze upon the old accessories: Donkey cart! Teal shawl! Fugly plaid slacks!
For opening night 2018, the Met offered the creaky but appealing biblical epic Samson et Dalila, presumably as a vehicle for Elina Garanca and Roberto Alagna.
This Sony Classical set of live performances covers a golden quarter century in the singing and staging of Wagner. Birgit Nilsson shared it with many other legends, and many of them appear on these discs.
On this day in 1968 mezzo-soprano Shirley Verrett made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Carmen.
The career of our beloved Renée Fleming deserves to continue… by whatever means necessary.
“Trove Thursday” offers a broadcast from last year’s London world premiere of Nico Muhly’s Marnie.
Lightning struck again here when, after a wait of 39 years, San Francisco Opera unveiled a new production of Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux.
“Trove Thursday” gives a preview of Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila with a broadcast featuring an unexpected temptress—Dolora Zajick—who will celebrate the 30th anniversary of her Met debut next month.
Sometimes the fates conspire, preventing an artist from recording the role for which he is his generation’s touchstone.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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