Let’s all cast our minds back to March of 2020. Or, better, let’s not.
After the break the ladies stepped up their game so much that it elevated the night into legendary status: definitely one for the books!
For this revival of Tosca Teatro Real has configured several casts with some of the best singers in the world: Sondra Radvanovsky, Maria Agresta, Anna Netrebko, Joseph Calleja, Michael Fabiano, Yusif Eyvazov, Jonas Kaufmann, Carlos Álvarez, Gevorg Hakobyan and Luca Salsi.
“Once upon a time / Lived a foolish king. / Mocking Death, his crime, / Pure chaos he bring.”
“Dying in the third act is much more intense, as the sickness has the same symptoms as COVID-19, so suffocation, pain, agony, fever—all this must be present and real.”
Robert Wilson is many things: a visionary (certainly); an iconoclast, artist, director, and designer of sets, lighting, costumes, movement (and furniture). Yet his work is never boring (well, at least not intentionally).
On the first viewing of this Idomeneo, with a cast clad mostly in military khaki green set against a green sky, the eye starts to tire from the dullness of the surroundings.
We are in the midst of a titanic Beethoven onslaught prompted by the unstoppable need to commemorate the composer’s upcoming 250th birthday.
The musical director of the Opera Royal de Wallonie at Liege is currently experiencing the early phase of a promising international career in music.
In this recital, the Polish bass-baritone Tomasz Konieczny and his pianist Lech Napierala present the world premiere recording of Stanislaw Baranczak‘s Podróz Zimowa (Winter’s Journey), which weds the poet’s meticulously crafted poetry to the music of Franz Schubert.
Although stripped down, this comedy of manners was far from boring due to well-choreographed movements and actions of the characters.
Mozart appears to find promiscuity a source of humor rather than something that is a fundamental problem.
Teatro Real continued their 200 years’ celebration by premiering a piece that they have never done before, Francesco Cavalli’s opera La Calisto.
The Albanian soprano Ermonela Jaho is surely the reason that Covent Garden has made a commercial release of this “Live to Cinemas” relay from March of 2017.
How do we celebrate a long career in opera, particularly one as illustrious as Plácido Domingo‘s?
Awaiting the return of Parsifal to the Met, “Trove Thursday” hops to the other end of Wagner’s oeuvre with a recent Rienzi der letzte der Tribunen.
When you attend a performance of Georges Bizet’s Carmen you can never be quite certain which one you’re in for.
Kevin Newbury‘s familiar production of Bellini’s Norma with its most frequent leading lady, the American Sondra Radvanovsky.
The beautiful singing here is less in the sound than in the way the voice moves.
Now we find Mariella Devia, a diva held in near mythic regard due to her vocal longevity, with competing videos of two of her performances that were released, literally, on the same day.
Verdi’s Macbeth gets true blood-and-guts treatment from Guillermo Sarabia and the legendary Marisa Galvany.
This “new-to-Chicago” production is a sheer pleasure from beginning to end.
Which operatic character could be best described as a spider?
Beginning with the dark, ominous music of the prelude of Charles Wuorinen and Annie Proulx’s opera Brokeback Mountain, we know we are in for a very different and far less sentimental version of the work than was had with Ang Lee’s iconic 2005 film.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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