Nothing makes me feel better than War and Peace
‘Comfort opera.’ Hmm… I had to give this one some thought.
By Nigel Wilkinson
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Welsh National Opera
Nothing makes me feel better than The Cunning Little Vixen
The opera is life affirming, but also recognizes that life comes to an end.
By Ethel Clutterbuck
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Peter Grimes
Nicky Spence sings the title role in a performance recorded earlier this spring in Cardiff
Bye bye baby
Following last week’s performances in Cleveland, Ronnie Banerjee compares six different versions of the Kostelnicka’s monologue from Leos Janácek’s Jenufa for “Perspectives on an Aria”
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.
Leveling up or leveling down?
Arts Council England, as a global policy trendsetter, may have sounded the death knell for the international opera industry as we know it.
A game of 3-D chess
“Opera needs a reset. We think there needs to be a fundamental shift in the ecology.”
Kitchen confidential
Since 1985, from the Chicago Symphony at Carnegie Hall to the Welsh National Opera visiting BAM and from Chicago Lyric to New York City Opera to the Met, I’ve never encountered a bad Falstaff—or one that didn’t astound and delight me.
O sink hernieder, Nacht der Lenny
Well here we are, beloveds, still swathed in the warm glow of the Leonard Bernstein centennial. Box sets abound like bunnies in a hutch.
Does whatever a spider can
The beautiful singing here is less in the sound than in the way the voice moves.
Ardori inospiti
The most recent Egyptian voluptuary of 2006 by our friend Franco has now been replaced by the most singularly spartan production of Verdi’s masterpiece I think I’ve ever seen.
Mice mice baby
This “new-to-Chicago” production is a sheer pleasure from beginning to end.
Trapped in the web of love
Which operatic character could be best described as a spider?
park performance
Simply everyone chimes in today about Monday night’s Met in the Parks recital at Central Park SummerStage. JJ has one take, Anthony Tommasini quite another, and for depth of detail, you need look no further than Our Own Sanford:
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).