‘Comfort opera.’ Hmm… I had to give this one some thought.
The opera is life affirming, but also recognizes that life comes to an end.
Nicky Spence sings the title role in a performance recorded earlier this spring in Cardiff
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”
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.
Arts Council England, as a global policy trendsetter, may have sounded the death knell for the international opera industry as we know it.
“Opera needs a reset. We think there needs to be a fundamental shift in the ecology.”
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.
Well here we are, beloveds, still swathed in the warm glow of the Leonard Bernstein centennial. Box sets abound like bunnies in a hutch.
The beautiful singing here is less in the sound than in the way the voice moves.
The most recent Egyptian voluptuary of 2006 by our friend Franco has now been replaced by the most singularly spartan production of Verdi’s masterpiece I think I’ve ever seen.
This “new-to-Chicago” production is a sheer pleasure from beginning to end.
Which operatic character could be best described as a spider?
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:
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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