So many Frida Leider clips to choose from, but I’ll pick this one because it is so different from what we might think of as the “typical” Wagnerian dramatic soprano.
A Baroque Valentine’s with Opera Lafayette | Feb | DC & NYC
Celebrate love in all its guises with tender ballads, amorous duets, cheeky verses, and bawdy drinking songs plus food, cocktails and wine.
Nowhere are the contradictions between Wagner’s small-mindedness, his meanness of spirit, and his human insight on clearer display than in Hans Sachs monologue Wahn, Wahn überall Wahn in the third Act of Mesitersinger.
The 1966 Bayreuth Festival production of Tristan and Isolde, conducted by Karl Böhm provides Nilsson with the cast she truly deserved, including Wolfgang Windgassen, Christa Ludwig, Martti Talvela, and Eberhard Waechter.
Die Walküre Met 12/6/1941- Helen Traubel, Astrid Varnay (debut), Kerstin Thorborg, Lauritz Melchior, Friedrich Schorr, Alexander Kipnis, cond. Erich Leinsdorf
Eva Maria Westbroek in her prime, in a role in which I find her unsurpassed among current singers.
As a frequent visitor of Parterre’s Jones Home (ah, the early internet!), I’d be remiss not to share this favorite clip of two queens maximizing their joint slay.
For me, Hans Hotter‘s interpretation of Wotan is a convincingly successful interpretation of this role.
I’d long ago given up on my Goldilocks search for a “just right” complete Tristan und Isolde recording starring Jon Vickers, my hands-down tenor of choice.
There was that Tristan.
The complete RCA Furtwängler Tristan is actually my top favorite, but the Ponnelle staging in Bayreuth featuring René Kollo and Johanna Meier is my top sentimental favorite, because it was my first full Wagner performance.
I’d never heard Götterdämmerung in a live performance until 1985 at The Dallas Opera. OMG, so long ago!
It took me a while to “warm up” to Wagner.
Well, I had a favorite—Sabine Kalter. But 15 years later, I changed my mind. It was Sabine Kalter.
Régine Crespin singing the Wesendonck Lieder is the most beautiful Wagner singing I’ve ever heard.
All of the Teatro Colón live opera recordings conducted by Fritz Busch are special, but his 1936 Parsifal is my favorite.
Dame Gwyneth Jones as Brünnhilde pretty much started it all for me.
Júlia Várady‘s smoldering, almost feral Sieglinde from the Sawallisch/Lehnhoff Ring, remains my favorite.
This is one of my favorite operas, and visually and story telling-wise, you can’t beat this production.
This performance represents a perfect alignment of piece, performer, director, and conductor – the epitome of Gesamtkunstwerk.
Rita Gorr as Ortrud, Bayreuth, 1959, Cluytens.
The superb 1958 Bayreuth Lohengrin, under the wonderful Cluytens.
Recency bias is in full swing here, but Glyndebourne’s first ever staging of Parsifal – and my first Parsifal – takes top prize for me.
I went to hear Eileen Farrell conducted by Leonard Bernstein at the Philharmonic in 1970.
I suppose Der fliegende Holländer is my favorite Wagner opera — a riveting masterpiece from start to finish, dramatically and musically.
Tell us: What was the best of 2025?
Parterre Box concludes the thrilling first year of Talk of the Town by inviting your lightning rod opinions on several more categories of operatic argumentation.
