“This isn’t an opera that touches on queer themes; it’s a bundle of queer themes tied up in an opera.”
Composer Philip Venables talks about queer utopias and bending gender and genre in The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions which opens at the Park Avenue Armory this week.
parterre box celebrates the beginning of Pride Month with a throwback to one of the queerer events in recent operatic memory: a bit of Carmen starring Jamie Barton and Stephanie Blythe!
“Sempre viva!”
A Welsh opera singer has said the art must have more LGBTQ+ representation if it is to survive.
“With its blend of history, political intrigue, and fantastical invention, all woven into a heartbreaking love story, Hadrian gives one of history’s greatest queer romances the full, grand opera treatment.”
Have you ever gotten some action at the opera? Had an assignation while in standing-room? Crept off to the toilet (or elsewhere) with a handsome man during a performance?
“For five years, concert pianist Theo Mangrove has been living at his family’s home in East Kill, New York, recovering from a nervous breakdown that derailed his career.”
“The opera The Lord of Cries. . . . with the equally astounding Anthony Roth Costanzo.”
The pretty boy who got a bum rap.
The expression “gayer than eight guys fucking nine guys” gets thrown around a lot these days…
Our Own Joel Rozen in Slate ponders the good gay vs. bad gay politics of Zachary Woolfe‘s New York Times celebration of Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
Rufus Wainwright is determined to offer a spectacle and that intention overrides all other considerations.
“Love is love,” tweets tenor Michael Fabiano.
Tomorrow (Sunday) a staged reading of The Lisbon Traviata will be performed at New York’s LGBT Community Center.
Between staging, music, and material, it’s hard to decide what feels most broken about New York City Opera’s American premiere of Brokeback Mountain.
I found Fellow Travelers intellectually and politically riveting, musically thrilling, and profoundly moving. It was a triumph.
“The background chorus characters in the Broadway show I saw tonight unobtrusively included a gay couple, and jaded though I sometimes am I think that’s really neat.”
Mean, moody, magnificent Matt Baume (left) hosts a live version of his celebrated podcast The Sewers of Paris this afternoon beginning at 5:00 PM Eastern time.
“City Opera invites you, our fans, to march with the artists who create the operas you love.”
Angels in America reimagined as an actual, full-blown opera.
“36.000 Swarovski-Steine werden dort aufgebracht.”
Parterre fave Stefan Herheim returns to Dutch National Opera to direct Pikovaya dama, in which the director attempts to reflect on the composer’s life, notably his hidden love for men.
“Revised version of Brokeback Mountain debuts in Salzburg”
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.
