What is there to say about the Franco Zeffirelli Bohème? What is left to say?
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.
It’s back to business as usual at the Met, for better and for worse.
A snarky commentator might dub last night at the Met “Boris of the divo hair flip” but that would do a disservice to a serious, often effective performance of the challenging original version of Mussorgsky’s masterpiece.
With composer Terence Blanchard and librettist Kasi Lemmons‘ incendiary Fire Shut Up in My Bones, the Met makes long overdue history and Will Liverman ascends to superstardom.
This was a great and happy event, but it wasn’t so much a musical one.
La Cieca has received a copy of a message, apparently from the Metropolitan Opera, announcing the departure of Diane Zola from the company.
As the Met gears up for its first performances in a year and a half. the company is already canceling shows in the early fall.
For the Met, high ticket costs, hostile unions and COVID are only part of the problem, according to performer, teacher and writer David Rohde.
Last year at this time, performance arts organizations in NYC were announcing that the COVID pandemic would force closures through the summer. We here at parterre box, having honed our mantic powers predicting the precise timing of a singer’s vocal collapse, foresaw a grimmer reality.
The Metropolitan Opera announces two further concerts in the Met Stars Live in Concert series.
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra has accepted a deal to receive bridge pay in return for returning to the bargaining table.
The eventually reopened Metropolitan Opera promises a swift return to its status quo ante as a farm team for the English National Opera, sharing the London company’s new Ring cycle directed by vieillard terrible Richard Jones.
The catch: Employees would have to agree to a 30 percent cut in pay, half of which would be restored once the Met’s box office returned to pre-pandemic levels.
The Met settled with disgraced former music director James Levine for a cool $3.5 million.
Fueled by a fierce intelligence, deep earnestness, exceptional eloquence, and social media savvy, Joyce DiDonato is a presence and a power, as much when speaking and thinking as when singing. Who better to imagine a program that would suit this (we hope) unique moment?
Stay tuned as La Cieca attends this Zoom press conference with Peter Gelb and special guest zoomers.
The Metropolitan Opera is heading for a very rocky couple of years.
The Metropolitan Opera announced today that the company has made the difficult decision to cancel the first few months of its 2020–21 season, based on current information regarding the ongoing health crisis. The new season is now scheduled to begin on December 31, 2020, with a special gala performance, the details of which will be shared at a later date.
What options are there for the Met and the other performing arts organizations trying to envision restarting performances in the fall?
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Metropolitan Opera announced today that the company has canceled the remainder of the 2019–20 season, which was to have ended on May 9, 2020.
A Saturday afternoon iteration of this season’s ubiquitous revival.
While last year’s finals were dominated by early nineteenth-century bel canto arias, this year’s finalists took on a remarkably broad range of music from a variety of repertoires.
I never imagined I’d see such a rote park-and-bark Wagner production created in 2020!
After tonight’s dark drab dud of a Dutchman, I was plunged into despair.
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.
