Even when the opera performed is a masterpiece, a truly superb opera performance is exceedingly rare.
STEMdiva status
Ahead of a special boozy, bawdy Valentine’s Day concert, artistic director of Opera Lafayette Patrick Quigley speaks with soprano Maya Kherani about her journey from MIT to rising American Baroque star.
Norman Lebrecht, who is now actively trying (and failing) to destroy classical music—and why not: look how cruelly the industry has treated him!—has published a “review” from a “critic” who walked out of a three-act opera after the first act.
Treat yourself to the beauty and pageantry that is grand opera at the Metropolitan Opera.
First video snippets of the new Prince Igor are now live on the Met’s website.
AGMA’s Alan Gordon warns his membership of a possible lockout by the Met if contract negotiations break down this summer.
To celebrate the birthday of Renata Tebaldi, our friends at Opera Depot are offering a free download of live performances by this great diva.
“A charming musical performance welded to a dramatic production so old and stale that, like fish left out too long, it’s starting to smell.”
La Cieca’s operative deep in the bowels of the Josie Robertson Plaza has just informed her that the announcement of the Met’s 2014-2015 season is now less than two weeks away.
“Revenue for performances in the [Metropolitan] opera house ended up at 69% of total potential box office revenue in the 2012?2013 season (79% of seats were purchased, including discounts).”
The legend of the mermaid is ancient, and recently scientists have theorized that these legends might have arisen when humans encountered marine mammals such as whales, seals, or sea lions.
Tenors Bryan Hymel (pictured) and Joseph Calleja redeem otherwise routine Puccini revivals at the Met, says Our Own JJ in the New York Observer.
After four years of delegating union talks to his predecessor, Joseph Volpe, Met honcho Peter Gelb will now lead negotiations himself.
The lovably garrulous jailer Frosch, as portrayed by Broadway’s Danny Burstein in the Met’s production of Die Fledermaus, has revised his opinion of the art of opera, at least temporarily.
“…the Met’s brand new production of Die Fledermaus, which premiered on New Year’s Eve, is overproduced, undersung and interminable, less a holiday entertainment than a checklist of opera-making skills the company can’t seem to master.”
Given the no-show of Anna Netrebko at the final dress rehearsal of L’elisir d’amore, the recent rift in the Netrebko-Schrott household and this insane weather, La Cieca thinks it’s time for the hive mind to decide who’s singing Adina at the Met on Thursday night.
But surely it only feels that long?
“They have a menorah and a Christmas tree,” he said, alluding to their assimilated status.
How, then, to explain the perplexing performance last Friday night of Falstaff, Mr. Levine’s first new production since his return?
Falstaff, Verdi’s final opera, is exuberantly inventive, bubbling and roiling with ideas the 79-year-old composer was too impatient to develop.
It’s the opening of the Met’s Saturday afternoon broadcast season, cher public, and the first opera in the series is Rigoletto.
Our Own JJ takes on an old frame (Der Rosenkavalier) and a new (Eugene Onegin) in his latest review for the New York Observer.
The simple fable at the heart of Die Frau ohne Schatten shouldn’t be difficult to parse, but Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s libretto juggles its vaguely Jungian, vaguely Arabian Nights symbolitry as if with intent to mystify and bewilder.
Before you depart the Met at the end of this season, Ms. Billinghurst, you have the chance to do some good for both the Met audience and James Levine.
“Two Boys demonstrates that Mr. Muhly is capable of very great things indeed, offering extended glimpses of the kind of masterpiece he just missed writing here, and, more happily, of the kind of masterpiece I feel confident he will write in the future.”
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.
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.