In our circle, Mexico City in the summer was the opera capital of the world from the late 1940s and early 1950.
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.
The very first Vienna post-war performance of Elektra.
Jonas Kaufmann announced that he feels ready to return to the stage after calling in sick since last autumn
A classic 1974 New York City Opera La traviata with Beverly Sills, John Stewart and Dominic Cossa conducted by Julius Rudel.
Let’s celebrate the coming of 2017 with a peek at Elsa Lanchester’s cabaret act consisting of bawdy Cockney songs.
This week features Roger Norrington leading a December 2006 performance of Berlioz/ Enfance du Christ from Berlin
“Good God—an adult musical!”
Anita Cerquetti had one of the most remarkable, most brief careers in opera in the past century.
This week’s opera is Die Liebe der Danae.
Leonie Rysanek, would have turned 90 today.
What to do with all those glorious short operas: play them alone or find companion pieces?
Verdi’s Macbeth gets true blood-and-guts treatment from Guillermo Sarabia and the legendary Marisa Galvany.
A simply gorgeous performance of Gluck’s Orphée et Euridice starring Juan Diego Flórez.
Works inspired by William Shakespeare are everywhere in 2016.
Jonny spielt auf, the second opera by 26-year-old composer Ernest K?enek, was such a huge success after its 1927 Leipzig premiere that in the following season it was performed 491 times in Germany alone.
Your alte Jungfer’s requisite Kuschelkatze (pictured) arrived on my doorstep in Mariahilf with the name of Tristan.
Just 85 years ago, four of Italy’s greatest opera stars gathered at Teatro all Scala for an historic event: the first-ever recording of Arrigo Boito’s sole complete opera, Mefistofele.
Among the highlights were concert performances of Jules Massenet’s Thaïs and Otto Nicolai’s Il templario.
Mimìs, Violettas, and Cio-Cio-Sans may live, love, and meet their ends without a tear from me, but I have never left a performance of Janácek’s The Cunning Little Vixen dry-eyed.
Falstaff, Verdi’s totally unexpected, final, great comedic roar.
I am happy to finally add Les contes d’Hoffmann to the playlist in a Salzburg performance from 2003 with Neil Shicoff in one of his parade roles.
It will be no surprise that your alte Jungfer (pictured) is particularly fond of the music of Richard Strauss.
“What fools these mortals be!”
There has been a conspicuous absence of chat on Parterre about this year’s Bayreuther Festspiele.
