“Robert Lepage‘s direction of a crucial scene in the Ring is even worse than Otto Schenk‘s, if such a thing is possible.”
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.
Our selected Rosenkavalier video overview closes out the 20th-century selections, crosses the millennial mark, and includes the first of our performances to depart from the opera’s prescribed 18th-century setting.
“Time is a strange thing,” the lady observes, to a young man who cannot begin to understand what she is talking about.
Today’s Rusalka video overview covers filmed performances of Dvorák’s opera since 2010.
Tristan has been the season-launching opera three times before now, but good luck finding someone to provide a firsthand account of the last time.
“I will never sing the role again. It was frightful. We were a set of madwomen…There is nothing beyond Elektra. We have lived and reached the furthest boundaries in dramatic writing for the voice with Wagner. But Richard Strauss goes beyond him. His singing voices are lost. We have come to a full stop.”
