“I have almost forgotten what it felt like to sit in a velvet seat at the Met, surrounded by people coughing.”
Of the hundreds of opera performances Our Own JJ (not pictured) attended in the 2010s he narrows it down to the ten most glittering highlights.
Joining the talking and singing heads of Aria Code is Our Own JJ, deconstructing “Mon coeur s’ouvre a ta voix.”
Our Own JJ catches up with the tail end of the Met season.
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.
Opera originalist Heather MacDonald is at it again, describing Our Own JJ as “New York’s shrillest advocate for revisionist opera productions.”
Gregory Spears‘ Paul’s Case is on the way to being commercially recorded.
Our Own JJ (not pictured) muses on the difficulty of staging Mozart’s greatest opera in his latest piece for the New York Times.
“Roberto Alagna has found his most congenial and emotionally moving role yet: Cyrano de Bergerac.”
“James Jorden always wanted to direct, but when he first moved to New York the closest he could get to the stage was in a low-paying job sweeping up bobby pins.”
“She not only sang the difficult leading role, she also directed the opera.”
Prototype: Opera/Theatre/Now presented new works in which women were variously gang-raped, eviscerated and executed by firing squad.
“We want to figure out how to create a nationwide change in how people think opera can be done. \“
The celebrated ‘Triumph’ scene… borders on homoerotic porn.
“He towered over the listless supporting cast like Daniel Day-Lewis guest-starring in a marionette show.”
“Just as every downtown shopping street in every major American city now features the same familiar retailers’ names, New York City Opera has no particular artistic identity different from, say, Opera Carolina.”
La Cieca (pictured) asks, what are your eight (or even 10) can’t-miss opera events for the fall?
An aging eccentric—who has for decades occupied a dubious place on the fringes of New York’s musical life—today saw a lifelong dream fulfilled.
Anna Netrebko and Latonia Moore (pictured) rekindle “The Grand Opera Buzz.”
“Friday night’s triumph may well leave the Met’s management wondering how it let such a gem slip through its fingers.”
“Mr. Eyre’s production… was just another in a series of ugly, gargantuan stagings signaling the Met’s endemic lack of imagination or artistic ambition.”
New York City Opera Renaissance’s Tosca “was opera at its most retrograde, an effort to recreate a golden age from a handful of tinsel.”
Our Own JJ’s muse Dorothy Bishop returns to New York’s plush Metropolitan Room tomorrow night with another edition of her “Dozen Divas” revue.