Two and only
Anna Netrebko and Latonia Moore (pictured) rekindle “The Grand Opera Buzz.”
our own jj
Seamless
“Friday night’s triumph may well leave the Met’s management wondering how it let such a gem slip through its fingers.”
End of the line
“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.”
Glister act
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.”
Cherchez la femme
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.
Hello there, masterpiece
Fellow parterrians, my review in the Observer of this year’s PROTOTYPE festival does not appear until Wednesday.
Tell me about the rabbits
Our Own JJ confesses he just doted on Heartbreak Express, but “You Us We All was not my cup of twee.”
Where’s the fire?
“Everyone complains about how there is no great singing in opera anymore, but last week’s performances suggest that’s not so. The singing today is mostly fine; it’s everything else that’s the problem.”
Man of steel
“This throwback to the golden age of opera—superhuman singing greeted with frenzied ovations—was a function of a perfect storm of excitement.”
Summer nights
“Those kids in Bushwick have this opera thing figured out.”
Guilt trip
Part of what makes opera seem, at least, a camp art form is that fans of the genre have such inconsistent taste.
Bum’s rush
Our Own JJ reviews Orlando and Early Shaker Spirituals in the Observer.
Time and again I would try to say
Our own publisher and New York Observer scribe Julie Jordan James Jorden plays pundit again for WQXR’s “Conducting Business.”
Sometimes just pretzels and beer
Our Own JJ crunches the numbers at the Met and LoftOpera in the New York Observer.
The kids are not all right
“’They’re young… they’re in love… and they kill people’ goes the tagline for the 1968 film Bonnie and Clyde, but the slogan could apply almost as well to the outlaw pair at the center of the Metropolitan Opera’s white-hot revival of Massenet’s Manon.”
Dongs of mirth and triumph sing!
Donkey dick and other Asian Fusion vaudeville acts arouse “The BAM Effect” at Handel’s Semele.
“The cold bothered me, anyway”
“It was the chilliest opening night at the Met in years on Monday—barely 15 degrees when the curtain went up on the company premiere of La Donna del Lago.“
Singular sensation
“If Mozart had only had the sense to write Don Giovanni in a… single-performer format, last Wednesday’s revival at the Met would have been one for the ages.
For your eyes only
“Don’t bother with The Loft or The Boy Next Door: the most spine-chilling thriller currently playing isn’t on the screen of your local multiplex but on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera.”
Shortlisted
I expected something lovely, but what I beheld was nothing short of magnificent.
Boys and girls, not together
It’s particularly bewildering that before 2013 there was no such thing as the Prototype Festival.
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).