Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is a problematic opera—or, rather, it is an opera that has, in the last century or so, become problematic.
96 comments
Sponsored
Win tickets to Piotr Beczala at Carnegie Hall!
pb—with our friends at Carnegie Hall—is giving away two tickets to PB’s December concert. Enter now!
Sooner or later, Our Own JJ gets around to discussing the Met’s Barbiere di Siviglia and Juilliard’s Turco in Italia in this week’s New York Observer.
Show Boat continues to communicate, even in the less than perfect circumstances of this latest revival.
“Taken by itself, the St. Matthew Passion felt a little mundane. But compared to Zauberflöte, it could have been the Second Coming.”
“So it’s twice as disappointing that Monday night’s performance of the Mozart masterpiece turned into a four-hour fizzle.”
“I applaud the Klinghoffer protesters for voicing their opinions, but that doesn’t stop me from saying that I find those opinions ill-informed, inept and downright dangerous.”
Our Own JJ (pictured) is off to cover the Met’s opening night.
“Labor! Oh, the problem of labor at the Met is gargantuan,” Our Own JJ (not pictured) would have said, had he thought of it.
Mark Morris’ staging of Acis and Galatea at Lincoln Center is everything good about summer condensed into two hours.
“The dark clouds hovering over Mr. Gelb should not obscure his very real achievements.”
“Mr. Burden did his best to wrestle with what looked like a disused Dale Chihuly chandelier, but…”
Our Own JJ (not pictured) debates Tim Smith, classical music critic of the Baltimore Sun, on the topic of the Met’s cancellation of the HD telecast of The Death of Klinghoffer.
“At Carnegie Hall last Thursday, a capacity crowd witnessed what might be the final official act of a monarch who has reigned for more than four decades.”
The NY Phil Biennial, a new music festival that is dedicated to new music, kicked off its first season at a drowsy time on the performing arts calendar, the week after Memorial Day.
The Met may be missing an angle calculated to appeal to the more adventurous attendee: opera as game of chance.
The winds of change sweep across the first post-9/11 issue of parterre box, the queer opera zine.
“In Kristine Opolais, who gave her first Met performance in the title role on Friday night, the company has a Butterfly with the soaring voice and penetrating theatrical presence to meet Minghella’s elegant dramaturgy head on.”
The sad fact, though, is that the Met is not doing a great job or, in most cases, even a competent job at this core task.
“Opera can, in fact, be something beautiful and moving even when all a performance has going for it is some really excellent singing.”
Our Own JJ (not pictured) offers his recommendations for 10 opera and classical music events worth hearing this spring.
In a slight detour from the usual all-opera-all-the-time format of parterre box, the queer opera zine, issue #44 centers on Ben Letzler‘s superb appreciation of film and cabaret diva Zarah Leander.
“The finale of Sweeney Todd left the stage of Avery Fisher Hall littered with corpses, but the evening, for all its flaws, felt vibrantly alive.”
The last place you’d expect to find opera at all, let alone good, exciting opera, is in still-scrappy Bushwick, Brooklyn.
Even when the opera performed is a masterpiece, a truly superb opera performance is exceedingly rare.
Sponsored
Reach your audience through parterre box!
parterre box, “the most essential blog in opera” (New York Times), is now booking display and sponsored content advertising for the 2023-2024 season. Join Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Warner Classics and many others in reaching your target audience through parterre box.
Sponsored
Win tickets to Piotr Beczala at Carnegie Hall!
pb—with our friends at Carnegie Hall—is giving away two tickets to PB’s December concert. Enter now!
"*" indicates required fields