Step aside, Texas: “Everything is bigger at Aida” is the motto of the Met’s second attempt at retiring Sonja Frisell’s colossal production.
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Alma Deutscher’s quest for beautiful music permeates the score of her Cinderella from the hushed opening of the Overture.
Show business fables often involve an ambitious, if naïve, ingenue (male or female) desperate for fame. This young wannabe finds fame and fortune: but it comes at a cost.
By Eli Jacobson
Soprano Lydia Grindatto confirmed the fine impression she had made at Giargiari vocal competition with a charismatic, thoroughly inhabited performance that showed careful preparation in every aspect.
By David Fox
The film of The Hours failed to effectively weave together the novel’s trio of threads of interiority about suicide and secondarily literary creation. I wondered if an opera would stand a better chance at achieving that? Based on Tuesday’s diva-encrusted stage premiere of Kevin Puts and Greg Pierce’s The Hours, its creators didn’t pull it off either.
Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Don Carlos was a real feast of good singing and orchestral grandeur.
By Henson Keys
I have a horrible confession. I’ve always judged the quality of an opera largely on the number of dead characters at the finale.
By Patrick Mack
All things were, indeed, made new again, when Boston’s venerable Handel & Haydn Society brought Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro to the stage, their first time doing so in its entirety, as their 2,576th concert on Thursday.
By Harry Rose
There are no words superlative enough to describe this celebration of Orpheus’ grief, and I truly applaud San Francisco Opera for presenting such food for thought that will definitely resonate long after with me.
Sondra Radvanovsky eschewed the customary stuffiness of the recital format, often speaking directly to the audience and putting her selections in a highly personal context.
San Francisco Opera has unveiled a brand-new production of Giuseppe Verdi’s warhorse classic La traviata, the first “to be built in San Francisco Opera’s scene and costume shops in 35 years.”
Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Le Comte Ory was a lovely cake with waaaay too much frosting.
By Henson Keys
After putting a hiatus on their awards in 2020 and 2021 (for reasons that are all too well-known to all of us), the Richard Tucker Foundation Gala returned on Sunday evening November 13 honoring soprano Angel Blue the 2022 Award winner.
By Eli Jacobson
The main reason to see this revival is Benjamin Bernheim’s Duca.
By Kevin Ng
Trouble was afoot from the first selection onward.
Davóne Tines has sung with Early Music groups and avant-garde ones, and he has a taste for projects that cross artistic boundaries, which suits an innate showmanship.
By John Yohalem
Countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen‘s star is surely on the rise.
This month, both the Paris Opéra and the Opéra-Comique are mounting seminal works about unhinged anti-heroines who meet their downfall after falling head-over-heels for an unavailable, deeply unattainable man – Salome, in the case of the Opéra; and Armide, in the case of the Opéra-Comique.
Teatro Nuovo took a big risk in a bad way on Wednesday with its revival of Rossini’s Maometto II.
The revival of Don Carlo(s) which opened on November 3 restored the translated Italian text and the cut 1882 four-act revision not seen at the Met since Rudolf Bing’s last season in 1972.
By Eli Jacobson
The pandemic had different effects on different people.
By Eli Jacobson
Dame Ethel Smyth’s third opera, The Wreckers, opened at Houston Grand Opera on October 28 and runs through November 11.
Come back, Big Clock! We need you more than ever!
Why did Ted Sperling and MasterVoices choose to perform an old warhorse like Carmen which has been produced almost continuously over decades just up the street at Lincoln Center?
By Eli Jacobson
