June is long gone. It was truly a month of excellence and exuberance here in San Francisco, coupled with cozy and inviting weather, as if to make up for the extended winter.
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.
It’s been eight decades since darling Aix-en-Provence was under attack—its last formal invasion, at least by non-operagoers, was in 1942 during the German occupation of southern France. But on Friday, the town was besieged once again by its annual festival, with two dazzling premieres that examined the cruel and constructive dimensions of war and revolution.
The Aix festival organized two back-to-back evening concerts dedicated to the Russian masters. One was an embarrassment of Slavic riches, the other… well, just an embarrassment.
With unrest and looting nearby as France learned collectively that minority lives should matter, Marseille-adjacent Aix-en-Provence could be forgiven for the heavy-handedness of launching its 75th anniversary summer Festival with a new French translation of the ultimate carnival of social tension, The Threepenny Opera.
The ailing and grief-stricken Pinkerton was shown to give his son a diary about his time in Nagasaki, and as Trouble read it, he (and the audience) was taken back in time as the story came to life, similar to the use of Pensieve in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Book 4).
This showcase concert gave notice that countertenor Hugh Cutting is among the most promising artists of his generation.
Despite the ever-increasing media coverage of San Francisco’s “doom loop,” June 2023 will be forever remembered as the time where San Francisco was the opera capital of the United States.
On June 20, a rather breezy, pleasant cool summer evening, the soprano Gabriella Reyes, tenor René Barbera and baritone Will Liverman took over the Summerstage space with a wide-ranging, ambitious recital program with Dimitri Dover tickling the ivories.
On June 16, San Francisco Opera concluded their excellent Centennial Season with a heartfelt 100th Anniversary Concert, featuring a starry cast, three conductors (including current and former Music Directors) and the SF Opera Orchestra and Chorus.
“I joyfully await the exit—and I hope never to return” were the last words written by the visionary Mexican painter, Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón (famously known simply as Frida Kahlo), according to her 2002 biography by Hayden Herrera.
Death of Classical, under the direction of founder Andrew Ousley, is interested in enlivening the classical music genre by organizing events in Green-Wood Cemetery, usually with a focus on food and drink.
Richard Strauss’ monumental (arguably his magnum opus) Die Frau ohne Schatten made a triumphant return to the War Memorial Opera House last Sunday June 4 after 34 years.
Lyric Opera of Chicago has brought back its wildly successful 2019 production of West Side Story, directed by Francesca Zambello. I thought it was terrific back then and, even with numerous cast changes, it was just as terrific on Sunday afternoon.
Although somewhat flawed, Days of Wine and Roses draws from the same musical language that made Piazza so instantly distinctive, and it features a specificity that I noticed in Adam Guettel’s earlier breakthrough work, Floyd Collins.
Renée Fleming arrived at Carnegie Hall on May 31 with something to prove.
In French opera—until Pelleas et Mélisande anyway—there is always a great deal of dance; often, dance rather than song is the main event.
This Holländer offers neither a clear narrative vision for the work nor a sense of turbocharged drama; it simply sits on the Met’s cavernous stage as a dull gray mass.
Out of sheer morbid curiosity last evening I pulled up the “orders” page of my Amazon account and searched Otello to discover that over the past 11 years. I’ve ordered 15 items with that title (one as recently as last night!)
In the five short years that I’ve been in New York, I have seen that crusty old Franco Zeffirelli production of La bohème more times than I can count on one hand. And there are certainly times when that peeling mise-en-scène really shows its age.
The wicked poisoner showed herself in fine form, full of purple passion and lusty music-making that would gladden the heart of any bel canto enthusiast or opera lover in general.
The opera took place on an actual boat: the Lightship Ambrose in the South Street Seaport.
Simon McBurney’s Die Zauberflöte, the second new production of the Met’s May Mozart Miracle, opened on Friday to rousing near-unanimous cheers.
Nina Stemme’s program guided her audience through a period of musical history that explores themes of love and mortality with texts that traverse emotional extremes.
Like a sommelier of male entitlement, Peter Mattei paired with precision moves from a wide-ranging vocabulary of gesture.
