Heretofore I’d avoided the Met’s abridged, English-language holiday presentations.
Philadelphia is a city famous for its musical institutions—so, of course, at this time of year Messiah performances abound.
French early music group Ensemble Correspondances offered two of the year’s very best concerts.
At Friday’s opening of Otello, there was a good deal of interesting going on, though not all of it necessarily onstage.
“Non mi dispiace” seemed to be the general consensus in the loggione December 7 when Verdi’s Attila came roaring into La Scala to open the 2018-19 season.
The long evening didn’t achieve the degree of celebration it should have.
Here’s a quick sprint through some recent (and a few maybe not-so-very-recent) Handel CDs that have been stacking up.
Four fine Handel-centric concerts from the Morgan Library to Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center proved a bracing antidote to pervasive Messiah-mania.
This a sincere revival with a social conscience, a chance to take immersive part in the Christmas miracle, not just watch it remotely.
At the opening of the Scottish Opera’s 2017 production of Turnage’s opera Greek, I was very sorry I’d missed Anna Nicole.
Jules Massenet’s version of the Cinderella fairy tale, Cendrillon, seems to be back in vogue after many years of obscurity.
Ars Minerva upped their game by mounting an 18th century baroque opera, Giovanni Porta’s 1738 Ifigenia in Aulide.
Diana Damrau‘s performance as Violetta was the work of a very ordinary artist, one susceptible to vocal flubs, poor intonation, and an all too banal approach operatic performance.
Anna Netrebko sang throughout with a palpable sense of joy and ease in vocal production, never a hint of strain or any moment forced.
There comes a time where everything falls into place, and more importantly, when your head and heart are also in the right mindset. That’s when when the opera becomes cathartic, life-changing experience.
The New Camerata Opera performs a double bill of John Blow’s Venus and Adonis, sometimes dubbed the first English opera, and Gustav Holst’s Savitri.
The proceedings took the virtue of longevity too much to heart; the night stretched on interminably.
Give the creators credit for producing an emotional response.
Only the Sound Remains introduced Americans to the latest collaboration between dazzling Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho and hirsute metteur-en-scène Peter Sellars.
French conductor Emmanuelle Haïm debuted with the Philadelphia Orchestra this weekend, leading performances of Handel and Purcell.
Sunday’s sold out Carnegie Hall recital became a veritable love-fest between the Peruvian tenor and those assembled in the Hall.
Washington Concert Opera on the occasion of Gounod’s 200th birthday presented the American premiere of his first opera, Sapho.
Patrice Chéreau‘s Elektra brims with ideas beyond its eschewing of the opera’s standard, hysterical trappings.
Alexander Birch Elliott‘ s dynamic if gauche Zurga added some pizzazz to an otherwise bland evening.
Tell us: What’s your favorite Verdi performance?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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