Valentin Schwarz‘s and Simone Young‘s Ring, in its final outing at Bayreuth, is dramaturgically messy and musically excellent.
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.
The repertory company of Munich’s Gärtnerplatztheater brings sparkle to a goofy, summery L’elisir d’amore
This summer’s festival, taking place amid record high temperatures and in the wake of its artistic director, Pierre Audi, featured a disquietingly zeigeisty focus on sexual violence.
In Lohengrin, populism comes to an apocalyptic end on the Bavarian stage
Peter Sellars‘s triple bill of Viennese modernism featuring Erwartung and a concert performance of The Raft of the Medusa stare down death at the Salzburg Festival
Claus Guth mines urgent and contemporary commentary from Die Liebe der Danae in Munich.
This Bard production, led by Leon Botstein, makes the strongest possible case musically, dramatically and visually for Smetana’s opera Dalibor.
A revival of the furious I masnadieri at the Bayerische Staatsoper falls short of perfection – and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Pénélope at the Bayerische Staatsoper’s summer festival spotlights the crossroads between the nostalgic and the progressive.
Matthias Davids‘s reactionary new production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg might be fun, but no one comes to Bayreuth for fun.
A North American debut of a respectable French Baroque ensemble, an ebullient presentation of La fille du régiment, and an afternoon soiree in Wine Country proved to be the hottest (yet affordable!) tickets around here this Summer.
In the 1847 version of Macbeth, the forces of Teatro Nuovo lacked the thunderous punch this music can pack, but provided a pleasant ride
It’s Norma, darling. We know.
Jessica Pratt’s last-minute Norma in Milan might well be the stuff of legend
A starry cast is hampered by Christof Loy‘s dour production of Rusalka in Barcelona
La sonnambula at Teatro Nuovo overcomes uneven casting to highlight the many charms of Bellini’s bel canto masterpiece
Performances of Pittori fiamminghi and Madama Butterfly in picturesque Castell’Arquato were a fine way to honor Luigi Illica, the city’s native son
Music for New Bodies at Lincoln Center’s Running AMOC* Festival proves Matthew Aucoin really is everything he’s made out to be
When such a canonically ossified work like Verdi’s Aïda is directed at all (let alone as ambitiously as Damiano Michieletto at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino), it does feel like a completely different opera
Les Brigands at the Paris Opera is an expensive joke that never lands
This evening of Julius Eastman at Lincoln Center was so good it hurt
A new production of Dialogues des Carmélites featuring Anna Caterina Antonacci proves that it’s hard to be an iconoclast in Venice.
Pride weekend events at San Francisco Opera and Festival Opera are fabulous starts to the Bay Area summer
Opera Parallèle’s Harvey Milk Reimagined offers a fragmented portrait lacking the depth or coherence needed to honor Milk’s legacy
A Baroque Valentine’s with Opera Lafayette | Feb | DC & NYC
Celebrate love in all its guises with tender ballads, amorous duets, cheeky verses, and bawdy drinking songs plus food, cocktails and wine.
