Two of France’s leading Early Music ensembles recently visited New York City to perform music by some of the 17th century’s leading composers.
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Rosa Feola, hailed last year for her Gilda at the Met, brought a level of vocal refinement and elegance to Juliet that substantially elevated the night’s proceedings.
By Alex Baker
When the New York Philharmonic announced Gustavo Dudamel as its next music director earlier this year, speculation arose immediately as to who would take his place out West when he leaves the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2026.
To get right to the point, the performance did not come together despite some good elements and was a major missed opportunity.
By Eli Jacobson
This Sunday marked a muted return of the Richard Tucker Foundation Gala, which had the dubious distinction of the fourth edition not to feature a prizewinner and perhaps the first not to provide complete orchestral and choral accompaniment for its performers.
By Emma Hoffman
Chopping up the action and dutifully showing each plot point may work in a film but in an opera, where every piece of marginal dialogue must be set to music, it feels like a chore.
By Alex Baker
In this vulgar world, there is no situation that can’t be limned with a power ballad.
By David Fox
For Philadelphia opera lovers, October means the Giargiari Bel Canto Competition—a staple event for the Academy of Vocal Arts, and a pipeline for the public to discover some of their strongest resident artists.
By David Fox
In Handel’s Rodelinda, a usurped monarch, believed dead, returns to avenge his deposition and reclaim the woman he loves.
I hate to say I nearly cringe at the thought of Gioachino Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia.
By Patrick Mack
On October 20th, a wet but warmish Friday night, the Metropolitan Opera opened this season’s revival of Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera in David Alden’s 2012 production.
By Eli Jacobson
You might wonder how this slimly plotted show, which had a brief Off-Broadway run in 2007 before fading into relative obscurity, ended up occupying a piece of prime Main Stem real estate nearly two decades later. To that end, I have four words: Josh Gad. Andrew Rannells.
All in all, this was truly a superb achievement for San Francisco Opera and an auspicious first chapter in the Wagner opera journey with Eun Sun Kim.
Suddenly, here it was, and I wondered if it was a dream or an illusion.
By David Fox
The Hunt’s strongest argument for the possibility of growth, connection, and agency even under adverse and restrictive circumstances lay, of course, in its music, in which three individual voices were able to combine and transform into something infinitely rich and strange.
It’s autumn in New York, baby.
By Emma Hoffman
Wanna feel old? Hair, “The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical,” as it styled itself, has its 56th birthday this month.
By David Fox
I love it, truly, just not that much.
By Patrick Mack
It’s a warning that could strike fear in even the heartiest theatergoer.
By David Fox
How appropriate that the Met should present this supposedly “Jewish” opera after many in the audience had just spent twelve days immersed in the genuine article over the High Holy Days.
By Emma Hoffman
Instead of following the story, we in the audience spend most of the evening thinking “What?? Why is that happening?”
By Henson Keys
One got a sense that the Met and the maestro directed most of the rehearsal and preparation toward the opening night premiere of the Heggie opus
By Eli Jacobson
“None of that sentimental crap, okay?”
By Kevin Ng
Bay Area composer Mason Bates’s and librettist Mark Campbell’s contemporary opera about the life of the tech mogul Steve Jobs came home “to the place where it all began” in spectacular fashion
