Coming out
Beautiful singing, thoughtful staging, lovely melodies… a perfect escape from daily life.
Review
The fantastics
“Berlioz Takes a Trip” proclaimed the free psychedelic buttons available at Carnegie Hall Monday referring to Symphonie Fantastique,the evening’s surefire crowd-pleaser.
Original sin
This new production of the 1847 original version of Verdi’s first stab at Shakespeare features the extraordinary performances of Luca Salsi and Anna Pirozzi as the Thane of Cawdor and his merry wife.
All is forgiven
Why do we go to the opera? Because the world needs a reminder of the power of forgiveness, particularly in these dark and gloomy times!
Automaton poem
With only a few weeks left to slice up our pumpkins and track down the perfect Luigi for our Mario, the timing seems right for a pair of Gothic operas set in a crypt.
Trouble in paradise
Although Leonard Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti is always categorized as an opera, the piece certainly has one foot planted firmly in his jazzy musical-theater style.
Magnificent seven
Even for a medium that often trades in high-impact visuals, The Mile-Long Opera is dazzling to look at.
Another Hun bites the dust
Verdi’s Attila is hardly a rarity in Italy the way it is in the United States.
The unusual suspects
Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America provides ample fodder for the legions of amateur opera sleuths seeking to confirm their theory of “Who Killed City Opera?”
Meine Liebe ist croon
As opera’s reigning tenor-superstar, Jonas Kaufmann can pretty much do whatever he wants and a sizable adoring public will lap it up.
Final chorus
The news of Nicholas McGegan’s retirement came as quite a shock to me.
American beauty
It’s surprising to read that, as of this writing, La fanciulla del west has only had 105 performances at the Metropolitan Opera.
Burning woman
I count myself as privileged to have witnessed Götterdämmerungat the Royal Opera House during this season’s revival of Keith Warner’s Ring.
Underdressed
For this revisiting of Tosca, San Francisco Opera decided to highlight the glamorous lifestyle of the Italian soprano Carmen Giannattasio.
Golden ‘Girls’ season finale
The conclusion of our Fanciulla del West video overview in three parts looks at a trio of performances from the 2010s.
Come to me my melancholy diva
“What emerges from this handsome but sentimental film is a portrait of the artist in decline, cocooning herself in defensive victimhood.
Ceci n’est pas un ‘Trovatore’
America’s longest-standing theatrical lightning rod, Robert Wilson premiered his ethereal, time-collapsing production of Le trouvère.
Minnie happy returns
Puccini’s Girl closes out the 20th century and gallops into the 21st.
All about the ‘Girl’ who came to stay
On Thursday, Puccini’s seventh opera, the California Gold Rush romance La fanciulla del West, returns to its birthplace for its first Met performances since 2011.
I think we’ve got her number
“Are we Team Guelf or Team Ghibelline?”
Glamour, reconceptualized
Opera Philadelphia’s O18 Festival continues through the weekend, but Friday represented a finale of sorts with the last two premieres.
Go away from my window
Hunger was the note of the night, a sentiment shared between the audience and Proving Up, a lean and hungry one-act telling a story of drought and desperation on the post-Civil War Western frontier.
Mortal raises veil from before goddess’s face
Anna Netrebko is the greatest performing artist singing opera today. Nobody else comes close; she makes me love her in a way that verges on the erotic.
Take me out to the bull game
I braved the alarming and majestically colorful wall-graffiti-art of Bushwick to attend Bullfight Boylesque, which runs to October 28.
Win a Free Ticket to Opening Night at the Met!
Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen star in the Met's new Macbeth. We're giving away one ticket, so screw your courage to the sticking place and enter now!
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).
