The UK’s first-ever production of Poliuto, now available from Opus Arte on DVD, set the lions of Rome among the lambs of Glyndebourne.
Thoughtless direction stifled the epic drama.
Donizetti’s bel canto masterpiece Lucia di Lammermoor returned to Chicago Lyric Opera on Saturday evening.
Director Barrie Kosky’s Glyndebourne 2015 production of Handel’s 1739 oratorio Saul (released on Opus Arte DVD) shows imagination as well as a strong cast and design team.
This year’s treat was Vittorio Gnecchi’s Cassandra, completed around 1905
Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s production of L’Italiana in Algeri for the Met remains steadfastly ignorant of postcolonial theory.
Lyric Opera of Chicago’s 2016-17 season got off to an exciting start on Saturday night with Wagner’s Das Rheingold.
Like Orest, I return to this house.
How Verdi’s opera might address this particular nightmare was unclear.
Mariusz Trelinski unveiled a rather gloomy, though musically satisfying, Tristan und Isolde.
Missy Mazzoli, a 36-year-old composer from Brooklyn, has created the most startling and moving new American opera in memory.
Well, that didn’t last long.
The characters get right down to work immediately with their foul deeds.
The Teatro di San Carlo in Naples is a pearl itself and this presentation proffers some of the best that company has to offer.
Ambivalent is how I feel about Cosí fan tutte.
David Lang is, per The New Yorker, a “postminimalist enfant terrible.”
You may wonder what Rachmaninoff’s Aleko and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci have in common.
With the performance of Dessì we move onto a different plane than the other singers.
Anna Netrebko‘s artistry is both subtle and thrilling.
Idomeneo proved enormously moving while a much more complicated Così fan Tutte went for shallow romantic hijinks stripping that work of its darkly ambiguous disturbing view of love.
dell’ arte Opera Ensemble continued its exploration of love and money by mounting Massenet’s Manon
Opera at Caramoor rallied Sunday afternoon with an admirable if erratic performance of Fidelio which was especially memorable for South African soprano Elza van den Heever’s thrilling first-ever Leonore.
The Hollywood Bowl is truly the preeminent musical venue in Los Angeles.
The unevenly-beating Heart unfortunately proved less than the sum of its deluxe parts.
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.
