On Thursday evening Jennifer Wilson “finally” made a belated, disappointing Met debut as Turandot.
Continuing coverage of the Met’s new Alban Berg spectacular.
In New York, tradition insists, there are no limits to where a preposterous idea, talent and relentless determination will take you, in defiance of all the odds.
Lilith. Pandora. Circe. Salome. “La Belle Dame sans Merci.” Carmen. Brigid O’Shaughnessy: the eternal “femme fatale” still fascinates us.
Polish singers are chameleons. They have to be.
Absent from Chicago Lyric Opera’s repertory for 21 years, Alban Berg’s Wozzeck came roaring into town on Sunday afternoon in a stunning new production by Sir David McVicar.
“CanCon”, or Canadian Content, is always a concern in Canadian cultural discourse.
Simply put, Christine Goerke is a stupendous Elektra.
After nearly three years and over 20 performances Michael Mayer’s “Las Vegas” production of Rigoletto at the Metropolitan Opera still outrages many.
New York is different now, and John Zorn has this hangout, The Stone, on Avenue C (you heard me) at Second Street, a performance space the size of a largeish dorm room.
What is surreal, symbolic, and generally mysterious in the dramatic arts can get a bad rap.
This “new-to-Chicago” production is a sheer pleasure from beginning to end.
“Operatic” generally refers to sung drama, but there is another meaning of that term: grandiose, outsize, hysterical.
Although the season is less than three weeks old, Metropolitan Opera audiences may hear nothing else this season as beautiful as Peter Mattei’s “Song to the Evening Star.”
Besides the heavens and a sweater in The Devil Wears Prada, it is the hue of Hibla Gerzmava’s soprano, in contrast to the red or rose or red-orange voices of most sopranos.
Which operatic character could be best described as a spider?
If you had told me 20 years ago that at some point in the future I would have over 550 of the Metropolitan Opera’s performances, audio and video, at my command with the touch of a button I would say my eulogy had just been read and I’d been taken to my reward.
For all their orchestral and vocal attractions, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s 15 operas are rarities in the West.
“This throwback to the golden age of opera—superhuman singing greeted with frenzied ovations—was a function of a perfect storm of excitement.”
LA Opera opened their 30th season with a pairing of two of their most popular productions, both of which were initially staged by filmmakers not unfamiliar with the vagaries of our industry outpost here in Hollywoodland.
The Metropolitan Opera’s much vaunted so-called “Tudor Ring” of three royal operas by Donizetti got off to a bumpy start Saturday afternoon with a revival of Anna Bolena that stubbornly refused to cohere either musically or dramatically.
LoftOpera is just one, though perhaps the liveliest, of many homegrown opera troupes in Brooklyn.
A clearly moved Hvorostovsky basked in the moment and momentarily broke character to acknowledge the love.
Would exciting American dramatic soprano Christine Goerke be the next great ice-princess we have been waiting for?
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.
