For my next trick
The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra under conductor Stéphane Denève plays up the schtick in a concert performance of The Magic Flute – and obscures Mozart’s magic in the process.
Review
Dashed hopes
Joyce DiDonato makes the most of Kevin Puts‘s trite new Emily Dickinson monodrama.
Agent orange
That Trump opera at the Staatsoper Hamburg is lazy activism at its finest, we fear.
Diva down
An excellent Věc Makropulos at Opéra de Lille makes the case for the vitality and necessity of France’s regional companies.
Di qualità, di qualità!
San Diego Opera presents a strongly directed and cast revival of Il barbiere di Siviglia.
Was keinem in Worten ich künde
In Modena, Teodor Currentzis‘s Ring ohne Worte foregoes words but not gimmickry.
Mother is mothering
Marina Rebeka comes tantalizingly close to triumph in Cherubini’s Médée at Théâtre des Champs Elysées.
Baroque in the Bay Area
Under the baton of Nicholas McGegan, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale proves they have a magic touch in a program of Rameau and Handel.
A shtetl aesthetic
Austin Opera’s moving production of Fiddler on the Roof grounds itself in lived tradition, to great effect.
Americana, reconsidered
Davóne Tines leads a thought-provoking program in San Francisco reconsidering patriotism, dissent, and spirituality as the United States faces down its quarter millennium crisis.
Life of the Mardi
La Monnaie’s flamboyantly busy new production of Benvenuto Cellini reads more burlesque than Berlioz.
Beam me up, Selim
Die Entführung aus dem Serail boldly goes where no opera has gone before at Pacific Opera Project.
Extravaganza of ideas
Iván Fischer‘s Mahler 3 with the Budapest Festival Orchestra at Carnegie Hall is memorable but crude, sometimes exhilarating and often tedious.
No shrinking Violanta
A chic production of Violanta at the Deutshce Oper Berlin continues the Korngold craze on the other side of the Atlantic.
I want you to enter the holy of holies
Das Wunder der Heliane fuses sex with the sacred at a simmering performance at the Opéra National du Rhin.
More than a material girl
The vivacious MANON! at Heartbeat Opera makes a strong case for the return of opera in translation.
Past is prologue
Simon Boccanegra has never felt as foreboding or prophetic as it did at a recent performance at La Fenice.
A lady of coarse and vulgar inclinations
A stark, sweltering performance of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk shocks the Komische Oper Berlin.
Nature boy
With Siegfried, the directorial vision of the Paris Opera‘s Ring cycle finally takes root.
A ruckus in Kaunas
Ponchielli goes east with mixed results in I Lituani.
Methinks the lady doth protestant too much
Old pros Gregory Kunde and Pier Luigi Pizzi anchor a new staging of Stiffelio co-produced by three theaters in Emilia-Romagna.
The snows that lie on the mountains of Judaea
Salome sweeps in like a storm at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
Faith in their hands shall snap in two
Franz Welser-Möst leads a rigorous, if emotionally staid, performance of Verdi‘s Requiem at Carnegie Hall.
Look to your laurels
A Strauss rarity receives a ravishing concert performance at Seattle Opera.
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).