The big news out of the Bay this week, of course, is that David Gockley, after ten years at the helm here and over forty in opera, has decided not to pull a Bloomberg/Galupe-Borszkh.
Giacomo Puccini’s horse-opera version of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” La Fanciulla del West, based on David Belasco’s play, The Girl of the Golden West, enjoyed the status of a curate’s egg for quite a while.
Readers of this site are typically up to speed on emerging vocal talents, so clearly there is no need for me to write a review of Chilean-German soprano Carolina Ullrich’s riveting recital at the Paris Opera?
The Metropolitan Opera desperately needed a new production of Le nozze di Figaro.
It’s a place where the one thing you can expect is the unexpected. The place is… Philadelphia?
I just arrived back from Stella di Napoli’s.
Soprano Renée Fleming is certainly making the role of the Countess in Richard Strauss’s final opera Capriccio the focus of her late-career years.
For those who like their Handel loud, with no forfeit of baroque finesse, one promising solution is to make the hall smaller.
Far be it from me to join the Schadenfreudian chorus of “Bye, Bye, Berti!” you may have been hearing in certain quarters, but the first thing I am duty-bound to report about San Francisco Opera’s Norma (of which three performances remain) is that they’ve hit the jackpot, coverwise.
“Oh to be young and going to Paris for the first time,” exclaimed an elderly gentleman who donned his best sweatervest for a concert at the Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival this past August.
I always think of Don Giovanni as half of the greatest opera ever written. Or, actually, about 2/3 of the greatest opera ever written.
After viewing Stefan Herheim’s production of Rusalka, I’ve got a new category: “regie slick.”
They say that Boston, despite many cultural distinctions, ain’t no opera town, and for some decades—generations?—this has been true. But tides of change will break, even on the shores of the Hub.
One of the things that made François Girard’s 2013 production of Parsifal at the Met so compelling was the way he tried to make the tale of suffering and temptation relevant to a contemporary audience.
Walking away from Theatre Châtelet this afternoon, I felt as though my relationship with France and its notoriously perplexing people and culture had at long last reached some degree of depth.
I fall on my knees before this new live recording
issued by the San Francisco Symphony.
The appeal of Ariadne auf Naxos (for me anyway) is the acknowledgment that underneath it all, opera (and all other forms of “high art”) is really show business.
None of my previous Elektra experiences prepared me for this stunning, overwhelming performance from the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence.
After listening to “Stella di Napoli,” her mightily impressive new CD
of rare bel canto arias just released by Erato, I felt many of the old sparks reigniting.
A good performance of a Rossini opera buffa usually bubbles along merrily.
It’s rare to encounter a video of an opera that has zero redeeming qualities, but I think I might have found it: the latest Arena di Verona La Traviata.
With much laying-on of fanfares and gift boxes our friends at Decca Classics have unleashed Luciano Pavarotti Edition 1: The First Decade on a weary and satiated public.
The little opera companies of New York are like chanterelles.
Notable purveyor of mayhem and infanticide Medea has lately been missing from the local operatic scene, but Sunday afternoon sections of the recently renovated Alice Tully Hall were singed by Canadian soprano Dominique Labelle’s blazing incarnation of the Greek sorceress.
Tell us: What’s your favorite Verdi performance?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
