Beyond the merely pretty
J’Nai Bridges makes a sophisticated companion to the Morgan Library & Museum’s Renoir Drawings exhibit.
Review
Bring on the lovers, liars and clowns
San Diego Opera’s Pagliacci puts a play within a play within a play.
Grail against the machine
A new production of Parsifal at San Francisco Opera stirred something deep inside Michael Anthonio about how music soothes the soul
Frieze frame
Shirin Neshat‘s Aïda in Paris is a typical instance of what happens when an artist is brought in to direct an opera.
In the beginning
In Jacopo Peri’s seminal Euridice, the Newberry Consort and Haymarket Opera made a compelling case for putting you in the room where it happened.
The emperor’s new groove
A new recording of Boito‘s Nerone from Cagliari shows off an epic opera with fire and flamboyance
Vigorous to rigorous
Dmitry Matvienko led a performance of Mussorgsky and Shostakovich at La Monnaie with meticulous rectitude.
School gyrls
What Opera Lafayette’s Dido and Aeneas lost in gravitas it gained in charm and specificity.
Undoing of woman
Anthony Hüseyin‘s eclectic recital in Berlin explores femicide in opera through a queer, nonbinary lens.
Up the creek and over the hill
Matthias Goerne‘s Die schöne Müllerin at Carnegie Hall offers a hoary and excessive collection of mannerisms and vocal tics that served the artist more than the music itself.
Avec la victoire, l’instant du bonheur
Buoyed by a strong cast, The Metropolitan Opera continues its autumn bel canto streak with a winning revival of Donizetti’s La fille du regiment.
The scorned mother of us all
Seeing Sondra Radvanovsky as Medea at Lyric Opera of Chicago sprawled across the floor, soaked in her children’s blood, is proof that we’re witnessing an utterly haunting singer-actor.
Dona nobis pacem
A Missa Solemnis to celebrate 125 years of Boston’s Symphony Hall was sophisticated and subdued.
Hold! Enough!
The timing for Boston Lyric Opera’s production of Macbeth this weekend was perfect for Halloween, though the show itself at the Emerson Colonial Theatre was decidedly less spooky.
Ain’t no mountain high enough
A new production of La sonnambula at the Metropolitan Opera is musically charming if dramatically confounding.
Only vaulting ambition
Macbeth at the Festival Verdi in Parma aims big — on a small scale
Moor is more
A pair of Otellos – in Madrid and Parma – is a study in contrasts.
It all began tonight
West Side Story opened LA Opera’s 40th anniversary season with fury and flair
Storybored
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay was, somehow, a fun night at the opera—just not one that felt specifically operatic.
Reunited and it feels so good
When Angela Meade and Michael Fabiano first sang Lucia together as students at AVA few would have predicted that they would go on to sing Turandot 16 years later.
Now, voyager
The miracle workers at Boston Modern Orchestra Project and Odyssey Opera have published another premiere recording of a work that I’ve long heard of but never heard: Dominick Argento’s The Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe.
Museum quality
Opera Philadelphia’s Il viaggio a Reims in a nutshell: Hyperactive, confusing, and distracting from (and sometimes for) the singers? Yes. Imaginative, wildly entertaining, and musically rewarding? Absolutely.
The rain in Spain
Wolf Trap Opera concluded its 2025 summer season last month with a production of Carmen that was vocally strong, though not entirely dramatically satisfying, amid challenging weather.
One-woman Brutus and Cassius
Anna Pirozzi and Luca Salsi reunite in blazing form in Tosca at the Teatro San Carlo
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).
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!
