Our old friend Heather Mac Donald (not pictured) is back, ostensibly to mourn the loss of ‘Petrarchan intimacy with the past’ in the study of the humanities, but, reliably enough, she can’t help taking a swipe at Regietheater while she’s at it.
Our Own JJ has been thinking about Bayreuth some more, this time in the pages of Musical America.
“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
“With one of my favorite opera productions returning to the Met tonight, I’ve been considering lately what makes Willy Decker‘s Traviata so fine, so satisfying, and so worth a return visit.” [Musical America]
“One of the things I’m gradually learning as I’m coming up my the 20th anniversary of writing about opera for publication is that you have to be wary about making Pronouncements.”
Our own JJ ponders the Met’s new production of Maria Stuarda (not pictured) for Musical America.
“I literally wanted to punch Sher in the face.”
“Since no opera company in the U.S. has quite got up the courage to present a Herheim production, this webcast offers us a chance to sample this director’s unique style of Regie.”
“’I’ve almost come to the conclusion that this Mr. Hitler isn’t a Christian,’ muses merry murderess Abby Brewster early in the first act of Arsenic and Old Lace, and to tell the truth I’m beginning to think I’m almost as far behind the curve as she was. Recent new productions at the Met suggest strongly…
“Since Zeffirelli took his official leave from the Met in 2008, the company has experienced—some would say suffered—a backlash against glamour, or at least against those qualities that, thanks in part to Zeffirelli, are wrongly perceived as the synonyms of glamour: triviality and meretriciousness.” [Rough and Regie] (Photo: Ken Howard)
La Cieca is delighted to announce that after a long absence Our Own JJ (not pictured) has returned to the pages of Musical America with another entry in his “Rough and Regie” blog— this time comparing Atys with Follies.
“The critical reaction to the Robert Lepage’s new production of Die Walküre at the Met leaves this contrarian reviewer in something of a quandary. Not only was pretty much everybody underwhelmed, but there was a consensus about what (they thought) was wrong: the clunkiness of The Machine, the lack of poetry in the latter part of the…
“It’s fortunate that Lulu at Den Norske Opera was the last stop on the ‘Regietournee,’ because honestly anything after that would have amounted to an anticlimax. If there is a more brilliant director working in opera today than Stefan Herheim, well, maybe I shouldn’t see any of his work, because it might be too much…
Our Own JJ (not pictured) gets the Staatsoper Stuttgart experience off his chest, to the tune of about 4,000 words, in his new blog post at Musical America. Included is a massive and (one hopes) final deconstruction of the Calixto Bieito Parsifal.
Our own JJ (not pictured) has finally begun to unburden himself on the subject of the recent, much-discussed “Regietournee.” For reviews of Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Rusalka and Cosi fan tutte in Berlin, please go to Musical America‘s Rough and Regie. (Photo: Monkia Rittershaus)
Our Own JJ salutes three sister bloggers (of whom only one is female) in his current Rough and Regie column at Musical America.
“A show can get better for a long time without ever getting good.” Our own JJ muses on the revised staging of Tosca on view this season at the Met. [Rough and Regie]
“Decker’s vision of Traviata, like most great productions, combines emotional truth with intellectual rigor—or, rather, there is a synergy between these two qualities that illuminates the entire work.” Our Own JJ takes apart the giant watch to find out what makes it tick, over at Musical America.
“The main culprit here is director Giancarlo Del Monaco (and by extension, his enablers Plácido Domingo, Joseph Volpe and Mrs. Donald Harrington), since, like the other four Del Monaco stagings at the Met in the early 1990s, this Fanciulla concentrates on massive naturalistic sets and superficial coups de theater at the expense of subtle characterization…
Is Our Own JJ turning Neocon? He certainly has some very positive things to say about the “conservative” Don Carlo in his latest “Rough and Regie” offering! [Musical America] (Photograph: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera.)
Our Own JJ delves into the mysteries of time travel—as it relates to opera production, of course. [Musical America]
Our Own JJ‘s heart has been blessed with the sound of Regie, and he’s blogged once more. This time it’s about The Little Foxes at New York Theatre Workshop. [Rough and Regie]
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.
