On the train ride home I was thinking that I don’t want to see or hear Norma ever again.
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.
Following new productions of Tosca in 2017, Adriana Lecouvreur in 2018, and the Anna Netrebko-led Puccini orgy of 2019, New Year’s Eve at the Met has come to signify that verismo, as this school tends to be known, is still kicking.
In the last weeks of January, as the Metropolitan Opera season wound to a close (prior to the winter hiatus) two striking sopranos were thrust into the limelight.
Now, through the auspices of the Metropolitan Opera, we have Sonya Yoncheva—and if anything, the diva-dom has been kicked up a notch!
“The Met Stars Live in Concert performance featuring soprano Sonya Yoncheva, which was rescheduled for this Saturday, November 28, has now been moved to Saturday, February 27, 2021, as Ms. Yoncheva is still ill (with a non-Covid illness).” Thus speaks the Met’s press department.
[via Twitter]
Ardent Angel Blue will jump into performances vacated by the collapsible Sonya Yoncheva at La Scala.
“Couple of hours ago at home, I was preparing for the show, when suddenly I collapsed.”
Here’s a quick sprint through some recent (and a few maybe not-so-very-recent) Handel CDs that have been stacking up.
Sonya Yoncheva dons the mantle of Cherubini’s Medée this afternoon at 1:05 PM.
The frequently-omniscient Future Met Wiki has recently vouchsafed a few morsels about upcoming Met seasons.
La Cieca, fashion arbiter though she may be, cannot figure out what is going on with this day-to-evening (and then some) look Sonya Yoncheva is flaunting.
Michael Fabiano and Sonya Yoncheva star in Great Performances at the Met’s telecast of La Traviata tonight at 9:00 PM.
Sonya Yoncheva will make her role debut in the Met’s new production of Puccini’s Tosca next season replacing Kristine Opolais.
“Et d’ailleurs, les costumes me font ressembler à un côté d’une maison.”
A big chunk of the last act of Norma.
La Cieca’s familiar spirits have been turning their generally steely eyes to the Future Met Wiki, attempting in vain to make sense of impending repertoire and casting at Casa Gelb.
While the celebrity-studded, expensively-dressed audience gathered for the gala opening of the Metropolitan Opera’s 2015-2016 season seemed genuinely enthralled by Monday evening’s performance of Otello, it was more likely swept away by the power of Verdi’s genius than by Bartlett Sher’s puzzling, inert new production.
I expected something lovely, but what I beheld was nothing short of magnificent.
At what moment does a “rising star” become simply a “star”?
Every year I say I’m not going to another La Bohème because I’ve seen this too many times.
“Sonya Yoncheva will sing her first-ever staged performances of Mimì in Puccini’s La Bohème at the Met on November 14, 20, 24, 28, December 1 and 5, replacing Kristine Opolais.
Sonya Yoncheva will make her North American role debut as Violetta in Verdi’s La Traviata at the Met this January.
