Michael Spyres’s nobly moving Idomeneo wasn’t just a bravura triumph: singing strongly throughout, he brought more colors to his portrayal of the tortured king than I had experienced from others in the Ponnelle production.
72 comments
Sponsored
Advertise on parterre box!
parterre box, “the most essential blog in opera” (New York Times), is now booking display advertising for summer 2022. Join Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Warner Classics and many others in reaching your target audience through parterre box.
It’s nasty world, Shostakovich seems to say, where life alternates between boring and terrifying.
Sondra Radvanovsky has an unconventional voice that is suited to unconventional characters and is best used in rangy, difficult music. The lack of lush beauty was no deficit in depicting Medea’s jealousy and vengeful rage.
By Eli Jacobson
The winners of the evening were the composer Riccardo Zandonai and Teatro Grattacielo which pulled off a near-impossible feat with success.
By Eli Jacobson
The opera The Rake’s Progress, as many people know already, was inspired by a series of engravings and paintings of the same name by William Hogarth, showing the decline of a young man into depravity and insanity.
Riccardo Frizza conducts Nadine Sierra (Lucia), Javier Camarena (Edgardo), Artur Rucinski (Enrico) and Christian Van Horn (Raimondo.)
By La Cieca
The Met brought back 2019 smash Akhnaten last night, with nearly the exact same cast and creative team, and with nearly the same knockout effect of three years ago.
It was Matthew Jocelyn’s libretto, with its disorientingly deconstructive approach to its source text, that gave Brett Dean’s Hamlet its identity.
With no disrespect to Nadine Sierra, who as Lucia acquits herself honorably if not magically in vocal terms, the undisputed cause célèbre here is director Simon Stone.
By David Fox
Saturday’s performance of Le nozze di Figaro at the Met mined the humor from Mozart’s divine setting of Beaumarchais’s play about a crazy day in the Almaviva household.
Nina Stemme’s Elektra always seemed the sanest individual onstage never quite giving over to obsession or hysteria with a good line in mordant sarcasm and contempt.
By Eli Jacobson
I was reminded at the Met’s season premiere of Eugene Onegin Friday night always to expect the unexpected.
Ailyn Pérez makes her role debut as Tatiana opposite Igor Golovatenko in the title role of the urbane nobleman who rejects her, much to his later dismay.
By La Cieca
“Eleonora Buratto will make her role debut as Elisabeth de Valois in Verdi’s Don Carlo in the 2022–23 season, replacing Anna Netrebko for the first five performances of the run.”
By La Cieca
Eleanora Buratto at this fully matured point of her career has a warm, creamy full lyric soprano that has the roundness and sweet warmth of a Freni but can also expand into the spinto power of a Tebaldi.
By Eli Jacobson
While it must be admitted that Elza van den Heever doesn’t have an ideally warm and agile Handel voice, she evidenced fierce control over her instrument and skillfully built a powerful portrait of the courageous Rodelida fighting for her survival.
Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Ségui will lead the Met Orchestra and Chorus and star soloists.
By La Cieca
The Metropolitan Opera announced today “A Concert for Ukraine” on Monday, March 14, at 6:00pm ET, with Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin leading the Met Orchestra and Chorus.
By La Cieca
This sterling revival shows the Metropolitan to be surviving well and in good shape.
By Eli Jacobson
The Met’s new season, including Medea with Sondra Radvanovsky, set parterrian tongues wagging during the month of February 2022.
By La Cieca
In online discussion on “Favorite Opera” and cuts in opera in general, it seems Don Carlos (in its original French title) or Don Carlo (as it is better known in Italian) – with or without the “s” – generally get the most votes both as favorite and as an opera from which deplorable cuts are made.
By Andrew Knapp
Despite having lost its announced Cherubino, conductor and Count (the latter in the midst of rehearsals), the season premiere of Le Nozze di Figaro Saturday afternoon proved to be one of the most enjoyable Met Mozart performances I’ve attended in ages.
At the heart of this success was Quinn Kelsey’s revelatory take on Rigoletto. He was matched, vocally and dramatically, by Rosa Feola’s Gilda—a tour-de-force performance.
The Met’s Cinderella is a charming adaptation of Massenet’s opera. Frothy, fun, and enchanting, it is a magical holiday treat for the whole family to enjoy.
