This spring’s Talk of the Town is craving your operatic dominance and your submissions by January 15.
Christmas kitsch is great fun, of course, but Christmas can be just as wonderful without it, as this great singer proves.
Christmas should be over the top, opulent, a little sad, utterly sincere, and ever so vulgar.
Auntie Joan goes the whole nine yards on this one and invigorates it to make it work in a way as no one else can.
Like Type 2 Diabetes, symptoms of YAS (Yuletide Aversion Syndrome) commonly creep up on gay men after manopause.
This month’s theme – “Opera singers celebrate the holidays” – conjured up a vast lexicon of memories of growing up in the 1960s and early 1970s.
“It duz… not… SCHVING!!!!”
One of my favorite Christmas recordings is Kathleen Battle‘s A Christmas Celebration.
Gabriela Beňačková is featured in a wonderful Christmas album called Carolling, released by Supraphon in the early 1990s.
“O Divine Redeemer” is, I suppose, more properly an Advent or Lenten piece. But when Renata Tebaldi asks us to hear her “croy”, who can resist?
Anna Moffo, in glorious voice and looking gorgeous as usual, sings “O Holy Night,” one of my favorite Christmas tunes.
I love Tabori—his staging of Bluebeard’s Castle and Erwartung are among my five favorite opera performances of all time.
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.
Ha ha ha, so gorgeous!
The production is based on the Elisabeth Fritzl story, and it really made me reconsider this opera’s fairy tale storyline.
I never thought an opera production could be this well done.
Les Camilles both agree on this one. And WHY? You ask??!
Barbara Hannigan‘s Lulu is the greatest live performance I’ve seen.
Who are the rats? Why are their tails getting longer? Is Lohengrin a rat trying to free himself from a maze?
At every turn, the preconceived notion of Trovatore was denied, right down to the boxing during the ballet.
With Cesare’s old-school rules of war set spinning by Cleopatra’s Bollywood-inspired manipulations, a Da Capo aria has never felt more dangerous
Barrie Kosky’s incredible production widened and universalized the ending.
The opening of John Dexter‘s production of The Dialogues of the Carmelites (originally produced in English) is one of the most arresting and memorable images I have ever seen.
In a lifetime of opera going I suppose I have seen many transformative productions, but this recent one seems, in the light of the increasing disaster enfolding this country, uncannily pertinent.
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.
