The opera is life affirming, but also recognizes that life comes to an end.
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.
My comfort opera is Elektra. Yes, you read correctly, Elektra.
The old Nilsson/Corelli radio checks from the 1960s are a reminder that what this opera needs are VOICES.
Other queens have been richer of voice or more dramatically compelling, but none I have ever heard succeeds in sounding something other than human.
Conchita Supervia (1895-1936), Spanish mezzo, never fails to lift my spirits, in practically everything she sang.
Suck it, Joseph Kerman: Puccini’s “Shabby Little Shocker” has outlived you and will probably bury us all.
Wozzeck. Yes, really.
From an early age I knew I should have been French.
We will have two Bellinis in new productions, with the best possible casts that can be assembled.
Messiah remains ubiquitous, but several of Handel’s other superb English oratorios will be given enticing performances during the 2025-26 season.
Next season I am looking forward to performances of Andrea Chénier at the Met.
Atlanta Opera’s Götterdämmerung (Stage Direction Tomer Zvulun with set design Erhard Rom).
Maggio Musicale Fiorentino presents John Adams’s The Death of Klinghoffer next May.
Palm Beach Opera has listed its 3 operas for next year — La bohème, The Pearl Fishers, and Rigoletto — but has not listed any casting yet!
If you haven’t yet sounded off for this fall’s The Talk of the Town, what on earth are you waiting for?
Corinne Winters will take on a trio of roles in Puccini’s Trittico in Houston.
I am looking forward to seeing The Greatest Thing Ever as Gounod‘s Juliette, a role I have never seen her in, at the Berlin Staatsoper on 6 November.
I am pretty excited to add coverage of nearby performances while I am getting settled here in Southern California.
Thank you, Leon Botstein, for giving us a chance to hear the Berlioz adaptation of Der Freischütz (or Freyschütz).
My next production will be Aïda with the Israel Philharmonic conducted by Zubin Mehta.
It’s always interesting to hear the master of one role in an opera take on another one.
Kaija Saariaho’s gifts for vocal and instrumental writing and the uncanniness of the themes she musicalized resonate with unforced power
De Materie (1989) by Louis Andriessen is unsuitable for home listening, so I’m really looking forward to hearing the great Asko|Schönberg ensemble perform it live in Rotterdam next season.
‘Expect nothing and you’ll never be disappointed.’
