I so don’t get why any company in the Anglophone world ever bothers to perform Continental operetta in English.
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.
When I first encountered Joyce DiDonato in the early 2000s, I found her to be the case of an extraordinary technique and intelligent artistry supporting a rather ordinary voice.
My contention here is more general than just a critique of an opera, a composer, or a singer. I argue that one cannot be a truly legendary artist unless one sings NEW MUSIC.
Mere days remain to make your voice heard for this summer’s The Talk of the Town!
Parsifal just gives me the creeps – a muddy maundery concoction that wallows in faux religiosity, a creepy view of sin, and naïve redemption.
I just don’t get why anyone takes Mario Lanza seriously as “the tenor of the century” and so forth.
The ultimate in Diva worship – where she can do no wrong.
Nothing helped me understand Verdi better than Alessandro Manzoni‘s I promessi sposi.
I first read Edith Hamilton‘s classic book on Greek mythology about sixty years ago.
What better beach read than a juicy diva autobiography?
The earliest days of recording told by F.W. Gaisberg, the man who recorded Patti, Melba, Moreschi, and Tamagno among many others.
Not really an opera book but, c’mon, it’s Bach.
I did not expect Dorothy Kirsten‘s autobiography to be so rewarding a read: I did so twice.
A reminder to relax and refresh this summer by sharing your innermost operatic thoughts for The Talk of the Town
A juicy, guilty pleasure read!
According to the memoirs of Alma Mahler, her third husband, Franz Werfel used to wander around the cafés of Paris with one of his chums, singing arias from obscure Verdi operas at the top of their lungs until the management would ask them to move on.
Giovanni Verga‘s short story (which he adapted as a play with Giuseppe Giacosa) provides the basis for Mascagni‘s famous opera.
Alex Ross wrote an exciting, gorgeously detailed examination of, for better or worse, Ricky’s far reaching influence on music, theatre, architecture, film, literature, mental illness, Satanism, Homosexuality, and rough sex.
Vishnevskaya writes rather as she sings.
With tenth anniversary productions of Fellow Travelers, the heart wrenching gay romance opera by composer Gregory Spears and librettist Greg Pierce, due to grace several major U.S. companies next season, what better way to commemorate Pride Month than by reading Thomas Mallon’s 2007 historical novel on which it’s based?
Julian Budden‘s masterful, three-volume analysis of the entire Verdi oeuvre is fascinating reading.
Although presented as an overview of the performance of Italian opera from the first half of the 19th century, Divas and Scholars is really an impassioned defense of musicology as a discipline and of Italian opera as a subject worthy of scholarly attention.
If you love the astonishing vocal works of J. S. Bach, John Eliott Gardiner’s 2013 book is a deeply rewarding read.
