Old opera productions at the end of their performing life can be sad affairs.
Welcome, beloveds, to the Jessye Norman Memorial Museum. I’ll be the docent for your tour today.
Angel Blue‘s refulgent, lush soprano blooms as Violetta’s vocal lines broaden and soar.
Anticipating Leontyne Price’s 96th birthday on February 10, Chris’s Cache presents the American diva in an epic collection of live performances.
Step aside, Texas: “Everything is bigger at Aida” is the motto of the Met’s second attempt at retiring Sonja Frisell’s colossal production.
After putting a hiatus on their awards in 2020 and 2021 (for reasons that are all too well-known to all of us), the Richard Tucker Foundation Gala returned on Sunday evening November 13 honoring soprano Angel Blue the 2022 Award winner.
On this day in 1951 the Metropolitan Opera opened its season with a new production of Aida.
On this day in 1924, the Metropolitan Opera presented La bohème, a performance visiting critic Ernest Newman didn’t seem to like one bit.
On this day in 1998 the Metropolitan Opera presented a new production of Le nozze di Figaro featuring Cecilia Bartoli as Susanna.
These are my findings and opinions (and I welcome rebuttals)!
On Thursday June 30th, San Francisco Opera closed their summer season with a one-night-only special concert celebrating Eun Sun Kim’s first season as the Caroline H. Hume Music Director, in an aptly named concert “Eun Sun Kim Conducts Verdi.”
Gabriela Benacková, one of Trove Thursday’s favorite sopranos, turns 75 tomorrow, so we celebrate with two rare complete Verdi portrayals.
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.
We have two reasons for celebrating Jessye Norman and the first is a release on the BBC / London Philharmonic Orchestra label of a Richard Strauss concert.
In any case, we are now in the Queen’s garden of the Palace in Madrid. It is the day before the coronation of King Philip. Coronation? What coronation?
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.
Lyric Opera of Chicago scored a smashing success on Sunday with its “Verdi Voices” concert, featuring soprano Tamara Wilson, tenor Russell Thomas, and Lyric Music Director Enrique Mazzola conducting Members of the Lyric Opera Orchestra in what might be termed a program of Verdi’s Greatest Hits.
Don Carlos is my favorite Verdi opera, and I’m always in favor of including the most music. But it can be a dizzying task to keep track of all the options.
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.
In an era when the Metropolitan Opera cannot cast an Aida, Trovatore or Forza consistently, New Amsterdam Opera managed to cast large, attractive and fully technically capable voices in all the cruelly demanding principal roles in I Vespri Siciliani!
After the break the ladies stepped up their game so much that it elevated the night into legendary status: definitely one for the books!
Live opera returns to Lincoln Center when Teatro Nuovo presents Il Barbiere di Siviglia on July 27 and 28.
Lately I’ve been loving listening to Régine Crespin, prompting Trove Thursday to celebrate the great French soprano with private in-house recordings of two of her important non-Met North American appearances.
Trove Thursday celebrates Christa Ludwig with live excerpts from 1955 through 1982.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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