Les Arts Florissants (lightly) stages two Charpentier rarities as a summer wedding gone wrong.
Supported by an ingenious production and strong performances, Antonia Bembo’s Ercole Amante makes a successful Paris Opera debut.
I can’t say 2025 was my best operagoing year; apart from a superb Fille du régiment, most of my good nights at the opera were decidedly mixed affairs.
Les Arts Florissants present two ravishing programs in Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Christopher Corwin on three stylish sopranos delighting audiences live in New York and on recording in a trio of new releases.
When the birthdays start to pile up in the double digits in big round numbers, you start to examine your past and review what you have done with your life.
What can you say, other than that everything was fab?
The always elegant Véronique Gens has recently returned often to her earliest roots in the French baroque.
Dancing sheep! Flying sheep! Flying sheep who dance!
While seasonally-awkward streams of Messiah abound, Trove Thursday turns instead to Berlioz’s exquisite L’Enfance du Christ from francophone forces including Stéphanie d’ Oustrac, Bernard Richter, Edwin Crossley-Mercer and Nicolas Testé (for once, sans sa femme).
Last night should have seen my favorite of this season’s revivals but instead Trove Thursday must step up with Jean-Marie Leclair’s irresistibly captivating Scylla et Glaucus conducted by Christophe Rousset.
“Trove Thursday” offers Offenbach’s irreverent La Belle Hélène featuring the beauteous Véronique Gens.
“The heavens are telling” begins the famous chorus that ends the first section of The Creation.
Sometimes the fates conspire, preventing an artist from recording the role for which he is his generation’s touchstone.
Armide with a superbly grand Francophone heroine in Karina Gauvin and conducted by the always excellent Ivor Bolton.
Scheming Anne-Sofie von Otter offs her brother and sons before the opera even begins? You bet!
“Trove Thursday” provides a live broadcast of Mozart’s rarely performed cantata Davide Penitente by Les Arts Florissants conducted by William Christie.
I was, to my astonishment, quite bored.
Since its founding 20 years ago, Washington, DC-based Opera Lafayette has devoted its considerable imagination and energy to reviving lesser-known 17th and 18th century French operas.
William Christie’s Les Arts Florissants made a much-anticipated appearance at Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival Saturday performing Theodora.
What must have raced through the mind of the none-too-comely Spanish Infanta when she learned that the opera to be performed during the celebrations for her 1745 wedding to the French Dauphin revolved around the comeuppance of an ugly yet vain water nymph tricked into believing Jupiter was her ardent suitor?
You have only until Sunday to catch the most heart-breaking moments seen on New York City operatic stages this season.
Cecilia Bartoli and Joyce DiDonato are not the only ladies who have recorded recitals this year featuring music from the 17th and 18th centuries.
Almost exactly one hundred years ago on March 18, 1912, the Metropolitan Opera gave its final performance to date of Armide.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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