Così fan tutte presents a considerable challenge to the modern director.
On this day in 1975 soprano Roberta Peters celebrated the 25th anniversary of her Metropolitan Opera debut, singing Despina.
How does one make a performance of standard opera repertoire like Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro feel “fresh?”
Opera’s latest superstar, Angel Blue, in a compleat and enthralling portrayal, gloriously sung and rivetingly acted.
Saturday August 17 the Merola Opera Program wrapped up its annual Summer Festival with the Merola Grand Finale concert at the War Memorial Opera House.
“Die Zauberflöte is an opera!” “No, it’s the first musical comedy!”
Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt in a 1967 Vienna broadcast appropriately featuring three American stars: John Alexander, Marilyn Zschau, and George London.
Brigitte Fassbaender‘s sound is piquant and, I’d hazard to guess, instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with her work.
All about the life of Lorenzo Da Ponte, but depicted as an opera performed as a dress rehearsal for an opera.
Saturday night, Lyric Opera of Chicago gave us a wonderful evening of vocalism in honoring Renée Fleming’s 25th anniversary at Lyric.
Così fan tutte, Mozart’s final Italian comedy with Lorenzo Da Ponte, is this season’s heaviest lift for Philadelphia’s Academy of Vocal Arts (AVA).
I was shocked to realize I hadn’t seen Don Giovanni at the Met since Michael Grandage’s stultifying production opened in 2011.
The long evening didn’t achieve the degree of celebration it should have.
L’Arlesiana in a vibrant live performance from a dozen years ago with Giuseppe Filianoti, Latonia Moore and Marianne Cornetti.
“The heavens are telling” begins the famous chorus that ends the first section of The Creation.
Those readers who know my musical tastes will not be shocked to find that I have a somewhat conflicted view of Mozart’s operatic works.
Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America provides ample fodder for the legions of amateur opera sleuths seeking to confirm their theory of “Who Killed City Opera?”
The news of Nicholas McGegan’s retirement came as quite a shock to me.
Celebrating its third anniversary and next week’s Met opening, “Trove Thursday” offers a sumptuous banquet of the third and final chapter of divas in the “wrong language.”
August on “Trove Thursday” begins with Midsummer Mezzo Madness featuring a sterling quartet of lower-voiced ladies
This year’s Salzburg Festival opens Saturday with a new production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, an opera often performed elsewhere in translation, so “Trove Thursday” offers two for the price (!) of one.
As the first of the 2018 opera productions last Saturday, the Merola Opera Program chose Mozart’s rarely-performed early serenata, Il re pastore.
“Trove Thursday” turns for the third of Verdi’s four Schiller adaptations to a recent I Masnadieri with risen stars Lisette Oropesa and Russell Thomas.
A very particular tension—between angry political resistance and gloriously sex-positive, buoyantly confidant celebration of queerness—fuels the immense energy of Taylor Mac’s A 24-Hour Decade History of Popular Music.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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