Yuval Sharon‘s production of The Excursions of Mr. Brouček shoots for the moon — and lands somewhat limply on Lake Constance.
Christopher Corwin speaks to rising bass-baritone Le Bu about his journey from Yancheng, China to the Met (with a stop in Wichita) and what important roles await him.
In an all-Mozart program with the San Francisco Symphony, Golda Schultz shows that her soubrette days are behind her.
This is one of my favorite operas, and visually and story telling-wise, you can’t beat this production.
I suppose Der fliegende Holländer is my favorite Wagner opera — a riveting masterpiece from start to finish, dramatically and musically.
Lise Davidsen‘s singular Senta dominates the forces of the Norwegian National Opera in a roiling new recording of Der fliegende Holländer out now on Decca Classics
This performance of Mahler’s Symphony N°8 at the Bozar in Brussels will probably be my last ever Mahler concert.
Later this month the Met at last revives its striking Herbert Wernicke production of Die Frau ohne Schatten, prompting a Chris’s Cache preview of three live recordings of Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s fanciful if knotty masterpiece.
Washington National Opera rounded out its season opening weekend with a one-night-only performance entitled “Gods & Mortals: A Celebration of Wagner” the evening after the premiere of its new production of Fidelio.
“Let’s start at the very beginning” of Kent Nagano’s pioneering complete Ring project which was recently discussed here in depth in Montagu James’s review of Die Walküre.
Dmitri Tcherniakov’s interpretation of Wagner’s Der Fliegende Höllander presents an engrossing character study about Senta and the Dutchman’s struggles against their insular community’s stifling conformism.
I’m old enough to remember when Yannick Nézet-Séguin could do no wrong.
In 1982 I saw Turandot at the San Francisco Opera, the year after I became an opera fan, and it was my first live opera.
Rachel Willis-Sørensen might be the greatest American soprano right now who doesn’t sing much in America.
My sole live encounter with Seiji Ozawa coincided with his final appearances at the Metropolitan Opera, where he conducted its 2008 revival of Tchaikovsky’s Pikovaya Dama.
I’ve never had a better time in an opera house.
Instead of following the story, we in the audience spend most of the evening thinking “What?? Why is that happening?”
This Holländer offers neither a clear narrative vision for the work nor a sense of turbocharged drama; it simply sits on the Met’s cavernous stage as a dull gray mass.
After attending three Met Lohengrins I’ve gone into Wagner withdrawal waiting for the upcoming Der Fliegende Holländer.
Diva November meets Wagner December when Chris’s Cache this week offers Régine Crespin as both Elisabeth in Tannhäuser and Senta in Der Fliegende Holländer via a pair of American pirates from the 1960s.
While it must be admitted that Elza van den Heever doesn’t have an ideally warm and agile Handel voice, she evidenced fierce control over her instrument and skillfully built a powerful portrait of the courageous Rodelida fighting for her survival.
Last night’s cast of Die Meistersinger at the Met, dominated by the irascible, unbeatable duo of Michael Volle and Johannes Martin Kränzle as Sachs and Beckmesser, did much to enliven Otto Schenk’s creaky, nearly 30-year-old production.
Remember that time you went to the opera and the whole evening was like magic? Saturday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion probably ranks among my greatest nights in the theater and I’m finding the superlatives in my thesaurus inadequate to the task.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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