Hansel and Gretel might just be the best thing the Met has done so far this season.
“Trove Thursday” celebrates the thrilling Finnish soprano Karita Matilla in the ultimate diva role.
The principal cast members for the week’s Aida are all Wagnerians: Birgit Nilsson, Sándor Kónya, Rita Gorr and Cornell MacNeil.
A poster outside Carnegie Hall proclaimed “Mahler Well Met” and to some degree it proved to be true.
An outstanding performance of Weber’s Euryanthe to share on “Trove Thursday.”
Met audiences might have to wait a very long time for Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
The wild tempest that whipped and drenched the audience as it exited the Met after Tuesday’s season premiere of Wagner’s Der Fliegende Holländer mirrored the finer features of the evening.
Leonie Rysanek, would have turned 90 today.
Missy Mazzoli, a 36-year-old composer from Brooklyn, has created the most startling and moving new American opera in memory.
“Trove Thursday” offers a Der Fliegende Holländer from New York City Opera featuring the underrated American soprano Johanna Meier.
Puccini’s Madama Butterfly with an unexpected heroine: the electrifying Julia Varady, seduced and abandoned by the suavely ardent Giacomo Aragall.
This week, I offer you a classic rendition of Richard Strauss’ tale of the House of Atreus starring Ursula Schröder-Feinen, Astrid Varnay, Leonie Rysanek, Theo Adam, and Hans Hopf under Karl Böhm’s direction.
Sir Richard Eyre’s new Manon Lescaut at the Met Friday night demonstrated no particular aptitude for opera.
On Wednesday, the still-active, still radiant Virginia Zeani turns 90.
If you had told me 20 years ago that at some point in the future I would have over 550 of the Metropolitan Opera’s performances, audio and video, at my command with the touch of a button I would say my eulogy had just been read and I’d been taken to my reward.
Anja Silja staked a claim as a leading Senta of her era with a series of searing performances of Der Fliegende Holländer while in her early twenties.
“Disciplined and intelligent.”
It seems almost comical to think now but the designer-director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, who died in 1988, was at one time considered the height of regie-theatre scandal.
What we have here is the grandest opera never heard.
Could Marek Janowski do for Wagner what the early music movement did for the Baroque and Classical repertory?
For better or worse, Decca’s new Norma recording
will ultimately be embraced—or dismissed—by those reacting directly to Cecilia Bartoli’s controversial portrayal.
There has never been a successful vampire musical—so they say. But that’s just not true.
I have been tossing and turning over La Cieca’s most recent assignment for me: a CD of Wagner’s Der Fliegende Holländer based on a performance live in concert from November 13, 2010. The anxiety mainly stems from the fact that, horror to say, I am no Wagnerite. I know that sect of opera buffs has…
You may recall, cher public, that a few weeks ago La Cieca challenged you to identify the blurbs for that new picture book (James Levine: 40 Years at The Metropolitan Opera, and yes, it’s available on Amazon!) Where was I, oh, yes. Anyway, La Cieca supplied three of the back cover blurbs and you were…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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