Philadelphia’s Academy of Vocal Arts, a top-tier advanced training program for singers launching professional careers, always sends off their artists in style.
A heady audience paid top price to pack Carnegie Hall Thursday for just 80 minutes of unstaged Wagner.
Munich’s Bayerische Staatsoper’s victory lap at Carnegie Hall concluded Thursday night with a sumptuous Der Rosenkavalier spectacularly conducted by Kirill Petrenko
“Trove Thursday” offers a vernal take on Massenet’s magical Cendrillon (in English) featuring two sopranos: Margaret Price—not yet 30—and Anne Pashley, then just 35.
A Met HD cinema broadcast of Puccini’s Tosca on Saturday, 27 January, concluded the first run of a production marked by upheaval in the ten months between its announcement and its New Year’s Eve premiere.
Der Rosenkavalier (on Blu-ray and DVD) is from the Met HD broadcast which also happened to be the final performance of the run, becoming a true souvenir of the farewells of its two leading ladies.
“Trove Thursday” celebrates with Carlos Kleiber conducting Johann Strauss, Jr.’s Die Fledermaus.
Washington National Opera’s lukewarm Alcina, unthreateningly misguided in both its musical and theatrical values, made little impact.
Denigrating myths about opera abound.
The tendency to rank—to create subjective lists of best or greatest, or to organize things in ascending or descending order—is a human compulsion.
Erin Wall was an elegant, warm, and sensitive Arabella.
Arabella with Wolfgang Sawallisch conducting a prime-time 1980s Munich cast.
Last night was my fourth or fifth wade into the slough of Bartlett Sher’s production of Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann at the Met since its premiere in 2009.
For those who thought opera to be a rare enough commodity that there shouldn’t be duels, Saturday night in the Berkshires offered the odd rebuttal.
A live broadcast of the prologue to Ariadne auf Naxos featuring Julia Varady, a favorite sopranos in a role she sang only rarely.
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.”
If everything you see is great, you are either new to opera or chronically easy to please.
“Trove Thursday” pays tribute to the great German bass Kurt Moll
“Did you ever have the feeling that you wanted to go, and then you had the feeling that you wanted to stay?” This soul-searching question is likely running through the mind of Renée Fleming.
Is there a more gorgeous male voice before the public today than Peter Mattei’s? Has Anna Netrebko ever sounded better?
“If you’ve overdosed on Der Rosenkavalier in the past week, let’s go back a few years to Richard Strauss’ first operatic hit: Salome.
Any production of Der Rosenkavalier that can transform the usually excruciating first half of the third act into a hilarious romp already has my vote.
We leave behind the Vienna of the 1740s, the time of breeches, fans and white wigs.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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