Calling from 2066, Brendan Latimer argues that the best way to save opera might be to just blow up the standard repertoire altogether.
From one Mister Snow to another, I salute him.
The inaugural New Orleans Opera Festival goes big across the Big Easy.
Ahead of their opening in Don Carlo in Dallas tonight, Christopher Corwin chats with Nicole Car and Étienne Dupuis — and offers a special edition of Chris’s Cache!
A stark, sweltering performance of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk shocks the Komische Oper Berlin.
Barrie Kosky’s incredible production widened and universalized the ending.
Wolf Trap Opera’s stirring production of Dialogues des Carmélites was a welcome respite from a brutally hot and humid DC summer.
A new production of Dialogues des Carmélites featuring Anna Caterina Antonacci proves that it’s hard to be an iconoclast in Venice.
A live broadcast from Venice featuring Anna Caterina Antonacci as Madame de Croissy
Turmoil and injustice in the federal government; turmoil and grief in the Catholic Church: the time sure seems right for a staging of Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites.
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.
From a musical perspective, the evening came together admirably. As a work of theater, though, it was as stale as last week’s takeout.
On June 16, San Francisco Opera concluded their excellent Centennial Season with a heartfelt 100th Anniversary Concert, featuring a starry cast, three conductors (including current and former Music Directors) and the SF Opera Orchestra and Chorus.
It doesn’t get more classic than John Dexter‘s Dialogues des Carmélites.
“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays” – Soren Kierkegaard
This week’s Trove Thursday—Kodály’s Háry János in a 1955 RAI broadcast in Italian led by famed Hungarian conductor Ferenc Fricsay—may be a bit brief as C-19 finally arrived last week chez CC.
To celebrate Valerie Masterson‘s turning 85 tomorrow, Trove Thursday offers a second annual birthday salute to the English soprano.
A Trove Thursday Mega-Post © featuring the wonderful American soprano Erin Morley in Orff’s Carmina Burana and Richard Strauss’s Brentano Lieder, plus extended live excerpts from Handel’s Orlando, Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail, and Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots.
Today is Mozart’s 266th birthday and I had already planned a Trove Thursday celebration when I learned that Maria Ewing had died on January 9.
Trove Thursday offers a nearly forgotten 19th century opera with a most marvelous name: Le Roi d’Ys by Éduoard Lalo featuring a superb French cast led by Alain Vanzo, Andrea Guiot, Jane Rhodes and Robert Massard.
Off-and-on since last fall my PPP (Personal Pandemic Project) has been assembling a chronology of the American Opera Society. For 19 years beginning in 1951 it presented a remarkable series of concert performances of works unperformed by either the Met or New York City Opera.
On the 21st of this month Romanian soprano Virginia Zeani will celebrate her 95th birthday and Trove Thursday salutes her versatility with two markedly different 20th century works: Menotti’s The Consul and Mascagni’s Il Piccolo Marat, one of many collaborations with her husband Nicola Rossi-Lemeni.
I watched Greta Gerwig’s heartbreaking, gorgeous, joy-filled explosion of an adaptation of Little Women in about the best way one can, sniffling in the dark with my best friend, the closest person I have to a sister.
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.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
×
Sign up for Parterre’s free newsletter.
Exclusive opera reviews, commentary, and top reads
delivered to your email weekly…ish.