Fifty some years ago I stumbled on to John Barbirolli‘s recording of matchless Elgar & V-Williams music for strings and discovered my go-to conductor for life.
The divine Dame Janet Baker never sang at the Metropolitan, sadly for American audiences.
Les Arts Florissants present two ravishing programs in Brooklyn and Manhattan.
What Opera Lafayette’s Dido and Aeneas lost in gravitas it gained in charm and specificity.
For our first review in a new series, we turn to the new recording of Dido and Aeneas featuring Joyce DiDonato, Michael Spyres and Maxim Emelyanychev leading Il Pomo d’Oro.
Not even howling winds and thunderous rain could dampen the excitement of Bay Area audiences to experience Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen for the first time in the Bay Area at Zellerbach Hall Berkeley last Tuesday, 4 February.
Can György Ligeti‘s only opera be understood as the composer’s own grappling with trauma, death, and memory of a past life?
I confess to being a “bad” dance fan: over the decades I’ve learned that if I don’t love (or at least like) the music, I won’t love the dance.
Those of us in New York City who relish 17th century Italian vocal music were offered an enticing banquet over the past few weeks.
Two short theatrical works and one sacred piece from the beguiling oeuvre of the guy who didn’t write Louise
On the train ride home I was thinking that I don’t want to see or hear Norma ever again.
On Saturday at Alice Tully Hall, Julliard 415, the school’s top-flight period-instrument ensemble, was joined by students from the Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts and Juilliard Drama for a rare semi-staging of King Arthur.
For the season opener, Opera San José decided to explore the class conflict central to Le nozze di Figaro by transporting the opera to India, specifically during the British Raj.
People these days often exclaim “…..is everything!” but often it feels like gross hyperbole. But surely anyone who has seen Mark Morris’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato since it premiered in 1989 would agree that it is indeed everything!
Trove Thursday offers Shostakovich’s 1962 Katerina Izmailova with Australian soprano Marie Collier as its anti-heroine and Jon Vickers as her lover.
Trove Thursday offers Offenbach’s delightful La Grande-duchesse de Gérolstein featuring Jennie Tourel, Laurel Hurley and Martial Singher, led by Arnold Gamson.
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.
Now, through the auspices of the Metropolitan Opera, we have Sonya Yoncheva—and if anything, the diva-dom has been kicked up a notch!
Trove Thursday begins February with two striking versions of Rossini’s Tancredi.
Dame Janet Baker turns 87 tomorrow and Trove Thursday celebrates with Handel’s rare Admeto conducted by the great Sir Anthony Lewis in which Baker’s bold Alceste vies with Sheila Armstrong’s sparkling Antigona for her deluded husband Admeto’s affections.
We can delight in films that make use of motif to give opera-lovers an extra little jiggle.
Over the past week New York City was blessed by two appealing 17th century presentations: John Blow’s Venus and Adonis from Opera Lafayette and La Storia di Orfeo courtesy of the Boston Early Music Festival.
A second Trove Thursday marking the recent passing of Jessye Norman focuses on the soprano’s catholic repertoire with three 20th century works: Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex; Berg’s Altenberg Lieder; and Franck’s Les Béatitudes.
My first-ever Met Sunday opera brought the welcome return of Gluck’s sublime Orfeo ed Euridice in an enchanting afternoon that combined elegant conducting, joyous dancing and Jamie Barton’s extraordinary hero.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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