After success at the Met as Turandot and before a historic Medea, soprano Anna Pirozzi talks to Harry Rose about her voice, her repertoire, and where her “second explosion of career” is taking her.
Supported by an ingenious production and strong performances, Antonia Bembo’s Ercole Amante makes a successful Paris Opera debut.
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.
Grand Tier Grab Bag hearkens back to the days when Sondra Radvanovsky — who is singing no Verdi at all next season — seemed like the Verdi soprano of reference.
Michael Spyres talks to Kevin Ng about his winding path as a baritenor, which composer he wants to conquer next, and how he makes Wagner work in his voice — and in his native Ozarks.
A uniformly strong cast triumphs over a dull production of Don Carlo at the Dallas Opera.
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!
The Ralph Fiennes production of Eugene Onegin at the Paris Opera is just…fine.
Simon Boccanegra has never felt as foreboding or prophetic as it did at a recent performance at La Fenice.
Franz Welser-Möst leads a rigorous, if emotionally staid, performance of Verdi‘s Requiem at Carnegie Hall.
Only the singers, led by Benjamin Bernheim, can salvage a dismal La Damnation de Faust at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées.
Second casts in Don Giovanni and Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera offer mixed blessings.
Rachel Willis-Sørensen and Stephen Costello make their returns to the Met later this month and Grand Tier Grab Bag anticipates their performances by sharing them in the Act II duet from Don Carlo recorded in Munich this spring as well as a taste of Willis-Sørensen’s Liebestod
My recollections of Hurricane Katrina, which made landfall in Louisiana twenty years ago today, come with a pair of odd bookends: it starts with Verdi’s Don Carlo and ends with Puccini’s Il trittico.
Sherrill Milnes sits down with Brendan Latimer to talk about his life, career, and what he hopes to pass along to the next generation
In the 1847 version of Macbeth, the forces of Teatro Nuovo lacked the thunderous punch this music can pack, but provided a pleasant ride
When such a canonically ossified work like Verdi’s Aïda is directed at all (let alone as ambitiously as Damiano Michieletto at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino), it does feel like a completely different opera
Les Brigands at the Paris Opera is an expensive joke that never lands
Claudio Abbado made his Met debut on 7 October 1968 conducting Verdi’s Don Carlo, led five more performances through 14 November, and then never returned. Chris’s Cache offers the only complete recording I’ve run across from that run.
A bleak and somber version of the familiar story by Saint-Réal, mixing facts with fiction, making it even more tragical than the Verdi opera.
Don Carlos returns to the Opéra National de Paris and it’s an unusually happy occasion
Larry Wolff continues his musings on Verdi’s varied career, this time over Giovanna d’Arco at the Teatro Regio in Parma
Revivals of Falstaff in Milan and Don Carlo in Naples have Larry Wolff thinking across the six decades of Verdi‘s career
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.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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