Falstaff, Verdi’s totally unexpected, final, great comedic roar.
“Has anyone ever seen a truly great production of this opera?”
The grand illusion is that we know it all. From four hundred years of opera, we’ve distilled the worthy survivors.
“Trove Thursday” continues its mini Shakespeare festival with a delightful performance by the New York City Opera of Die Lüstigen Weiber von Windsor.
As portrayed by Vittorio Grigolo, Nemorino was a manic self-absorbed, probably bipolar, stalker who—against all odds and good sense—gets the poor girl.
These days a cadre of voluble opera-goers regularly issues dire warnings that anyone about to attend this or that production at the Met should close her eyes and just listen rather than witness yet another Peter Gelb regie “atrocity.”
A “lone voice in the wilderness” booed Barbara Frittoli’s calamitous Nedda.
Between them, Maria Guleghina, Marcello Giordani, James Morris and John Del Carlo have nearly 150 combined years of service on stage.
“CanCon”, or Canadian Content, is always a concern in Canadian cultural discourse.
Lisette Oropesa sang “The Lost One”—the meaning of “traviata.”
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.
This is the tenth season of the Met’s HD broadcasts, not that I would know it.
Homer, inspired by many a muse, sang not of sequels to his Iliad.
The opening night of the Metropolitan Opera of September 1972 was supposed to be the dawn of a new era.
The Metropolitan Opera yesterday afternoon was an uncommonly cozy place, as the auditorium was packed to the rafters with friends and family members of the nine National Council Audition Finalists.
My memory is fading but the events I recall most vividly of the last season seem largely to have been concert performances.
The Little Opera Theater of New York (LOTNY) is presenting a double-cast run of two of Floyd’s early one-acts, Slow Dusk and Markheim.
Wednesday brought the Met’s “real” season opener, an indelible, indispensable night at the opera: a starry revival of Verdi’s Macbeth crowned by Anna Netrebko’s demented Lady.
The little opera companies of New York are like chanterelles.
In recent years the enterprising Dell’Arte Opera Ensemble has brightened the usually arid weeks of August in New York City with some worthy operatic showcases for young singers.
Falstaff, Verdi’s final opera, is exuberantly inventive, bubbling and roiling with ideas the 79-year-old composer was too impatient to develop.
It may have taken most of Verdi’s canon to do it, but the “Tutto Verdi” collection finally manages to do justice to Verdi in his last two operas.
Giuseppe and I have always had a complicated relationship.
Based on reliable reports about reshuffling of the Met’s repertoire for the 2013-14 season, the only reasonable conclusion is that James Levine will never return to conduct with the company.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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