A.J. Goldmann on the Salzburg Festival’s revolving doors, both in its administration and in its delectable production of Il viaggio a Reims.
Offenbach‘s Robinson Crusoé is salvaged from obscurity.
Shirin Neshat‘s Aïda in Paris is a typical instance of what happens when an artist is brought in to direct an opera.
Les Brigands at the Paris Opera is an expensive joke that never lands
Some of my blog‘s habitués (they do exist) will know that I sometimes quote the people around me at the opera.
Operettas always seem to be on the menu for New Year’s Eve, so Chris’s Cache joins in with a broadcast of Offenbach’s delicious La Grande-duchesse de Gérolstein featuring Stephanie Blythe in the title role.
June is long gone. It was truly a month of excellence and exuberance here in San Francisco, coupled with cozy and inviting weather, as if to make up for the extended winter.
“Trove Thursday” offers Offenbach’s irreverent La Belle Hélène featuring the beauteous Véronique Gens.
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.
Odyssey Opera’s Ägyptische Helena was a beautifully executed production of a flawed opera.
Zelmira, a work of 1822, was the last of the eight operas Rossini composed for the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, then the largest opera house in Italy—perhaps in Europe.
Those who want a rethought Lucia to allow the heroine more sense of agency will be especially confounded at Laurent Pelly’s reading.
Trove Thursday wades into the murky musicological waters of Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann..
When Norman Lebrecht is declaring on an almost daily basis that classical music is dead, it’s perhaps heartening that four of today’s prominent tenors have recently released what might be called fluff/vanity albums.
For better or worse, Decca’s new Norma recording
will ultimately be embraced—or dismissed—by those reacting directly to Cecilia Bartoli’s controversial portrayal.
The best joke in Offenbach’s delicious Orphée aux Enfers is the opening premise: Orphée and Eurydice are miserably married, due to her utter boredom with his old-fashioned music.
For those of us newly accustomed to watching The Met: Live in HD cinecasts and similar events in our neighborhood theaters, it is easy to forget that opera as cinema was once a very different experience. Ritter Blaubart, one in a series of seven films by Walter Felsenstein recently released on DVD, shows us the…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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