A stylish and funny Così fan tutte at LA Opera is a pretty glam affair, according to Patrick Mack.
Prompted by Washington Concert Opera’s upcoming Luisa Miller, Chris Cache’s misbehaves five times by offering just the opera’s final act with sopranos from the 1970s, some of whom might be considered “under-appreciated”: Gabriella Tucci, Adriana Maliponte, Renata Scotto, Gilda Cruz-Romo, and Katia Ricciarelli.
Patrick Mack looks back on “a great, nay, historic evening,” Renata Scotto‘s 1981 performance of Il trittico, now newly available on Met Opera on Demand.
The American bass, a fixture of the Metropolitan Opera between 1967 and 2018, was 83.
Following last week’s multiple versions of three prime concert arias, Chris’s Cache concludes its Mozart month by offering more of those special vocal works, this time twenty-five arias for mezzo, tenor or bass, as well as more for soprano.
It was, at least, a jolly good show. Whether or not it actually suited Stravinsky’s music or Auden and Kallman’s text, is another question.
While everyone tries to figure out what on earth Strauss and Hofmannsthal are up to in Die Frau ohne Schatten, now playing at the Met, Chris’s Cache offers a later, simpler, shorter Strauss with three live broadcasts of his “bucolic tragedy” Daphne.
Patrick Mack reviews yet another Puccini album from Jonas Kaufmann
This archly traditional production of La bohème was a little shaky on opening night. It nevertheless had a full complement of sterling individual performances to take us on home.
With Boston Lyric Opera’s largest opera production of the season already well behind us, the one-off semi-staged gala performance of Aïda held on Sunday at Emerson College’s Colonial Theatre to support the company’s vast education and community engagement apparatus, was a particularly enticing entry on the Boston cultural calendar.
It surprises even me how some operas have eluded me in live performance even after lo, these many years. One of them is Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette.
The Richard Tucker Foundation Gala has always been a big annual celebration of the voice with an emphasis on big-voiced singers in big repertoire (not much Wagner usually, though…). Like so many reliable operatic institutions it has struggled for survival after the pandemic.
Happy was I to attend the Celebrity Opera Series presentation Saturday night at BroadStage, mere blocks from my humble abode in Santa Monica as Anglela Gheorghiu was making an eagerly awaited return for the first time since her debut here in 2013.
Patrick Mack on the iconic Ethan Mordden‘s career and his first book on opera in 30 years – and it appears that time has mostly stopped in the Mordden manse.
Judith Malafronte sits down with bass David Leigh who debuts as Rocco in Washington National Opera’s production of Fidelio next week
On this day in 1965 soprano Mirella Freni and tenor Gianni Raimondi made their Metropolitan Opera debuts in La bohème
Boston Lyric Opera’s shows, of late, are often going to war with their texts.
Michael Anthonio crunches the numbers on San Francisco Opera’s recent seasons and goes straight to the top to General Director Matthew Shilvock for a look at where SF Opera has been and where it’s headed
“In over nine years you’ve never posted an opera by Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari,” no one has ever said.
The outdoor recitals that the Metropolitan Opera presents in New York City Parks every summer are a wonderful way to showcase rising young stars and promising beginners from the Met’s Lindemann Program.
Opera took center stage on the final weekend of the Philadelphia Orchestra season.
Quite simply, the singers are not around today who are steeped in the tradition of verismo, or for that matter the later part of the 19th century.
You can imagine my surprise at encountering an almost wholly traditional staging with one teensy difference.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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