Gone are the halcyon days of tradition and ritual.
Endlessly extricating her from existing contracts then negotiating new ones must make being Sonya Yoncheva’s manager the hardest job in the music business.
From up close, the miked opera singer can be a bit tough to take.
Anticipation of events like the Metropolitan Opera’s 50th Anniversary bash turns me back into the newly opera-soused kid who begged his parents to let him watch the highlights of the Bing Gala on the family color television.
Were La Rondine an IQ test, I’d be in trouble.
In The Gypsy Baron (Der Zigeunerbaron), currently (through Sunday) enjoying a revival by the Manhattan School of Music Opera Theater, you get Strauss waltzes and patriotic marches.
Silent Night is in a sense a giant middle finger raised against the conventional wisdom that musical sophistication requires inscrutability.
Let’s call this meeting to order. My name is Patrick and I’m a boxset-aholic.
Revive is a manifesto of sorts, declaring Elina Garanca’s intentions for the new direction in her career.
Today’s Rusalka video overview covers filmed performances of Dvorák’s opera since 2010.
Mortality is ugly—it smells, it makes uncomfortable noises, it takes its time; and then there is the overwhelming sense of dread and helplessness.
With Christmas Eve 2016 falling on a Saturday, the Met offers contrasting orchestral splendors at noon and 6 p.m.
>What does a great opera production do, and what does a bad production fail to do?
With the performance of Dessì we move onto a different plane than the other singers.
Call me old fashioned, but when I go to the opera, I go to hear beautiful singing.
That little place just two hours from the city is on the list of things I shall never understand, like the plot of Parsifal.
I realized I hadn’t yet posted anything featuring one of the “Queens of the Bootlegs,” so I now correcting that with Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West starring the great Magda Olivero as Minnie.
“Trove Thursday” presents Sena Jurinac‘s radiant portrayal of Janacek’s Jenufa opposite the implacable Kostelnicka of Martha Mödl.
Los Angeles saw the first U.S. performance of Giacomo Puccini’s snow-dusted weeper in 1897 just a year after the young Toscanini led the prima in Turin.
Too often I allow my memories of great singers to be dulled by late career behavior, delving into unsuitable roles or just plain laziness.
Well, when the New York Times goes into a tizzy, you know times are hard, cher public, but your doyenne is ready to ride to the rescue, hakeo don’t panic.
With six leads in Gioconda, you can reliably hope that three or four will be worth listening to, or why would they have revived the opera?
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.”
There is a self-effacing quality to Jonas Kaufmann’s concert film An Evening with Puccini.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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