On Sunday afternoon, husband-and-wife duo Roberto Alagna and Aleksandra Kurzak presented a charming program of operatic favorites from the patio of the Château de la Chèvre d’Or in Èze, France.
Trove Thursday completes its Prévost–trifecta with Puccini’s Manon Lescaut starring Sondra Radvanovsky and (pre-Met) Aleksandrs Antonenko conducted by Riccardo Chailly plus an added Radvanovsky-Puccini bonus: Suor Angelica.
Otto Nicolai’s Il Templario with Juan Diego Flórez, Clémentine Margaine and Luca Salsi.
At Friday’s opening of Otello, there was a good deal of interesting going on, though not all of it necessarily onstage.
The long evening didn’t achieve the degree of celebration it should have.
“Trove Thursday” offers due local Lombardi: one with Renata Scotto and José Carreras, the other with Aprile Millo and Carlo Bergonzi.
He returned. He sang. He didn’t get hanged.
As opera’s reigning tenor-superstar, Jonas Kaufmann can pretty much do whatever he wants and a sizable adoring public will lap it up.
It’s surprising to read that, as of this writing, La fanciulla del west has only had 105 performances at the Metropolitan Opera.
The conclusion of our Fanciulla del West video overview in three parts looks at a trio of performances from the 2010s.
Puccini’s Girl closes out the 20th century and gallops into the 21st.
A heady audience paid top price to pack Carnegie Hall Thursday for just 80 minutes of unstaged Wagner.
Evan clicked over to the his favorite music critic’s weekly column, “Slings and Arias.”
At last, Jesús Halévy had found the right size. The small ecru sweater was buried beneath a stack of extra-larges at the Macy’s on Herald Square.
Touting an austere, governessy program—the hour-and-change Schubert/Müller cycle, Die schöne Müllerin—Jonas Kaufman fulfilled his long-awaited, high-profile return to Carnegie Hall last night.
The tendency to rank—to create subjective lists of best or greatest, or to organize things in ascending or descending order—is a human compulsion.
“Trove Thursday” presents a performance from 40 years ago: an inspired Renata Scotto as Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur.
Is this not Puccini’s greatest opera, his most human, least manipulative?
Today’s offering is an electric performance of Verdi’s early potboiler Attila conducted by Giuseppe Sinopoli.
So, um, I guess we can agree that words are more important than music?
Were La Rondine an IQ test, I’d be in trouble.
>What does a great opera production do, and what does a bad production fail to do?
This is the hardest piece I’ve ever tried to write for parterre.
While composed within a European style, La Fanciulla del West is an opera that manages to present a distinctly American experience.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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