At the Metropolitan Opera on Friday night, an otherwise undistinguished Traviata was salvaged by an astonishing performance from Aleksandra Kurzak, whose Violetta was an incontrovertible triumph.
On this day in 1912 Pietro Mascagni‘s Lodoletta had its United States premiere at the Metropolitan with Geraldine Farrar and Enrico Caruso in the leads.
On a new Opus Arte video, Ermonela Jaho is at the absolute peak of her powers both vocally and interpretively.
Little Shop of Horrors loses its necessary edge when it’s wrested from the gritty world of its creation.
Luisa Miller snowballs toward disaster and death.
When soprano Yihan Duan started to sing her aria, you could feel an almost electric charge that something special was happening.
The Philadelphia Orchestra’s opening night concert, for better or worse, was not a gala evening starring Plácido Domingo.
Following classic recordings documenting the work of Karl Böhm and Herbert von Karajan. Orfeo’s 150 Years Wiener Staatsoper box moves on to new releases that are seeing their first incarnation on an officially available disc.
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.
Trove Thursday offers Bellini’s La Sonnambula with Anna Moffo (San Francisco 1960) and Anna Netrebko (Vienna 2006).
The Glimmerglass Festival premiered a searing examination of race, identity, and the fraught relationship between communities of color and law enforcement. Blue, with a score by Jeanine Tesori and libretto by Tazewell Thompson.
La Traviata offered a cast of fresh debutantes and an uncommonly strong musical performance that could hardly be bettered.
Amore Opera, an old-fashioned, adventurous little company that performs ambitious and sometimes delectably obscure but worthy repertory at the Riverside Theatre, is now (through Sunday) presenting Un ballo in maschera.
Minnesota Opera’s stab at boosting revenue with extra performances of something surefire never caught fire.
Sunday’s “Rising Stars in Concert”, featuring the Ryan Opera Center ensemble and members of the Lyric Opera Orchestra, was a stirring and entertainingly musical afternoon.
Michael Mayer‘s production of La traviata at the Met is so timid, so devoid of insight, so cynically pandering and gaudy that I hardly feel like it even matters what I think of the performances of the current cast.
It’s been a rough winter in Chicago, and an especially rough one for lead singers at Lyric Opera of Chicago
Sixty years ago today, Berg’s Wozzeck was first performed at the Metropolitan Opera.
Sondra Radvanovsky returned for her 29th Met Aïda Thursday night (but only her second Aïda.)
Those of us who were hoping for “a star is born” performance were, alas, disappointed.
When a work is named for its lovers one might legitimately expect that pair to dominate its performance but in my experience that is never the case with Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande.
The year is 2017. To Violetta, a role she sang first in 1994, Anna bids farewell.
A 1994 role debut as Violetta.
I wondered if there truly is a future for opera other than as an overpriced museum piece for an aging audience who likes their sets lavish, their productions non-challenging, and their singers telegenic.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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