I have a confession and you may need to sit down for it: Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita was one of the gateway drugs to my eventual opera fandom.
Can we start by not using Barbra Streisand as a polestar here?
The Kennedy Center’s Opera House was a white-hot crucible of theatre kid energy on Friday evening for a luxurious 50 Years of Broadway at the Kennedy Center gala.
From the technical standpoint San Francisco Opera’s Billy Budd was pretty much flawless.
Earlier this month I got the opportunity to sample two very different Baltic operas.
Not a few eyebrows arched on social media when L.A. Opera appropriated the hashtag “Fight like a girl” on street level poster adverts all over town for the revival of their 2013 production of Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca.
Since Gilbert and Sullivan remain constant in the light-opera repertory, somewhere between Fledermaus and Les Mis in popular esteem, there must be good reasons their final collaboration, The Grand Duke, is seldom revived.
Packaged with a peek-a-boo cover exposing only Bryn Terfel’s lovely left eye (the effect of turning the page to reveal the Welsh bass-baritone’s head in its entirety brings to mind this Encyclopedia Dramatica entry) and an oddly hip-hop-flavored gray-on-black treatment of the album’s title, Terfel’s Bad Boys seems designed for those who like their divos…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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