Lucia di Lammermoor at La Scala, starring Rosa Feola, proves as airless as this summer’s heatwaves.
He has conducted some of my favorite opera recordings.
Ahead of their opening in Don Carlo in Dallas tonight, Christopher Corwin chats with Nicole Car and Étienne Dupuis — and offers a special edition of Chris’s Cache!
When Angela Meade and Michael Fabiano first sang Lucia together as students at AVA few would have predicted that they would go on to sing Turandot 16 years later.
Sherrill Milnes sits down with Brendan Latimer to talk about his life, career, and what he hopes to pass along to the next generation
Assuming someone else will pick Leyla Gencer‘s legendary “Vil bastarda”, I’ll go with another clip featuring robust audience participation.
Jessica Pratt sings the title role in a live broadcast from Trieste
Well, it’s a clip from Mary Zimmermann‘s production of Lucia di Lammermoor… wait, wait, come back!
Donizetti wrote so much great music, it’s hard to single out a favorite opera, or even a preferred aria!
Some people were introduced to the art form listening to the Met’s NBC broadcasts on a glowing tube radio or watching acid-trip animated adaptations on the BBC or seeing Elmer Fudd sing, “Kill the Wabbit.” I came to opera through simulated drive-by shootings soundtracked by The Marriage of Figaro.
I first heard Patrizia Ciofi in a production of La traviata from Venice. It was a very modern production set in present day, but still she shown through her performance was just incredible.
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 a review by Christopher Corwin, figures from in and around the box react to Pablo Larraín‘s new film Maria
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.
Judith Malafronte on firebrand pedagogues, the old-school singing manual revival, and what many voice teachers are getting wrong.
Lisette Oropesa, a product of the Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Program, has not been seen much on the stage of the Met in recent seasons.
When asked to express some “thoughts” here about Verdi’s Il trovatore, my immediate thought was “hmm… not a lot to think about there.”
I suspect Carolina Uccelli was tough.
In the lead up to LA Opera’s mounting of Turandot on May 18th (hooray!) I thought I’d touch on some of my favorite recordings and new re-masters I’ve discovered. I have them all.
Yes, there were other Giocondas if not of quite the same distinction. Chronologically…
On this day in 1918 Pietro Mascagni and Giovacchino Forzano’s Lodoletta had its United States premiere at the Metropolitan.
Perhaps the greatest souvenir of her art there is.
A revival of Peter Konwitschny’s rightly legendary Don Carlos and Dmitri Tcherniakov’s confounding new Salome: both turned out to be unforgettable!
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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