Verdi’s Stiffelio goes Amish in Vienna, featuring a stellar Luciano Ganci in the title role.
Grand Tier Grab Bag hearkens back to the days when Sondra Radvanovsky — who is singing no Verdi at all next season — seemed like the Verdi soprano of reference.
Old pros Gregory Kunde and Pier Luigi Pizzi anchor a new staging of Stiffelio co-produced by three theaters in Emilia-Romagna.
By the time the curtain rose on Verdi’s Luisa Miller last Sunday in Washington Concert Opera’s final show of the season, the originally announced line-up was about as accurate as a federal agency org chart from February.
Prompted by Washington Concert Opera’s upcoming Luisa Miller, Chris Cache’s misbehaves five times by offering just the opera’s final act with sopranos from the 1970s, some of whom might be considered “under-appreciated”: Gabriella Tucci, Adriana Maliponte, Renata Scotto, Gilda Cruz-Romo, and Katia Ricciarelli.
Larry Wolff continues his musings on Verdi’s varied career, this time over Giovanna d’Arco at the Teatro Regio in Parma
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.
When asked to express some “thoughts” here about Verdi’s Il trovatore, my immediate thought was “hmm… not a lot to think about there.”
Lyric Opera of Chicago has opened its new season with a revival of its tried and true 2006 production of Verdi’s sixteenth opera, Rigoletto, one of his most tuneful and dramatic works (I attended the Sunday matinée performance).
After a century of searching, the world has perhaps finally found a definitive Magda in ethereal soprano Ailyn Pérez.
Since I began regularly attending performances at Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1999, I have been a great admirer of director Francesca Zambello’s productions.
Amilcare Ponchielli’s La Gioconda might not be a perfect opera (though I don’t see why not) but it is one of my favorites…
It is a measure of Verdi’s genius that throughout the four rambling acts, his musical invention in the service of creating characters never failed him.
I’ve argued with myself for many years as to which was my favorite opera by Giuseppe Verdi, La forza del destino or Don Carlos. The latter finally won out especially after studying it in depth, but in the long run, it is the music of Forza that I love the most.
A revival of Peter Konwitschny’s rightly legendary Don Carlos and Dmitri Tcherniakov’s confounding new Salome: both turned out to be unforgettable!
Anna Bolena might be the earliest of Donizetti’s operas that might have name recognition to a non-specialist audience.
It was thrilling to see and hear Will Crutchfield’s insights come to life onstage in performance when Teatro Nuovo performed Poliuto at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center Wednesday July 19.
After putting a hiatus on their awards in 2020 and 2021 (for reasons that are all too well-known to all of us), the Richard Tucker Foundation Gala returned on Sunday evening November 13 honoring soprano Angel Blue the 2022 Award winner.
On Thursday June 30th, San Francisco Opera closed their summer season with a one-night-only special concert celebrating Eun Sun Kim’s first season as the Caroline H. Hume Music Director, in an aptly named concert “Eun Sun Kim Conducts Verdi.”
In the last weeks of January, as the Metropolitan Opera season wound to a close (prior to the winter hiatus) two striking sopranos were thrust into the limelight.
Who’s been hiding tenor Benjamin Bernheim from me all this time?
The American Opera Society introduced many important singers to New York City audiences, but few were as controversial as the Greek soprano Elena Souliotis; Trove Thursday offers her local debut (at age 23) in Anna Bolena with Marilyn Horne, Janet Baker, Plácido Domingo and Carlo Cava.
Following last week’s Golden Cockerel, Trove Thursday offers another classic Russian opera not in Russian: Borodin’s Fürst Igor with Nelly Miricioiu, Marjana Lipovsek, Bodo Brinkmann, Evgeny Nesterenko, Robert Schunk and Sergei Koptchak conducted by Mark Ermler.
For those pining for Puccini with the Met out of commission. Trove Thursday steps up with the composer’s brief first opera Le Villi with Krassimira Stoyanova, José Cura and Franz Grundheber, led by Simone Young.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
×
Sign up for Parterre’s free newsletter.
Exclusive opera reviews, commentary, and top reads
delivered to your email weekly…ish.