Lucia di Lammermoor at La Scala, starring Rosa Feola, proves as airless as this summer’s heatwaves.
One Italian soprano continues to save the day in bel canto roles at La Scala; this week Parterre Box features Marta Torbidoni.
A Pasolini-inspired Tosca at La Monnaie does not quite find the pleasure in the pain.
John Danaher pays an operatic tribute to the writings of James McCourt, an author who captured the spirit of opera as queer and dangerous like no other.
After success at the Met as Turandot and before a historic Medea, soprano Anna Pirozzi talks to Harry Rose about her voice, her repertoire, and where her “second explosion of career” is taking her.
The one who got away was Anna Caterina Antonacci, a thrilling performer.
Verdi’s Stiffelio goes Amish in Vienna, featuring a stellar Luciano Ganci in the title role.
Parterre Box features a performance from two belcantisti who would rather you not think about their political affiliations.
The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra under conductor Stéphane Denève plays up the schtick in a concert performance of The Magic Flute – and obscures Mozart’s magic in the process.
Fine music-making meets a clunker of a production in La Monnaie‘s revival of Norma
Daniele Rustioni, who starts his tenure as Met Principal Guest Conductor with Don Giovanni this week, might just be the opera conductor we’ve all been waiting for — and he’s betting on a long haul.
In the pursuit of clowning, Anthony Roth Costanzo’s Galas may have lost sight of “the seriousness of the theme.”
Mexican soprano Gilda Cruz-Romo died on 28 June at the age of 85 and Chris’s Cache remembers her with live recordings of a frequent role and a rather rare one: a last-minute Met Tosca plus perhaps her only stab at the Cherubini Medea.
It’s Norma, darling. We know.
Jessica Pratt’s last-minute Norma in Milan might well be the stuff of legend
Joan Sutherland as Norma is something I’ve never been able to get.
The Met’s mostly successful revivals of The Queen of Spades and La bohème showcase the returns of Sonya Yoncheva and Corinne Winters
Following the peek at Asmik Grigorian‘s attempt, parterre box humbly offers an in-house snippet of Federica Lombardi‘s “Casta Diva” from a few blocks over on the Ringstrasse
Ahead of a broadcast in Europe on Arte on Sunday, parterre box has snagged a snippet of Asmik Grigorian‘s eagerly anticipated role debut as Norma in Vienna
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.
Despite the practically unmitigated fiasco of the last Verdi concert opera performance seen in Boston, I approached Sunday’s Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras performance of Don Carlo at Harvard’s Sanders Theatre with much more optimism.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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