Ambur Braid‘s biggest dramatic soprano assignment yet — the Dyer’s Wife in Aix — is occasion for Parterre Box to feature her in some of her old repertoire.
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.
Juan Diego Flórez‘s charm and artistic sensibility remain as vibrant as ever, as seen at a recent Carnegie Hall recital.
For Niel Rishoi, a new CD of Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi by Eleonora Burrato for Pentatone can’t help but invite unflattering comparisons
Donizetti’s never been a desert island composer of mine, but he comes close when I hear Edita Gruberova in her prime.
For me, Donizetti’s operas are all about the mad scenes.
As this is “Donizetti Month” here on parterre box, Chris’s Cache offers the recently deceased Paul Plishka and Opera Orchestra of New York with Carol Vaness in Anna Bolena and with Mariella Devia in the rarely heard Adelia.
When asked to express some “thoughts” here about Verdi’s Il trovatore, my immediate thought was “hmm… not a lot to think about there.”
Anna Bolena might be the earliest of Donizetti’s operas that might have name recognition to a non-specialist audience.
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.
Despite the diminishing returns of her vocal means, Edita Gruberova‘s last years of her career were if anything more successful than ever.
Trove Thursday’s belated contribution to last weekend’s Platinum Jubilee is a broadcast from Aldeburgh of Benjamin Britten’s Gloriana with Christine Brewer and Tom Randle as Elizabeth and Essex, an opera which premiered 69 years ago yesterday.
Sondra Radvanovsky is very special here!
When was the last time the Metropolitan Opera mounted a new production that was musically outstanding yet the direction and/or design mostly sucked?
The 1990s effectively signaled a new phase in Edita Gruberova‘s career with her undertaking more demanding, heavier roles, while still essaying Zerbinetta and Lucia.
Ludwig van Beethoven’s “rescue opera” Fidelio was presented by San Francisco Opera as their first new production of the season last Thursday in reinterpreted fashion.
Pauline Tinsley, who died May 11, made few commercial recordings; Trove Thursday offers the thrilling English soprano in excerpts over nearly two decades from nine works ranging from Handel to Richard Strauss.
Off-and-on since last fall my PPP (Personal Pandemic Project) has been assembling a chronology of the American Opera Society. For 19 years beginning in 1951 it presented a remarkable series of concert performances of works unperformed by either the Met or New York City Opera.
For nearly 70 years, New York City was the world capital of concert opera thanks first to the American Opera Society, then to Eve Queler’s Opera Orchestra of New York.
With La Scala’s plan to open on December 7 with a new Lucia di Lammermoor thwarted, Trove Thursday sets its Wayback Machine to nearly 50 years ago to present two of the 20th century’s greatest madwomen—Joan Sutherland and Beverly Sills—denounced by Plàcido Domingo and Alfredo Kraus respectively, with the former pair consoled by Kurt Moll‘s luxurious Raimundo.
Next month in Bergamo Plácido Domingo takes on his zillionth—and possibly final—new role, so Trove Thursday previews it by returning to the same venue 50 years earlier for Donizetti’s Belisario with Leyla Gencer and Renato Bruson, a real baritone as its titular hero.
One of Mariella Devia‘s earliest New York successes: Delibes’s Lakmé with Nicolai Gedda and Paul Plishka.
For those of you keeping track at home that’s four substitutions for three roles and the curtain hasn’t even gone up yet.
It was a gloomy, chilly, rainy day in Chicago on Sunday afternoon, a perfect reflection of the sad and gloomy fates of the title characters in Lyric Opera of Chicago’s presentation of The Three Queens.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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