Video Artists International brings us back to a time when opera was carried over the airwaves by great voices—and a tire company.
Austin Opera’s 40th anniversary gala celebrated the present while gesturing boldly towards the future.
Pride weekend events at San Francisco Opera and Festival Opera are fabulous starts to the Bay Area summer
West Bay Opera’s Otello punches well above its weight
Chris’s Cache marks the arrival of Printemps in its many guises with three beguilingly cast performances of operas by Rimsky-Korsakov, Massenet, and Saint-Saëns
As opera and operetta “had a moment” in major Hollywood motion pictures starring the likes of Lawrence Tibbett, Jeannette MacDonald, and Nelson Eddy during the Great Depression, it made perfect sense that a canny showman like Mae West would want a piece of the action.
The outdoor recitals that the Metropolitan Opera presents in New York City Parks every summer are a wonderful way to showcase rising young stars and promising beginners from the Met’s Lindemann Program.
To bring a well-known story to the stage, many methods are available.
Nothing says “diva” like an insane recital program.
If it is true that there are few respectable ways for people over 40 without small children to celebrate Halloween, a performance of Richard Strauss’ pioneering horror opera Elektra belongs on the short list.
With the phenomenal cast that stacked Paris Opera’s production of I Capuleti e i Montecchi , it was easy to overlook the quirks of Bellini’s opera and get lost in the pleasures of glorious bel canto singing.
After the break the ladies stepped up their game so much that it elevated the night into legendary status: definitely one for the books!
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.
On Sunday afternoon, husband-and-wife duo Roberto Alagna and Aleksandra Kurzak presented a charming program of operatic favorites from the patio of the Château de la Chèvre d’Or in Èze, France.
We can delight in films that make use of motif to give opera-lovers an extra little jiggle.
As long as women have been preyed upon, Don Giovanni has been relevant.
Elina Garanca’s glorious Marguerite transformed La Damnation de Faust into the Met’s first essential must-see of the year.
While Russell Thomas admirably goes toe to toe with Otello (and Otello) in a thoughtful and self-aware way, the assumption feels like a work in progress if not an outright mismatch with his vocal gifts.
When soprano Yihan Duan started to sing her aria, you could feel an almost electric charge that something special was happening.
Austin McCormack‘s lascivious choreography outshone a tepid and tedious staging of Saint-Saëns’s old-testament epic.
Roberto Alagna’s physical and vocal embodiment of Don José lent his particular narrative a complication I hadn’t anticipated.
Alexander Birch Elliott‘ s dynamic if gauche Zurga added some pizzazz to an otherwise bland evening.
Throughout the evening I couldn’t help thinking that this1870s Biblical epic of erotic obsession and penance was what the Met should have been doing this fall rather than its misbegotten Samson et Dalila.
With a program of Schumann, Wagner, Ravel and de Falla, mezzo-soprano Elina Garanca and pianist Kevin Murphy delivered a underdone performance at Carnegie Hall on Tuesday night.
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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