Bembo eruption
Supported by an ingenious production and strong performances, Antonia Bembo’s Ercole Amante makes a successful Paris Opera debut.
Tancredi
39 pieces since 2009.
39
pieces
18
years
Tancredi
Carlo Vistoli sings the title role in a live broadcast from Rome
Streamed May 19, 2026 at 2:00 PM
2 comments
Museum quality
Opera Philadelphia’s Il viaggio a Reims in a nutshell: Hyperactive, confusing, and distracting from (and sometimes for) the singers? Yes. Imaginative, wildly entertaining, and musically rewarding? Absolutely.
Come, young waverers
Too young to be in love. But not too young to go to war or to die.
Come to the record store in old Peking
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.
Decidedly un-HIP
Chris’s Cache celebrates Ewa Podles‘s long connection with Handel by featuring her in three complete, decidedly un-HIP operas spanning over twenty years
Princess in denial
On this day in 1968 mezzo-soprano Fiorenza Cossotto made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Amneris.
It’s hard to be a saint in the city
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.
Pretty poison
The wicked poisoner showed herself in fine form, full of purple passion and lusty music-making that would gladden the heart of any bel canto enthusiast or opera lover in general.
The second time around
While the formulaic nature of some of Rossini’s other operas can undermine his ability to balance bravura singing and playing with legitimate drama, a concert Maometto II proves, with what it offers as much as what it lacks, that the formula still works.
Tenors al fresco
Lawrence Brownlee and Michael Spyres are two singers at the top of their game, as this concert showed, virtually peerless in music as punishing as it is pretty.
Rossini al fresco
Last night, for the first time in nearly a year and a half, opera returned to Lincoln Center.
Gianna Rolandi 1952-2021
American soprano Gianna Rolandi died Sunday morning, according to a number of her friends and colleagues. She was 68.
The boys from Syracuse
Trove Thursday begins February with two striking versions of Rossini’s Tancredi.
The Coronation of Lisette
Sunday’s Richard Tucker Gala at Carnegie Hall was unusually satisfying despite a less than usually superstarry line-up.
Killer queen
Rossini’s Semiramide is a highly original and imaginative work of theater that impresses for its creative and beautifully scored orchestration, incisive recitatives and ensembles, and theatrically intriguing characters.
Girl of the emboldened west
L’Italiana in Algeri‘s appearance at the Salzburg Festival should be no surprise since Ceciila Bartoli has been the intendant of the Whitsun Festival extension at Salzburg since 2012.
There is no spoon
Can a work with indisputably great music fail to add up to a successful opera? I puzzled over that Sunday during Teatro Nuovo’s essential concert staging of Rossini’s La Gazza Ladra at SUNY Purchase.
Meine Liebe ist croon
As opera’s reigning tenor-superstar, Jonas Kaufmann can pretty much do whatever he wants and a sizable adoring public will lap it up.
Social Medea
Simone Mayr’s Medea in Corinto, a curious work of 1813, has been revived by Will Crutchfield’s new enterprise, Teatro Nuovo.
A touch of the stone
“Trove Thursday” turns its Rossini-150 series to one of the composer’s least known but tastiest comic gems La Pietra del Paragone with Julia Hamari, Justino Diaz, Alessandro Corbelli, Claudio Desderi and Paolo Barbacini conducted by Roberto Abbado.
Horne in the morning and June at night
Semiramide produced at Carnegie Hall by Matthew Epstein in 1983 with June Anderson, Marilyn Horne, Samuel Ramey and Douglas Ahlstedt with Henry Lewis conducting.
For me and my Gaul
I first went bonkers for Bellini’s masterpiece during the previous century when the Met remounted it for Joan Sutherland.
The zoo story
A week from Saturday Will Crutchfield’s “Bel Canto at Caramoor” ends a 20-year run with Il Pirata.
Win a Free Ticket to Opening Night at the Met!
Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen star in the Met's new Macbeth. We're giving away one ticket, so screw your courage to the sticking place and enter now!
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).
