Robert Rounseville should have made it to the Met
From one Mister Snow to another, I salute him.
By Mister Snow
41 comments
The Mikado
13 pieces since 2009.
13
pieces
18
years
Trouble in paradise
The New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players‘s vivacious music making compensates for uninspired storytelling in their staging of Utopia, Limited.
Animal house
Ursula Sturgeon looks at the furry opera company HowlAria and discovers that maybe one man’s Callas recording collection is another man’s fursuit.
The Stuff and Nonsense Dreams Are Made On
The New York Gilbert And Sullivan Players is giving its umpteenth production of The Mikado through next Sunday at the Kaye Playhouse, and the show remains frisky and first rate.
Briefs encounter
Trial by Jury was the operetta chosen by Lamplighters Music Theatre, the San Francisco-based Gilbert & Sullivan company, to close their 66th season.
Women in revolt
The full title of the opera pretty much describes the plot: Il mondo alla roversa osia Le donne che comandano.
Mac and me
A very particular tension—between angry political resistance and gloriously sex-positive, buoyantly confidant celebration of queerness—fuels the immense energy of Taylor Mac’s A 24-Hour Decade History of Popular Music.
The last ruse of summer
Flotow’s Martha, a work of 1847 that was popular around the world for a hundred years.
All night long
In one important respect, a great production of Puccini resembles a great production of Wagner.
Strike up the banned
Jonny spielt auf, the second opera by 26-year-old composer Ernest K?enek, was such a huge success after its 1927 Leipzig premiere that in the following season it was performed 491 times in Germany alone.
Sail, away
Sir Arthur Sullivan, the son of an Irish father and an Italian mother, studied Mendelssohn’s composition style in Leipzig. He was therefore, inevitably, the supreme English theater composer of his day, and his often Mozartean style of melody is not out of place in a bel canto festival. After all, in the fourteen operettas he […]
How jolly was my jenkin
I own almost every recording of the 13 operettas Sir Arthur Sullivan wrote with W.S. Gilbert ever made. Twelve Mikados, 14 Pirates of Penzance, 10 Iolanthes, right on down the line to the rarely heard Utopia, Ltd. I was a G&S fan long before I got into opera; when I was a teenager, their operettas […]
“Amor, ch’a nullo amato amar perdona”
My latest assignment from our doyenne has been to explore two of the many small opera companies pullulating around New York City. Some of these ensembles last l’espace d’un matin, while others have been enjoying a longer, healthier life.
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).
