A wonderfully committed Ailyn Pérez and Gerald Finley at Saturday afternoon’s revival abetted by Emmanuel Villaume’s passionate conducting converted me to a Thaïs believer.
Among several fine productions at Aix this summer, Dmitri Tcherniakov’s brilliantly conceived and executed Carmen proved a game changer.
Two productions at the Aix-en-Provence festival shared one look.
I finally get to complete my personal operatic Top Ten this week with Igor Stravinsky’s only full-length opera, The Rake’s Progress.
Sometimes when you find the club that will have you as a member, you do not easily give up your spot.
There are two kinds of opera lovers: Those who despise or tolerate La Gioconda as a preposterous rip-off of Aida that lingered a century in the repertory in spite of its galumphing story, largely because of the popularity of its tuneful ballet—and true opera lovers. We love every silly note of the thing, and every…
With February 14th falling on a Sunday, there will be no Valentine’s Day Met performance this year.
This week “Trove Thursday” brings a rare in-house recording of a visit to the Metropolitan Opera House by the Staatsoper Hamburg presenting Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress with a deluxe cast
In New York, tradition insists, there are no limits to where a preposterous idea, talent and relentless determination will take you, in defiance of all the odds.
Paris can be a lot to handle, but this week it was a lot to Handel.
American mezzo Jamie Barton, who has steadily been winning fans in the US over the past few years for her rich and nuanced singing, took the international opera world by storm last weekend by winning both the Song Prize as well as the overall prize in the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition.
It took about 30 minutes for me to grow restless watching the world premiere video of Gyorgi Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre from Gran Teatre del Liceu.
James Levine: Celebrating 40 Years at the Met includes not only unreleased video performances on DVD but also live radio broadcasts on CD. This performance is one of the latter, originally heard April 19, 2003. The Rake’s Progress has one of the greatest operatic pedigrees of all time. It was inspired by a series of…
1. DON’T STAGE THE OVERTURE. Surprise: Verdi and Rossini and Wagner Mozart actually worked in the theater most of their lives, so give them credit for knowing that the overture is there to get the audience in the mood, to ease their transition from “outside” to “inside.”
Our Own Sanford reports from this afternoon’s National Council Grand Finals Concert at the Met. First things first: No hunkentenors, but Edward Parks is a barihunk, and Christopher Magiera is almost a barihunk. Now to the important stuff. There were nine singers in the final, and I would say that 10 of them deserved to…
UPDATE: La Cieca has just heard that the “dark season” is not a done deal just yet. The NYCO board meets next week to make that decision. (Given how late in the game this is, most likely the “decision” will be no more than a formality. But La Cieca will keep her ear to the…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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