Yuval Sharon‘s production of The Excursions of Mr. Brouček shoots for the moon — and lands somewhat limply on Lake Constance.
Festival d’Aix-en-Provence confronts the living and the dead — and its own future — through audacious productions and an intimate world premiere.
Daniel Barenboim’s Tristan und Isolde is a performance I keep coming back to, again and again.
Greek National Opera’s Medea in the ancient theater at Epidaurus is an intermittently rewarding exercise in nostalgia.
John Danaher pays an operatic tribute to the writings of James McCourt, an author who captured the spirit of opera as queer and dangerous like no other.
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.
Parterre Box features soprano Miina-Liisa Värelä, making her title role debut in Die Walküre in Munich next week, in a performance of Tristan und Isolde from 2021.
Die Walküre heralds the end of an era for the Los Angeles Philharmonic — and the arrival of a new generation of Wagnerians.
Michael Spyres talks to Kevin Ng about his winding path as a baritenor, which composer he wants to conquer next, and how he makes Wagner work in his voice — and in his native Ozarks.
SoCal goes Scandi in two recent concerts, with one featuring an appearance by Lise Davidsen.
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra explores love and death in an intense, intelligent program featuring soprano Corinne Winters.
The inaugural New Orleans Opera Festival goes big across the Big Easy.
Back-to-back casts in the Metropolitan Opera’s revivals of Madama Butterfly and La traviata offer ample opportunity for soprano-gazing.
Led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Yoann Combémorel, the Curtis Symphony Orchestra proves themselves the equal of any major American orchestra in a program of Mahler, Wagner, and Dawson.
David Fox and Dan Johnson report on Yannick Nézet-Seguin‘s recent performances of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Philadelphia and New York.
Lise Davidsen, Michael Spyres, and Yannick Nézet-Séguin are astonishing in Tristan und Isolde at the Met, while Yuval Sharon‘s new production is anything but.
Hoping for a “Tristan for the ages” in New York next month, John Danaher considers five versions of Tristan’s Act III “Muss ich dich so verstehn” for “Perspectives on an Aria.”
Franz Welser-Möst leads a rigorous, if emotionally staid, performance of Verdi‘s Requiem at Carnegie Hall.
Lise Davidsen‘s first Isolde is only one of the highlights of Tristan und Isolde at the Liceu in Barcelona.
Anticipating the titanic arrival of Lise Davidsen‘s Isolde in New York in March, Parterre Box is thrilled to share a bit of her debut opposite Clay Hilley recorded in Barcelona last week.
Esa-Pekka Salonen and The Los Angeles Philharmonic serve a feast for all five senses.
I can’t say 2025 was my best operagoing year; apart from a superb Fille du régiment, most of my good nights at the opera were decidedly mixed affairs.
Composer Philip Venables talks about queer utopias and bending gender and genre in The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions which opens at the Park Avenue Armory this week.
Michael Thalmeier‘s Tristan und Isolde in Berlin asks, how much minimalism is too much minimalism?
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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