Photo: Camilla Greenwell

Grand Tier Grab Bag

Lightning strikes twice

New York audiences got a taste of Ben Bliss in Mozart this fall, but this week Grand Tier Grab Bag offers snippets of the tenor trying his hand at Handel earlier this year.

Composer Philip Venables / Photo: Harald Hoffmann

Feature

So brutal but also so joyful

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.

Photo: Metropolitan Opera

our own

Out of the mouths of babes

Parterre Box concludes the thrilling first year of Talk of the Town by inviting your lightning rod opinions on several more categories of operatic argumentation.

© Catalina Filip

Grand Tier Grab Bag

Oceanic feeling

Grand Tier Grab Bag features a complete performance of Ernest Chausson's Poème de l'amour et de la mer ahead of a particular year for both its soloist and conductor.

© Herwig Prammer / Opéra national de Paris

Get in the zone

Tamara Wilson and Stanislas de Barbeyrac are the standouts in Calixto Bieito's underwhelming Die Walküre in Paris

Toby Tenenbaum

Shades of gray

MasterVoices presents a strongly-cast Sweet Smell of Success—but the merits of this noir musical are hardly black or white. 

Photo: Carnegie Hall Presents L’Arpeggiata (international early-music ensemble) WONDER WOMEN Performers: Christina Pluhar, Artistic Director and Theorbo Luciana Mancini, Mezzo-Soprano Benedetta Mazzucato, Mezzo-Soprano Vincenzo Capezzuto, Alto Concert photographed: Thursday, November 20, 2025 7:30 PM Concert Zankel Hall Photograph: © 2025 Richard Termine PHOTO CREDIT - RICHARD TERMINE

Big time sensuality

Barbara Strozzi links two sensuous programs by L’Arpeggiata and Catapult Opera. 

Piotr Beczała as Andrea Chénier and Guriy Gurev as Roucher in Giordano's "Andrea Chénier." Photo: Karen Almond / Met Opera

To be a poet is a condition

Are today’s stars enough to sustain Andrea Chénier?

Gabriela Beňačková sings Czech Christmas Music

Gabriela Beňačková is featured in a wonderful Christmas album called Carolling, released by Supraphon in the early 1990s.

Renata Tebaldi sings “O Divine Redeemer”

"O Divine Redeemer" is, I suppose, more properly an Advent or Lenten piece. But when Renata Tebaldi asks us to hear her "croy", who can resist?

Anna Moffo sings “O Holy Night”

Anna Moffo, in glorious voice and looking gorgeous as usual, sings "O Holy Night," one of my favorite Christmas tunes.

I’m still thinking about George Tabori’s Pagliacci

I love Tabori—his staging of Bluebeard's Castle and Erwartung are among my five favorite opera performances of all time.

I’m still thinking about Laurent Pelly’s Il turco in Italia

Ha ha ha, so gorgeous!