Friday, May 15, 2015
It was "out with the old, in with the new" for another of the Franco Zeffirelli productions that were once the Metropolitan Opera's bread and butter, designed for audiences to cheer for the …
SOURCE: BroadwayWorld at 03:54PMTuesday, May 5, 2015
Stephanie Blythe--who's at the Met these days singing Baba the Turk in Stravinsky's THE RAKE'S PROGRESS--“abhors labels.” That's why, despite a cavernous voice that has become even deepe…
SOURCE: BroadwayWorld at 11:49AMSaturday, April 11, 2015
What a great idea it was for the Met to mount revivals of Verdi's ERNANI and DON CARLO at the same time! It offers an opportunity to compare two operas that have much in common--and a produc…
SOURCE: BroadwayWorld at 02:13AMThursday, April 2, 2015
Nine years before IL TROVATORE took the prize for Verdi's most outlandish story line with gypsies, stolen babies and mistaken identities there was ERNANI, with a different kind of complicate…
SOURCE: BroadwayWorld at 03:41PMMonday, February 9, 2015
I consider Mozart's DON GIOVANNI at the top of my list of favorite operas--the music starts to go through my head without much encouragement and gets stuck there. Yet, it's also one of the m…
SOURCE: BroadwayWorld at 09:40PMWednesday, January 28, 2015
Donizetti's MARIA STUARDA is a chamber piece blown up to grand opera proportions. That was the takeaway from the new production--that centers on a fictional battle royal between Elizabeth I …
SOURCE: BroadwayWorld at 04:24PMWith all its money problems, why hasn't the Met thought about doing some lesser known works in concert? Or, for that matter, marshalled some of its glamorous resources to put on the Verdi RE…
SOURCE: BroadwayWorld at 03:30PMOnce upon a time, the Met used to be able to pull off an operetta, like the Rudolf Bing-era FLEDERMAUS. But for the second year in a row--after last season's dire FLEDERMAUS from writer Doug…
SOURCE: BroadwayWorld at 03:16PMSaturday, January 3, 2015
For New York opera-goers, what was the event of the year? Undoubtedly, John Adams's THE DEATH OF KLINGHOFER, not only for the kerfuffle caused by the [unfounded] claims of anti-Semitism but …
SOURCE: BroadwayWorld at 06:31AMSaturday, October 25, 2014
Only someone who arrived convinced of the opera's bias could have found the Met's premiere of the John Adams-Alice Goodman THE DEATH OF KLINGHOFFER to be anti-Semitic. On the other hand, tha…
SOURCE: BroadwayWorld at 03:47PMTuesday, September 30, 2014
"Cherubino is crazy in some ways, in good ways," says Isabel Leonard, who is singing the role of the young male page in the Almaviva household in the Metropolitan Opera's new Richard Eyre pr…
SOURCE: BroadwayWorld at 04:56PMMore than most stagings of Mozart's LE NOZZE DI FIGARO, the new Richard Eyre production that opened the season at the Met made it hard to remember that the miserable duo who head the househo…
SOURCE: BroadwayWorld at 04:53PMWednesday, June 11, 2014
In New York, Donizetti's ROBERTO DEVEREUX will forever be associated with Beverly Sills' powerful portrayal of Elizabeth I, and her stern photo glaring out from the cover of Time Magazine. H…
SOURCE: BroadwayWorld at 11:55PMMonday, June 2, 2014
When New York's Gotham Chamber Opera--in collaboration with the Gerald Lynch Theatre at John Jay College--presented Toshio Hosokawa's THE RAVEN in its US premiere last week, as part of the N…
SOURCE: BroadwayWorld at 07:30PMWednesday, May 28, 2014
Despite its visions of damnation and redemption, Gounod's FAUST, with libretto by Barbier and Carre, is pretty tame stuff. In the wrong hands, it can be dull as well. Well, you can't accuse …
SOURCE: BroadwayWorld at 12:48AMTuesday, May 13, 2014
“The party's over,” wrote Betty Comden & Adolph Green in BELLS ARE RINGING. “It's time to call it a day.” The opera season at the Metropolitan said its farewells to 2013-2014 on May …
SOURCE: BroadwayWorld at 02:36PMSaturday, May 3, 2014
When the Met's production of LA CENERENTOLA, Rossini's version of the Cinderella story. arrives in movie theatres around the world next week, the star for many will be tenor Juan Diego Flore…
SOURCE: BroadwayWorld at 12:44AMMonday, April 28, 2014
One of the thrilling things about live opera performance is that it's like watching a tightrope walker, particularly when it's one with as many high notes and such florid writing as in Belli…
SOURCE: BroadwayWorld at 03:53PMMonday, April 21, 2014
By this time in the Met's season, audiences can be a little “been there, done that”--but not when it came to Latvian soprano Kristine Opolais, singing the title role in Puccini's MADAMA …
SOURCE: BroadwayWorld at 09:47PMWednesday, April 16, 2014
Of all the music that Richard Strauss wrote during his long career—and he'd composed almost 60 songs and more than 40 piano works by the time he was 18—perhaps none are more gorgeous a…
SOURCE: BroadwayWorld at 01:07PMWednesday, April 2, 2014
In our age of 20-somethings suffering from arrested development, they say “25 is the new 15.” This certainly was not true at the Met auditions concert (formally, the Metropolitan Opera N…
SOURCE: BroadwayWorld at 06:06PMWednesday, March 26, 2014
It's always reassuring when a change of cast--in this case soprano Diana Damrau and tenor Javier Camarena in wonderful performances--transforms a truly terrible production into an exciting n…
SOURCE: BroadwayWorld at 11:38AMMonday, March 24, 2014
I thought someone spiked the water cooler backstage at the Met during the first half of LA BOHEME on March 19. Tenor Vittorio Grigolo's Rodolfo jumped around in the opening scene like he had…
SOURCE: BroadwayWorld at 11:46AMThursday, March 20, 2014
When the Vienna State Opera visited New York at the end of February, it brought Alban Berg's WOZZECK to Carnegie Hall as part of the "Vienna: City of Dreams" festivities. With the big sound …
SOURCE: BroadwayWorld at 07:44PMMonday, March 17, 2014
"I'm not a warhorse kind of singer," mezzo Susan Graham states matter-of-factly. "A. I'm a mezzo. B. I'm not a character mezzo. C. I'm not a contralto. The iconic opera repertoire for mezzos…
SOURCE: BroadwayWorld at 04:05PMSunday, March 9, 2014
Like the young Anthony Hope in Stephen Sondheim's scintillating SWEENEY TODD, "I've sailed the world, beheld its wonders...," with SWEENEY TODDs ranging from the original cast in New York, t…
SOURCE: BroadwayWorld at 01:50PMSaturday, March 8, 2014
Like the young Anthony Hope in Stephen Sondheim's scintillating SWEENEY TODD, I've sailed the world, beheld its wonders, with SWEENEY TODDs ranging from the original cast in New York, to an …
SOURCE: BroadwayWorld at 07:45PMFriday, February 28, 2014
Monteverdi's "Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda" twice in one season in New York, in performances only months apart? Especially after Anna Caterina Antonacci's riveting take on the 20-min…
SOURCE: BroadwayWorld at 04:27PMMonday, February 24, 2014
What does an opera singer do on his night off from singing the title role in Massenet's WERTHER in a new production at the Metropolitan? If he's the charismatic wunder-tenor Jonas Kaufmann, …
SOURCE: BroadwayWorld at 03:27PMFriday, February 7, 2014
He's the dashing yet fickle prince in the Met's HD Live broadcast of Dvorak's RUSALKA, on February 8, and was the womanizing Duke who concluded that "La donna e mobile" ("Woman is fickle") i…
SOURCE: BroadwayWorld at 03:58PMTuesday, February 4, 2014
It wasn't Theodora, but the Carnegie Hall audience, who went wild on Sunday at the performance by the English Concert of Handel's rarely heard THEODORA, starring Dorothea Roschmann and David…
SOURCE: BroadwayWorld at 11:44AM 
