135 stories by "JAMES JORDEN"
After a sketchy start to the season, the Met hit its stride on Friday with a revival of Donizetti's "Don Pasquale" that's as crisp as autumn in New York. This farce about an elderly bachelo…
A flawed Verdi masterpiece inspired a superb performance Monday night when the Met unveiled its new, richly cerebral production of “Don Carlo.” Spanish history inspired this saga…
Roberto Alagna an swers questions even before they're asked. Strolling through Central Park the other day, chatting in lightly accented English about his performances tonight at Carnegie Ha…
Even in the twilight of her career, Dame Joan Sutherland delivered more bang for the buck than sopranos half her age.The diva, who died yesterday at 83, played the teenage virgin Gilda in V…
In the Met's "Tales of Hoffmann," Giuseppe Filianoti plays a poet defeated by life. In reality, the 36-year-old singer's brush with tragedy had a far happier ending. The Italian tenor seemed…
Next year's centennial of Tennessee Wil liams' birth got off to an early start Wednesday with a revival of Lee Hoiby's "Summer and Smoke." But while the Manhattan School of Music's producti…
A milestone in history, a hyped Met premiere and a gaggle of A-list artists added up to something less than a sensation Wednesday night when the Metropolitan Opera offered its first performa…
The loudest cheers at the Met on Monday rang out before the curtain went up on Wagner's “Das Rheingold,” the company's most expensive staging ever.A pre-show standing ovation for…
The first rule of gam bling is: You win some, you lose some. Still, it's heartbreaking that on Friday at the Met, an opera about a compulsive gambler, "The Queen of Spades," barely broke ev…
Saturday night's Met debut of Vittorio Grigolo in "La Bo heme" was promising enough to suggest the tenor may one day live up to his own hype. An onslaught of advance hoopla for the 33-year-…
What do you call a sex comedy that's neither funny nor sexy? At the Met on Tuesday night, you'd have called it "Cosi Fan Tutte." The theme of the opera is revealed in the title: "All women …
You'd think that anything written by the man who gave us “West Side Story,” “Candide” and “On the Town” would be worth at least a listen, yes? Well, despi…
Can a 220-year-old opera be taught new tricks? That's the goal of operamission, which, starting tonight, will present Mozart's "Cosi Fan Tutte" in a format that's part miniseries, part town…
At the close of “Boris Godunov,” a leaderless Russia churns in chaos. Happily, the Met's new production of Mussorgsky's masterpiece — despite a last-minute turnover on the …
This year may go down as one filled with surprises at the Met, kicking off with an unexpected role for a familiar tenor and a dazzling debut for a budding superstar. The tenor is Roberto Al…
This year may go down as one filled with surprises at the Met, kicking off with an unexpected role for a familiar tenor and a dazzling debut for a budding superstar. The tenor is Roberto Ala…
Shakespeare called Romeo and Juliet "star-cross'd lovers" -- and the Met's performance Thursday of Gounod's operatic version, "Roméo et Juliette," was also plagued by hard luck. The offsta…
Math is hard, even for Met master mind Peter Gelb. The company's general manager kicked off his season preview last week boasting that, since he took office in 2006, the average age of the …
When a show takes place by a lake, its director can take several ap proaches: hang a backdrop, proj ect watery ripples on the stage -- or have someone say, "Hey, look at that beautiful lake!…
'But we don't see Carmen!" sings the chorus -- in French -- in Bizet's opera, before the gypsy temptress saunters in. But even after Elina Garanca arrived on the Met stage Thursday night, we…
7 lessons the Met can learn from Stuttgart and Berlin.
Who knows what to expect from an opera about the Internet? But when Nico Muhly's "Two Boys" evokes the complex mysteries of cyberspace in a series of shimmering choruses, it's...
My fellow opera lovers, our long Metropolitan nightmare is over.
After more than two seasons sidelined by illness and injury, James Levine returned to the Met Tuesday to lead Mozart's "Cosi …
Don’t blame Tchaikovsky if his opera “Eugene Onegin” proved to be the least exciting part of the Met’s opening night.
Monday’s gala sprang to life only for a fe…
The whole city's a New Yorker's living room, and as temperatures rise, the parks of Gotham double as concert halls, as well.
The grandfather of NYC's outdoor music events, the New York Phil…
