Author: Andrew Moravcsik

All three acts of Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly take place in a tiny Japanese cottage on an isolated hill overlooking Nagasaki. Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, an American naval officer, has purchased…

Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto tells the story of a small community in which one man’s absolute and arbitrary power eventually corrupts everyone around him. The tragedy is universal: if you find…

With New York’s Metropolitan Opera struggling to hype star singers, commission enduring new works, fill a mammoth space, and balance its budget, the vitality of the city’s opera scene has…

On its face, no opera seems trashier than Così fan tutte. Two best bros bet on the fidelity of their young fiancées, disguise themselves as exotic strangers, and try to…

Madama Butterfly is firmly ensconced among the top-ten “most performed” operas worldwide and the Met’s current production is nearly two decades old. Yet, over the past few weeks, the Met…

Aida, an opera that requires at least five fine Verdi voices, has fallen on hard times. Still, the cast announced for last Saturday’s performance at the Bayerische Staatsoper, headed by…

For two weeks in January each year, the Prototype Festival brings small-scale and experimental musical theater to New York.  The focus is on new works that draw not so much…