Category: Performances

Paris OpÈra’s L’Italiana in Algeri had a lot going for it, including a star mezzo in her local debut, so why was I resistant to its merits?

In sports they say, “Winning isn’t the most important
thing—it’s the only thing.” In the theater, getting the show
on the boards out front is the key.

Jephtha was Handel’s last work — he went blind while
composing it, noting this on the manuscript, and though he lived another seven
years, did not deign to dictate new music.

A successful production of Verdi’s Macbeth relies not only on
incisive vocal characterization as projected by Macbeth and Lady Macbeth but
also on the interaction of these lead figures in order to vivify their descent
into a world of destruction.

With its playbill half-empty, its general director Placido Domingo
resigning, and the talk of a takeover by the Kennedy Center, Washington
National Opera is in a dire need of good news this season.

In the final scene of Shakespeare’s King Lear, faced with the dreadful sight of the distraught Lear cradling in his arms the body of his dead daughter Cordelia, the Earl of Kent asks: “Is this the promised end?”

The opening night of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, in Rome
in 1816, was violently disrupted by vociferous protests from supporters loyal
to Paisiello, whose own comic interpretation of Beaumarchais’
politically-charged play had appeared in 1782.

Haven’t you always secretly felt that singers who reach for high notes
(and make them) ought to levitate and maintain themselves in mid-air
when they do it?