TENOR

If you cross the traditional EUGENE ONEGIN by Tchaikovsky (great even when overfilled with drama and, yes, music music music, with Konstantin Shilovsky’s co-libretto) with a touch of Ken Russell’s 1971 “The Music Lovers” (the overwrought bio-pic of Tchaikovsky with Richard Chamberlin and Glenda Jackson as his patron and wife that took the composer out of the closet for anyone who didn’t know he was there), and you might have an idea of what Heartbeat Opera’s version of the opera-cum-composer’s t...

The first night of the Met’s revival of Puccini’s LA RONDINE (THE SWALLOW) was filled with surprises of one sort or another, under the baton of that smart conductor, Speranza Scappucci. She knows her way around Puccini and deserves to be heard more frequently at the house. The production had glamour through Art Deco-ish scenic design by Ezio Frigerio, with lighting by Duana Schuler and costumes by Franca Squarciapino....

Catapult Opera's production of Nadia Boulanger's La Ville Morte will mark the first time New York audiences will get to experience her sole opera. ...

No matter how many “star” performances the Met manages to muster in the course of a season, there’s nothing quite as exciting as the Laffont Grand Finals Concert—formerly known as the Met’s National Auditions Finals—which took place this past Sunday afternoon for its 70th season, when we got to hear up-and-comers who might have knocked our socks off at the concert itself or could at some time in the future....

Go inside rehearsals for The Met's return of Puccini’s passionate love story, which features soprano Angel Blue as Magda and tenor Jonathan Tetelman as Ruggero....

The Met has announced the winners of the 2024 Metropolitan Opera Eric and Dominique Laffont Competition. Learn more about the winners here!...

It’s hard to compete with a dazzling concert hall like Barcelona’s Palau de la Musica Catalana—designed by Lluís Domènech i Montaner, one of Antonio Gaudi’s contemporaries in the modernista style. Or, with the famed Catalan (yes, not Spanish) diva Victoria de los Angeles, a Met favorite, whose centenary was being celebrated. Nonetheless, Albanian soprano Ermonela Jaho did quite impressively in her house debut at the Palau with the Franz Schubert Filharmonia under Tomas Grau....

Will Berger is a renaissance man on a mission.  When he's not lecturing on classical music and opera, or writing the commentaries for the Metropolitan Opera Radio on Sirius, or co-hosting the live Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts, or producing (and writing) the broadcasts' Met Opera Quiz, or writing books (Wagner Without Fear (1998), Verdi With a Vengeance (2000), Puccini Without Excuses (2005), all published by Random House) he's writing the libretto for a new Jazz Metal Opera!  ...

While I’ve admired soprano Nadine Sierra’s before, she seemed to reach a whole new level with her glorious turn as Juliette in the season’s first performance of Gounod’s ROMEO ET JULIETTE at the Met the other night. She was vivid and a delight to watch as she inhabited the teenaged heroine of the piece. Perhaps it was her stage partner, French tenor Benjamin Bernheim, who egged her on to such heights, with his nuanced singing and boyish demeanor....

Brian Jagde sings an excerpt from Don Alvaro’s Act III aria in a recent performance of La Forza del Destino at the Metropolitan Opera....

Watch video footage from Bartlett Sher's production of Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, as it returns to the Met stage for seven performances, with an all-star cast of artists making their Met role debuts....

UN BALLO IN MASCHERA—A MASKED BALL—certainly makes for a juicy opera, on paper at least. It has a plot filled with passion, jealousy and conspiracies, and a score by Giuseppe Verdi that has some of his most memorable music, including a great duet, plus unforgettable arias for soprano, tenor and baritone, and some first-rate music for secondary characters (Ulrica the fortune teller and Oscar the pants-role page) and chorus. The production at Barcelona’s gorgeous Grand Liceu Theatre didn’t stint o...

It’s always a joy to see the Juilliard Opera/Juilliard Historical Performance department perform in the intimate realm of the Rosemary and Meredith Willson Theatre, where the audience is up close and personal to the action on stage. Last week’s performances of Francesco Cavalli’s ERISMENA happily fell neatly into that category. Even with a libretto that’s had more lives than the proverbial cat, the work manages to weave its magic....

Much was made of the fact that it’s been almost 20 years since Verdi’s LA FORZA DEL DESTINO was last seen at the Met. For its heralded return, they picked a choice cast (starting with Lise Davidsen), a fine conductor (Music Director Yannick Nezet Seguin) and a director (Mariusz Trelinski) who’s, well,… Two out of three ain’t bad, considering the cast. So we might as well start there....

“I think the story is about survival, and about people sheltering one another,” director Mary Birnbaum told me in our conversation about EMIGRÉ, the oratorio that features what she called “composer Aaron Zigman’s sweeping score” and the “complex storytelling” by librettist Mark Campbell and lyricist Brock Walsh. The work makes its US debut on February 29 at the New York Philharmonic in Geffen Hall, under conductor Long Yu....