Let's Hear It for the Five Winners of the Met's 2025 Laffont Competition!
by Richard Sasanow - Mar 18, 2025
Imagine being a rising young opera singer and getting to sing two solos from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera. And picture receiving $20,000 and the prestige, exposure and networking opportunities that come with it. That's what came to Sopranos Alissa Goretsky and Emma Marhefka, Mezzos Sadie Cheslak and Michelle Mariposa, and Baritone Luke Sutliff, who took top honors and applause from the crowd of thousands at the opera house on Sunday March 16.
Photos: First Look at Met Opera's MOBY DICK
by Joshua Wright - Feb 28, 2025
Get a first look at Moby-Dick at the Metropolitan Opera. Following the haunting Met premiere of his first opera, Dead Man Walking, composer Jake Heggie returns to the company with his 2010 adaptation of Herman Melville’s sea-drenched, heaven-storming epic.
The 2025 George London Award Winners Revealed
by Chloe Rabinowitz - Feb 22, 2025
The winners of the 53rd George and Nora London Foundation Competition for young American and Canadian opera singers, were revealed at the conclusion of the competition’s final round. Learn more!
Review: Strauss’s Powerhouse FRAU OHNE SCHATTEN Casts Big Shadow at the Met
by Richard Sasanow - Dec 7, 2024
Richard Strauss’s DIE FRAU OHNE SCHATTEN (THE WOMAN WITHOUT A SHADOW), with a libretto by his long-time collaborator, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, has made a triumphant return to the Met with a stellar cast and the Met Orchestra in peak form under Yannick Nezet-Seguin. It dazzled and glowed like few other evenings in recent memory, in a production by Herbert Wernicke, who died young, not long after its debut in 2001.
Review: Top Singing and Tap Dancing Highlight Richard Tucker Awards Gala
by Richard Sasanow - Nov 3, 2024
As usual, the gala concert of the Richard Tucker Music Foundation started off with an interloper from the golden age of opera: Richard Tucker himself, singing Mascagni’s “Addio alla Madre” from CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA. A tough act to follow for those singing live at Carnegie Hall, but happily no one seemed daunted by it. That doesn’t mean everything went smoothly at the gala concert, which is par for the course of the annual event. Despite the prestige of the Richard Tucker Awards, the world doesn’t stop when the Tucker Foundation comes a calling.
Review: The Marx Brothers Found Life in TROVATORE that the Met Couldn’t Muster
by Richard Sasanow - Nov 1, 2024
I must admit that the Met’s current revival of IL TROVATORE--with RIGOLETTO and TRAVIATA, considered the great creations of Verdi’s middle period--made me think of another masterwork, “A Night at the Opera,” my favorite of the movies by those champions of silliness, the Marx Brothers.
More Artists Join Lineup for Richard Tucker Music Foundation 2024 Opera Gala at Carnegie Hall
by Stephi Wild - Oct 10, 2024
The Richard Tucker Music Foundation presents its annual Gala on Sunday, October 27, 2024 at 6:30 p.m. at Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall, and countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, tenor Anthony Léon, soprano Nadine Sierra, and soprano Elena Villalón join the star-studded line-up of previous Richard Tucker Award Winners, Grant Recipients, and special guests.