Grammy Award-winning violist Richard O’Neill and renowned pianist Garrick Ohlsson will perform a selection of classical pieces at 92nd Street Y, showcasing works by Schubert and Rachmaninoff.
Mozart’s DON GIOVANNI was one of my first operas and remains among my favorites, despite its misogyny and the difficulty in putting together the kind of cast that can do justice to the string of show-stoppers in the score. The season's premiere of the opera had much to admire.
Anyone familiar with Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prizer-winning THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY must be a bit bewildered at how a 700-page novel could be turned into a 3-hour opera. Or, for that matter, how a superhero named “The Escapist” could be sharing a stage this week with Puccini’s Turandot and Mozart’s Don Giovanni.
The forces behind the Met’s latest try at bringing a different (sic: younger) audience to the house, THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY, joined forces at the Guggenheim’s Works & Process series last week to introduce the new work to a receptive crowd. It’s the story of two Jewish cousins who team up in Brooklyn to create a comic book superhero, called the Escapist, to fight Hitler and the forces of fascism, “a story that unfortunately has extra resonance right now,” according to Met General Manager Peter Gelb. It brings three sound worlds--traditional, swing and electronica--to the Met’s season-opener.
Mr. Jacobs Will Perform J. S. Bach's Seldom-Heard The Art Of Fugue at St. Peter's Lutheran Church, and more. Learn more about the upcoming performances.
Even without an over-the-top production—and the Met has had a couple of those—Richard Strauss’s SALOME has been outraging audiences for more than 120 years. This week’s new take by director Claus Guth in his Met debut was no exception.
Someone at the Met should have been giving out flu shots (before RFK Junior makes them illegal), because something is obviously going around the cast of the new AIDA. They should have handed out a scorecard to help the audience keep track of who-was-who.
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.
A match made in heaven? Girl meets boy. Girl meets baby. Girl meets drone. Girl meets court-martial.
Jeanine Tesori and Director Michael Mayer's production of Grounded, based on librettist George Brant’s acclaimed play, is now on stage at the Met Opera. Check out all the reviews.
Discover the August line-up at Smoke Jazz Club featuring performances by the Fred Hersch Trio, Johnathan Blake, and more. Enjoy a month of exceptional jazz music at this iconic New York venue.
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.
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.
The foray of the Met Orchestra under Music Director Yannick Nezet-Seguin into the concert hall the other night—Carnegie Hall to be specific, during its “Fall of the Weimar” series—was in some ways like a three-part meal that mixed the order of the courses. First came an appetizer (running less than 10 minutes) in the form of Bach’s “Fuga [Ricercata] a 6 voci” from Musical Offering, BWV 1079, a late work by the composer (1747) rethought by Anton Webern in the 20th century. Then there was dessert in the form of Wagner’s “Wesendonck Lieder,” gloriously sung by soprano Lise Davidsen to thunderous applause. Finally, there was the main course: Mahler’s 5th Symphony, which was greeted rapturously by concertgoers.
Hélène Grimaud: 'Between The Notes' premieres at AMC Empire 25 Times Square on December 5th.
Just as the Met’s debut of Mexican composer Daniel Catan’s FLORENCIA EN EL AMAZONAS (FLORENCE IN THE AMAZON) began the other day, a member of the audience yelled out “Viva la ópera en español!” (“Long live opera in Spanish!”). And that was before a single note of the composer’s lyric, highly accessible and heavy-on-the-Puccini score was played.
It’s rather surprising, really, for the audience to embrace a contemporary piece like DEAD MAN WALKING, no matter how easily it falls upon the ears, considering the subject matter. In this Ivo van Hove production, it starts with a rape and double murder in a rather graphic piece of film, the use of video being one of van Hove’s trademarks. It ends with a death by lethal injection, also graphically shown in live video.
The Oratorio Society of New York, led by Music Director Kent Tritle, will kick off its its 150th Anniversary and 2023-2024 season on Monday, November 6, 2023 at 7:00pm with Bach's Magnificat and Mozart's Requiem.
This August, Lincoln Center presents two of classical music's most dynamic young figures in the Wu Tsai Theater at the newly reimagined David Geffen Hall. As part of its Summer for the City series featuring the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, Lincoln Center first presents the debut of acclaimed conductor Gemma New – hailed for her “impassioned, richly detailed” style (Opera News) – in concerts highlighting Mozart's “Prague Symphony” on August 1 and 2, 2023 at 7:30PM.
Acclaimed violin virtuoso Randall Goosby is set to solo in the New Jersey Symphony's upcoming performance of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, June 1—4, led by Music Director Xian Zhang. The program also features the world premiere of Chen Yi's Landscape Impression and Stravinsky's Suite from Pulcinella.
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