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Nico Muhly's Internet Opera: Two Boys
The 32-year-old composer Nico Muhly is a Juilliard-trained wunderkind who worked for Philip Glass for nearly a decade. He’s got a solid portfolio full of unpredictable work — his long roster of...
View ArticleOrnamenting Handel's Messiah
In Handel’s day written music offered singers and players of instruments a great deal of freedom to ornament the melodic line as they wished. We asked the soprano Julianne Baird about adding her own...
View ArticleLeontyne Price’s A Program of Song
Mississippi in the 1910s produced some of our country’s greatest blues artists. It also produced one of our greatest operatic singers, soprano Leontyne Price. The bar she set for singers has remained...
View ArticlePoetry in Sexts & Music History in Drag
Patricia Lockwood, one of poetry’s brightest young stars, combines her funny Twitter persona with serious poetry to create surreal, text message-sized verse. She became internet famous for a poem...
View ArticleAha Moment: Ditching Punk for Opera
Eve Orenstein grew up listening to punk and hardcore. By the age of 11, she was shaving her head and sneaking into shows at New York’s legendary club CBGB with her friends, where a busted lip from a...
View ArticleIn John Adams’ Klinghoffer Opera, the Drama Is Offstage
Earlier this week, hundreds of demonstrators took to the street in front of the Metropolitan Opera in New York to protest The Death of Klinghoffer by the composer John Adams. The opera is based on the...
View ArticleLuisi Leads 'Cavalleria Rusticana' and 'Pagliacci'
Tune in at 1 pm Saturday for the classic pairing of two one-act masterpieces: Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo's Pagliacci. The Met's principal conductor, Fabio Luisi, conducts this...
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Verdi's 'Ernani' from Liége, Belgium
Based on a play by Victor Hugo, Verdi's Ernani describes the fraught relationships between its heroine, Elvira, and the three men who love her: her guardian, Silva; the king, Don Carlo; and her lover,...
View ArticleThe Vienna State Opera: Mission Possible
VIENNA — The inflight movie offering on my Austrian Airlines flight here was made up of films I had already seen or had no interest in watching. “Perhaps I am missing something?” I asked the cabin...
View ArticleAngela Meade Stars in Verdi's 'Il Trovatore'
Tune in Saturday at 1 pm as the Metropolitan Opera presents Il Trovatore, Verdi's classic drama about unrequited love and hidden identities. Marco Armiliato conducts the opera, which features the famed...
View ArticleReview: Met's WWII-Era 'Manon Lescaut' Offers Mixed Bag
The opening of the Metropolitan Opera's new Manon Lescaut production clearly left some disappointment in its wake on Friday, but that won't always be so.The updating to Nazi-occupied 1940s France takes...
View ArticleAnalysis: The Metropolitan Opera’s 2016-2017 Season
Each year, when the Metropolitan Opera announces its new season, I like to analyze the announcement and find as many positive things as possible in what is on offer. The Met famously has had some rough...
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Dutoit Conducts Ravel Double Bill from Geneva
Ravel composed only two operas, and both are too short for a full evening's entertainment. Fortunately, they combine to make an outstanding operatic double-bill in this production from Geneva,...
View ArticleOur Justices, Our Selves
Cultural depictions of the Supreme Court can shed light upon the walled-off world of the justices. But does the court derive power from its inaccessibility? Brooke and Thane Rosenbaum, director of the...
View ArticleSondra Radvanovsky Stars in Donizetti's 'Maria Stuarda'
Tune in to WQXR at 1 pm on Saturday to hear Sondra Radvanovsky take on the title role in Donizetti's Maria Stuarda, as the ill-fated Queen of Scots. This is the second of the composer's "three queens"...
View ArticleStar Tenor Roberto Alagna Rises to his Role in 'Manon Lescaut'
In late January, the Metropolitan Opera faced a crisis. Tenor Jonas Kaufmann was sick and had to withdraw from a new production of Giacomo Puccini’s "Manon Lescaut" which was scheduled to open in just...
View ArticleTenor Roberto Alagna Stars in 'Manon Lescaut', Sen. Cory Booker Looks Ahead
Star tenor Roberto Alagna talks about his new, unexpected role in the Met's "Manon Lescaut." U.S. Senator Cory Booker shares details about his personal life and career, and reflects on the importance...
View Article#3834: New Music From/About Iceland
For this New Sounds, hear music made about an imaginary Iceland as well as new music from Iceland by way of Ireland, Australia, & New York. One of the outsider’s views of Iceland is by the Irish...
View Article'The Shining' Brings the Overlook Hotel to the Opera Stage
"Heeerreee's Johnny!!!"That iconically crazed Jack Nicholson moment in The Shining— as he is breaking down the door to kill his family — won't be sung, spoken or heard at all in the new operatic...
View ArticleAlexander Chee on “The Queen of the Night”
Alexander Chee’s new novel is a romance about an American girl in nineteenth-century Paris. The heroine, Lilliet Berne, bounces from one identity to the next — a frontier orphan who runs off to join...
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