Richard Sasanow

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

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

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

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) and add 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 tale is like.

It was tough separating the opera from the event when FIRE SHUT UP IN MY BONES opened the first post-Covid pandemic season at the Met. Back then, in September 2021, FIRE made history as the first opera by a Black composer, Terence Blanchard with his librettist Kasi Lemmons (based on the book by Charles M. Blow), to make its way to the Met stage. This week, it returned to show that contemporary opera can have “legs” on the big stage of the company.

I wouldn't say that Andrew Ousley's TIERGARTEN cabaret draws parallels between Weimar Germany—from World War I, leading up to the Nazification of the country and finally World War II—and the current political climate in the US.

It's easy to understand why Neal Goren, Catapult Opera's founder and artistic director, was immediately taken with LA VILLE MORTE. (His program

Back in December, I saw the chamber version of John Adams's EL NINO—dubbed EL NINO: NATIVITY RECONSIDERED—at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

It’s a big season at the Met for tenor Jonathan Tetelman—born in Chile, raised in New Jersey—and he’s taking every advantage of it. He’s come to town with a reputation as a Puccini specialist (not that there’s anything wrong with that). How does he feel about that? “Well, I basically built my voice on Puccini repertoire. I’ve taken it as a gift because he’s a great writer for my voice.” His debut at the Met in March was in LA RONDINE but he’s looking forward to showing off more of his dramatic chops with Pinkerton in MADAMA BUTTERFLY, starting this week, because there’s more 'there' there.

Those of us who keep an eye on the comings and goings of singers at major opera houses around the world, have known that Friday’s debutant, Lithuanian soprano Asmik Grigorian, was going to be one to watch. And it was. No worries about whether her voice would translate from Europe’s smaller houses to the Met’s enormous hall: Grigorian may have been singing Puccini’s Cio-Cio-San/Madama Butterfly this time around, but she’s a well-schooled Lady Macbeth and Turandot as well, bringing a notably large voice with her. She survived the Met’s notoriously short rehearsal time for revivals (particularly for the second cast of the season). Lastly, she even made it through the final curveball, when tenor Jonathan Tetelman became ill and standby Chad Shelton had to take over as Pinkerton; he did well considering the circumstances, but he was no match for her.