RICHARD WAGNER

All that was missing were shouts of “food fight!” to turn last night’s performance of Richard Wagner’s TANNHAUSER—the first of the Met’s season—into a version of National Lampoon’s Night at the Opera, as climate activists interrupted the house debut of the great baritone Christian Gerhaher, and audience members traded barbs with the demonstrators, threatening the company’s determination that “the show must go on.”...

There are no supernatural women arriving on horseback to escort slain warriors to the afterlife--just a trio of mermaids, a couple of giants and a loveless dwarf, along with a bunch of gods, demi-gods and grotesque humans in Richard Wagner’s DAS RHEINGOLD, the first part of the composer’s Ring cycle (officially DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN). Saturday night’s audience stayed to cheer the opening of General and Artistic Director Tomer Zvulun’s production after nearly three intermission-less hours....

Vancouver Opera will complete its successful 2022-2023 season with The Flying Dutchman. Written by one of the world's greatest operatic composers, Richard Wagner, this production will delight opera enthusiasts and casual fans alike....

The Met’s new production of Richard Wagner’s LOHENGRIN showcases startlingly good singing from tenor Piotr Beczala in the title role, supported ably and nobly by soprano Tamara Wilson’s Elsa, bass-baritone Evgeny Nikitin’s Telramund and bass Gunther Groissbock’s King Heinrich. And soprano Christine Goerke’s evil Ortrud nearly steals the show. With the Met’s orchestra and chorus in glorious form, led by music director Yannick Nezet-Seguin in the pit, the performance made you want to scream and ye...

The new opera season started out for me far from Lincoln Center’s madding crowds, in Brooklyn’s Irondale Center, near BAM, with a pair of short pieces by French composers that definitely had their charms....

Vancouver Opera has announced the 2022-2023 season. Returning to the Vancouver Opera stage after 28 years is The Pearl Fishers in October. A company premiere alights the Queen Elizabeth Theatre with ethereal magic in A Midsummer Night's Dream in February. Concluding the season is the long-awaited return of a legend with Wagner's The Flying Dutchman....

Opera Saratoga announced today the first performance events as part of the company's 60th Anniversary Season. On Thursday, November 19th, in partnership with Caffè Lena, Opera Saratoga will launch AMERICA SINGS, a monthly concert series featuring an array of diverse, internationally acclaimed artists. ...

The Longborough Festival Opera has announced its 2021 program. The festival is set to take place from June 4-August 3....

To conclude the Monday Concert series on 29 June, General Music Director Kirill Petrenko will conduct the Orchestra Academy and the Bayerisches Staatsorchester with music by Arnold Schönberg, Igor Stravinsky, Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss....

I admit this is an absolutely personal, totally one-sided view of what gave one man opera thrills last year and what I will look back on with delight. Some are old works, some are new, some are individual performers, some are ensembles, some are complete productions, some are merely the highlight of an evening, most are domestic, a few are foreign. In any case, as the new decade begins, I recall that these are the vocal highlights that made my heart beat a little faster and made me look forward ...

Since it's highly unlikely that the Met will take on Carl Maria von Weber's DIE FREISCHUTZ (frequently translated as THE MARKSMAN) anytime soon--or even in the lifetime of any baby born this year--we should be grateful to Heartbeat Opera for bringing it to New York audiences through December 15, in a rootin' tootin' version that resets the piece from 16th-century Bohemia to contemporary Texas....

World Premiere: Court Theater, Munich, 1870. The second opera in Wagner's monumental Ring cycle, Die Walküre has long stood on its own as an evening of extraordinarily powerful theater. Part of this appeal lies in its focus on some of the Ring's most interesting characters at decisive moments of their lives: Wotan, the leader of the gods; his wife, Fricka; his twin offspring, Siegmund and Sieglinde; and, above all, Wotan's warrior daughter Brünnhilde. These characters and others follow their des...

Wagner's visionary initial installment of the Ring Cycle depicts the original sin of the theft of the sacred golden treasure, the vanity of the gods, the greed of the Nibelungen, the fratricide of the giants, and the building of Valhalla. Bass-baritone Greer Grimsley sings the role of Wotan, the conflicted lord of the gods. Mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton sings her first Wagner role at the Met as Wotan's embattled wife, Fricka....

Wagner's visionary initial installment of the Ring Cycle depicts the original sin of the theft of the sacred golden treasure, the vanity of the gods, the greed of the Nibelungen, the fratricide of the giants, and the building of Valhalla. Bass-baritone Greer Grimsley sings the role of Wotan, the conflicted lord of the gods. Mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton sings her first Wagner role at the Met as Wotan's embattled wife, Fricka....

To celebrate the founding of Amore Opera in 2009, Artistic Director Nathan Hull has programmed six main-stage opera productions this season. Over the past decade, Amore has created a niche for itself in New York City's cultural realm, offering lively stagings of opera classics, neglected gems of the repertoire, appealing children's fare, and ever-popular Gilbert & Sullivan presentations in the well-appointed and intimate 200-seat Riverside Theatre at Riverside Church, 91 Claremont Avenue, (near ...