Blog
Met Opera 2024-25 Review: Ainadamar
“That. Was. Glorious,” an anonymous voice behind me gushed when the curtain dropped. Indeed, Ainadamar’s genre-bending combination of great voices, historical elegy, and explosive flamenco dancing is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
An Interview With Elena Villalón
Fresh off her critically praised Met Opera debut in Orfeo ed Euridice last spring, Cuban-American soprano Elena Villalón now takes on Osvaldo Golijov’s exhilarating Ainadamar. She kindly took the time to answer some questions in between rehearsals.
Met Opera 2024-25 Review: Les Contes d’Hoffmann
Jacques Offenbach‘s Les Contes d’Hoffmann is opera’s equivalent of The Tortured Poets Department, only 14,592 times better. The music brims with kaleidoscopic vibrancy and the story of Hoffmann’s three loves is delightful, though dizzyingly strange at times.
Recital Review: Erin Morley at the Yale School of Music
It feels natural that Erin Morley’s first solo album, Rose in Bloom, should be nature-themed. She commands great versatility with her crystal-crisp voice, which sometimes resembles a richly filigreed silver flute, other times the ethereal otherworldliness of a glass harmonica.
Opera Onscreen: Crying and Renée Fleming in Margaret (2011)
My favorite opera scene in film is perhaps the obscurest: Margaret (2011), when Anna Paquin and J. Smith-Cameron attend Les Contes d’Hoffmann starring Renée Fleming and Susan Graham. By the end of the Barcarolle, Paquin’s character has burst in tears and reconciled with her estranged mother.
An Interview With Sydney Mancasola
In 2019, soprano Sydney Mancasola earned a place in the operatic annals when she headlined the European premiere of Breaking the Waves. She recently spoke with me about that experience, Debussy’s enigmatic Mélisande, and the “thrilling” contemporary opera scene in the US.
