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Featured stories
Sound Play
American bass-baritone Nicholas Brownlee, who this season sings the Dutchman in Santa Fe, has emerged as a Wagnerian to watch—and hear.
Sight Lines | Lise Davidsen
Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen, who is currently singing the Marschallin in the Met's Rosenkavalier revival, shares how she's prepared herself psychologically for the repertory's biggest roles.
Breaking news
Gustavo Dudamel to Depart Paris Opéra After Two Seasons as Music Director
Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels's opera, Omar, Awarded 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Music
Grace Bumbry, 87, Superstar Singer of Searing Eloquence and Glamour, has Died
In Review
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Otello at LA Opera
Otello at LA Opera
"Everything was aligned for LA Opera's recent revival of Otello, which offered an evening of near-matchless singing by Russell Thomas and Rachel Willis-Sørensen, and an orchestra, under James Conlon's baton, whose rendition ranged from truly apocalyptic to the profoundest intimacy of tragic loss."
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Die Zauberflöte at the Metropolitan Opera
Die Zauberflöte at the Metropolitan Opera
"If Simon McBurney hasn’t quite succeeded in making the Met's new staging of Die Zauberflöte cohesive, he and his design team have certainly delivered plenty of invention. The zauber of this opera, of course, lies in the music itself. But Nathalie Stutzmann’s ineffective leadership seldom inspired the clarity necessary for embodying Mozart’s luminous sound world."
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Nixon in China at Opéra National de Paris
Nixon in China at Opéra National de Paris
"Renée Fleming made a triumphant return to the Paris Opéra with a winning performance as a slipper-wearing, homespun Pat Nixon in the company premiere of John Adams's opera. The beauty of Fleming’s plangent, unchanging timbre was ideally suited to the character’s more reflective and naïve moments, and Gustavo Dudamel drew a fine performance from an orchestra not familiar with this repertoire."
Spotlights
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Rediscovered Country
Rediscovered Country
Leon Botstein explores unfamiliar repertory at the annual Bard Music Festival.
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Singing to Win
Singing to Win
An insider offers his perspective on what it is like to sing in a vocal competition.
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96 Hours for Change
96 Hours for Change
Atlanta Opera’s unique competition showcase for new operas supports underrepresented voices.
Extraordinary Journey
Two new adaptations of Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha underscore the opera’s enduring viability.
Sound Bites: Gemma New
A maestro from New Zealand conducts Susannah at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis.
Recordings
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MOZART: Requiem
SALIERI: Requiem
MOZART: Requiem
SALIERI: Requiem“The voices and instrumentalists of Le Concert Spirituel bring these works into fascinating dialogue.”
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GRIMES, NEGRÓN, NOVA, SHAW, SNIDER: The Blue Hour
GRIMES, NEGRÓN, NOVA, SHAW, SNIDER: The Blue Hour
“Trippy and kaleidoscopic but also engaging and continually interesting.”
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NONO: Intolleranza 1960
NONO: Intolleranza 1960
“This smacks of champagne socialism: an opera-going elite, in €330 seats, watching the plights of poor migrants set to an ultra-avant-garde score.”
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Ruby Hughes: Echo
Ruby Hughes: Echo
“A moody, melancholy recital that exploits Hughes’s impressive ability to sing artfully at a pinpoint pianissimo.”
Watch & Listen
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Sight Lines | Missy Mazzoli
Sight Lines | Missy Mazzoli
The composer speaks about how she learned to write for the voice, her efforts to foster greater inclusion among future composers and her chamber opera, Proving Up, which receives performances at Juilliard in February.
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Sight Lines | Russell Thomas
Sight Lines | Russell Thomas
F. Paul Driscoll speaks with tenor Russell Thomas about his new appointment as LA Opera's artist-in-residence, how he finds inspiration in old recordings, and the repertoire that he hopes to take on during the next phase of his career.
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Best of the Best: Eugene Onegin
Best of the Best: Eugene Onegin
Our favorite selections from Tchaikovsky's great romance, sung by an all-star cast, from Ivan Kozlovsky, Leonid Sobinov, Jussi Björling and Galina Vishnevskaya to Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Peter Mattei and Renée Fleming.
Rarely Trusted
The women in Don Giovanni inspire complex moral questioning.
Is Donna Elvira the most complicated?