February 2023

The Hours at The Metropolitan Opera

Rigoletto at the The Metropolitan Opera

On November 10, Bartlett Sher’s Weimar-inspired production of Rigoletto, which had its Met debut last season, returned to the company with an understated opening-night performance that featured the debuts of French tenor Benjamin Bernheim as the Duke, Russian mezzo-soprano Aigul Akhmetshina as Maddalena and Italian conductor Speranza Scappucci leading the Met orchestra.

Atalanta at Juilliard Opera

For Juilliard Opera’s production of Handel’s pastoral opera Atalanta, director Omer Ben Seadia made the canny decision to move the action from Arcadia to Bacchanalia, a modern-day Burning Man-type desert music festival.

Don Carlos at Lyric Opera of Chicago

Lyric Opera filled what has been a significant gap in Chicago’s opera experience with its first-ever mounting of Verdi's Don Carlos in its original five-act French version, and Rachel Willis-Sørensen's Elisabeth was something to hear.

La Traviata at San Francisco Opera

Shawna Lucey's handsome new production of La Traviata, which opened at San Francisco Opera’s War Memorial Opera House in November and featured the memorable company debut of soprano Pretty Yende, registered as an unqualified triumph.

Orfeo ed Euridice at San Francisco Opera

San Francisco Opera brought its fall season to a triumphant close with Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, presented in a riveting production by Matthew Ozawa and starring Polish countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński, who never let the listener forget that his character is the world’s greatest singer. His voice is pure-toned, flexible and astonishingly robust, and his performance in the role demonstrated his gift for projecting intelligence and emotion in word and sound.

Alcina at the Royal Opera House

Vocal values were mixed in the Royal Opera House's new production of Alcina, which opened on November 8 in Richard Jones's glamorous new staging. Soprano Lisette Oropesa sang the title role skillfully without quite producing the tonal richness and depth that might have drawn a full measure of empathy.

The Rape of Lucretia at the Linbury Theatre

Armide at the Opéra Comique

The premiere of a new production of Gluck's Armide at the Opéra Comique was a musical triumph for conductor Christophe Rousset, leading his orchestra Les Talens Lyriques and the chorus Les Éléments, and Véronique Gens, who enjoyed one of the great successes of her career in the title role.

La Périchole at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées

Offenbach's Périchole returned in triumph to the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in a new production directed by Laurent Pelly and conducted by Marc Minkowski, the same team that enjoyed enormous success at the Châtelet with the composer’s Belle Hélène in 2000 and Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein in 2005.

Don Giovanni at the Teatro Regio Torino

Chiara Muti’s new production of Don Giovanni at the Teatro Regio—conducted by her father, Riccardo Muti, in one of his increasingly rare appearances in the opera house—was appropriately dominated by Luca Micheletti in the title role. The thirty-eight-year-old baritone has everything the part requires—charisma, stunning looks, endless vitality and a voice that is mellifluously seductive.

Alzira at Opéra Royal de Wallonie-Liège

In November, Opéra Royal de Wallonie-Liège provided a rare chance to see a staging of Verdi’s Alzira in a production directed by Jean Pierre Gamarra and conducted by Giampaolo Bisanti, the house's new music director. In the title role, Francesca Dotto never forced her lyric soprano beyond its natural limits, sketching in the frilly coloratura with lightly voiced accuracy, while allowing herself more force for her dramatic recitatives.

SILVESTROV: Requiem für Larissa

Valentin Silvestrov, Ukraine’s greatest living composer, originally wrote his 1999 Requiem in honor of his wife, musicologist Larissa Bondarenko, who’d died unexpectedly three years earlier. Two decades later, it’s impossible not to reinterpret the piece as a memorial to the composer’s countrymen who have perished in the war.

AL-ZAND: The Leader

Canadian-American composer Karim Al-Zand demonstrates how relevant a one-act French political satire from 1953 can be.

WEINBERG: The Passenger

In her new staging of Mieczysław Weinberg’s Passenger for Graz, Nadja Loschky lets the past and present intermingle in a surrealist dream space crowded with closets and cupboard doors.

Jonas Kaufmann and Ludovic Tézier: Insieme

How many ways can a tenor and baritone be paired? Father and son, romantic rivals, jealous comrades, devoted friends—they’re all here in this juicy duets album from tenor Jonas Kaufmann and baritone Ludovic Tézier.

Julia Bullock: Walking in the Dark

Julia Bullock makes a spectacular debut as a solo recording artist with this album featuring five songs performed with pianist Christian Reif, Bullock’s husband, and two works—Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 and John Adams’s “Memorial de Tlatelolco,” from El Niño—with London’s Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Reif.

Lisette Oropesa: French Bel Canto Arias

For her second solo album, soprano Lisette Oropesa explores selections that are well suited to her, given two of her stated loves—the French language and Italian bel canto. The result is a fascinating program of Rossini and Donizetti arias as they would have been heard by French listeners.

George London: Grosse Sänger unseres Jahrhunderts

BEETHOVEN: Missa Solemnis

MERRILL: Carnival!

MONTEVERDI: L’Incoronazione di Poppea

S. WAGNER: An Allem Ist Hütchen Schuld!

AHVENNIEMI: Soundtrack of an Imaginary Opera

TIPPETT: The Midsummer Marriage

Bruno de Sá: Roma Travestita

Christina Landshamer: La Passione

Julie Roset: Handel: Salve Regina

Luciana Elizondo: Cantos de Amor y de Ausencia

Marie-Eve Munger: Maestrino Mozart: Opera Arias of a Young Genius

Marina Viotti: A Tribute to Pauline Viardot