Veteran opera manager Anthony Freud has led the Welsh National Opera, the Houston Grand Opera, and most recently the Lyric Opera of Chicago. This summer, he is retiring and returning to his home in London. On a Zoom call, we looked back at his long, varied career in opera. Freud spoke with practiced eloquence about […]
Tag: Opera
Posted inPlaylist
The Best Opera Scenes in Film
On film, characters go to the opera house for meetings, espionage, or murder; operas can bring about moments of revelation, connection, or catharsis. They progress the plot or add texture to the lived-in dimensions of the film’s world. But the best uses of opera in film boost something under the surface, and even add additional […]
Posted inInterview
“When I Came Out All of This Tension Went Away”
Sam Taskinen recently celebrated the premiere of a new staging of Wagner’s “Das Rheingold,” playing the giant Fasolt, in Erfurt, Germany. Possessing a warm, sonorous bass-baritone, she has sung many of the important roles for her voice type: Fra Melitone in Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino,” Kaspar in Weber’s “Der Freischütz,” and Angelotti in Puccini’s […]
Posted inReview
A Chance to Mourn
All eyes have been on Detroit in recent years, where Yuval Sharon’s much-profiled tenure at the rebranded Detroit Opera has turned into a case study for new models of opera’s cultural relevance in regional America. News outlets and commentators have been generous in covering his stewardship, highlighting Sharon’s audaciously modern programming and unorthodox concepts—not to […]
Posted inEssay
Jester’s Privilege
ACT I He’d never been to the opera, and I’d never been to the opera alone. Actually, I had never been to the opera without my father, and I was pretending to still be in love with my boyfriend even though I knew that I wasn’t, so I took him as my date. We’d almost […]
Posted inReview
29,313; or, where the archive ends
I. I had come to Munich searching for an archive I wasn’t sure was there. This was several years ago now, back when I was still fumbling toward a book on post-war opera—something about its relation to genre, history, and mourning; the sketches are still tucked in a drawer somewhere—and at the time, Munich was […]
Posted inReview
Turn The Machine Inward
The Met Opera’s new production of Bizet’s “Carmen” stars trucks. Or rather tractor trailers, ready to move goods. In the first act, which the libretto sets in a Seville cigarette factory, workers crowd around a loading dock, loading boxes into a trailer whose destination is unknown. In the second act, Carmen and her smuggler gang […]
Posted inInterview
Everything I Am on This Earth
In Angela Gheorghiu: A Life for Art, a memoir-cum-book-length-interview coauthored with journalist Jon Tolansky, the Romanian soprano recalls an early-career performance of “La traviata” in Salzburg. She was already on edge when she learned that the original conductor had been replaced by Riccardo Muti—whom she had specifically requested not to work with, fearing the Italian […]
Posted inReview
Unfinished Cities
Nadia Boulanger was one of the most important teachers of the 20th century, but she was active as a creative artist for only a small part of her long life. Her opera “La ville morte” (“The Dead City”) was begun in 1909; composed in collaboration with her mentor Raoul Pugno, it’s her most substantial work, […]
Posted inInterview
“We Disrupt What We Love”
On November 30, the opening night of the Metropolitan Opera’s revival of “Tannhäuser,” we had reached the engrossing song contest in the Wartburg Castle from Act II. Baritone Christian Gerhaher, making his house debut in the role of Wolfram, was singing “Blick’ ich umher,” the character’s song on courtly love. As the music and libretto […]