Last month, St. Louisans faced a unique risk when comedian Jim Gaffigan and conductor James Gaffigan played two very different shows in the same city on the same night. Luckily, it seemed that ticketholders for each event got to the right theater without any confusion. “My show is with @jerryseinfeld,” Jim Gaffigan clarified on Instagram. […]
Tag: Opera
Posted inRankings & Roundups
Every Maria Callas Role, Ranked
In honor of Maria Callas’s centennial (which, depending on who you ask, will be either this Saturday, Sunday, or Monday), Warner Classics has released “La Divina: Maria Callas in All Her Roles,” a ten-pound box set comprising 131 CDs (plus a handful of Blu-Rays). If you were to listen to all of these recordings—from the […]
Posted inEssay
Boredom! At the Opera
Despite being a classical singer, I’ve fallen asleep at every Wagner opera I’ve ever attended. “Das Rheingold,” for example, makes it too easy. The seats are comfortable, the lights are dim, the exposition is endless. I feel cocooned, sardined up next to countless other people who all seem to have a higher tolerance for leitmotif than […]
Posted inStuff I’ve Been Hearing
In These Times
“Beethoven” It’s always fun when an album nearly slips past your radar until it becomes the catalyst for controversy. This isn’t a slight to Alice Sara Ott, whose early recordings of Chopin’s complete waltzes and Beethoven’s “Waldstein” Sonata are among my favorite interpretations. More likely, her Beethoven compendium—including a live performance of the First Piano […]
Posted inBreaking
Queer, Dangerous, Exciting
James Jorden, who died earlier this week at 69, is almost certainly one of the most influential people in my life who I never met. In 1994, frustrated with his own floundering career as a stage director, and by the sorry state of both opera writing (overly academic guff or reformatted press releases) and opera […]
Posted inOpinion
Immoral Decisions
Update, 10/6/23: WCPE announced via its website that, “After careful deliberation, due consideration, and hearing from our supporters, listeners and the public, The Classical Station has decided to broadcast the entire 2023-2024 season of New York Metropolitan Opera.” Last month, Berlin’s newly-nomadic Komische Oper opened its first season in exile with Hans Werner Henze’s “Das […]
Posted inEssay
Hopelessly Devoted
Paul and I say our goodbyes in the dingy half-light of a Berlin bar. His fastidious punctuality has given way to a soft fatigue brought on by the end of long night’s work, but his professional guard remains firmly in place. The hug is cordial, measured in its familiarity. We ask one another the unobtrusive […]
Posted inBreaking
The Politics of D Major
Like a panel of elementary-school teachers, music critics weren’t mad—just disappointed yesterday. That was when the Staatsoper Unter den Linden announced that conductor Christian Thielemann would replace Daniel Barenboim as music director starting with the 2024-25 season. Stern and badly-spelled I expected better of yous rang out across the land, directed at the city’s center-right […]
Posted inInterview
A Hero’s Journey
Editor’s note: A few weeks after announcing his retirement from the opera stage due to incurable bile duct cancer, tenor Stephen Gould died at the age of 61 on September 19, 2023. Gould met with VAN writer Volker Hagedorn in early 2019 while headlining “Tannhäuser” at the Dresden Semperoper. In honor of the singer, much-loved […]
Posted inReview
Smeared in Gold
In his program interview with theater writer A.J. Goldmann, Barrie Kosky described his new production of the Royal Opera House “Ring” cycle as “stripping opera back to the quintessential human condition,” taking inspiration from the distilled purity of Greek dramas over the expanse of Norse and Germanic myths. This spare, brutal, yet lubricious production sets […]