The crowd for a recent Saturday evening performance of Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore at Caramoor Center for Music and Arts, in lush Katonah, N.Y., was older and whiter even than a typical audience at the Metropolitan Opera (and that is pretty darn old and white).
The opera’s star, a young black tenor named Lawrence Brownlee, was Read More
Looking back at some of my old music columns, I’ve discovered several overused adjectives. “Rigorous,” “probing” and “immaculate” seem to have been particular favorites. Fine words, but they tend to reinforce a widely held perception that the performance of classical music is an intensely serious business attended largely by people who put high-minded sentiments ahead Read More
At a time when new releases of classical recordings have dwindled to a comparative trickle, one sector seems to be flourishing as never before: This fall has seen a remarkable outpouring of albums by female opera singers. The majority of them, as it happens, are not sopranos but mezzo-sopranos; we’re living in an age when, Read More
