On a cool night in the middle of November, the soprano Aprile Millo gave a recital at Rose Hall in the TimeWarner Center, celebrating her 25th anniversary with Opera Orchestra of New York. It was a strange, intensely moving evening, an effect amplified by my fever and the Dayquil I was freebasing to combat it. Read More
When the lights went up Sunday afternoon on a shirtless man next to a pantsless man—both American, both young—I knew that City Opera was back. It was the start of the second act of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, and the two men were playing the eponymous antihero and his servant, Leporello.
Christopher Alden’s new production Read More
In terms of box office, the season has not been satisfying at the Metropolitan Opera. Sold-out new productions of The Magic Flute and Rodelinda notwithstanding, overall attendance still hasn’t bounced back from 9/11, which made stay-at-homes of Met lovers in Japan, Europe and the rest of the United States. As the 2004-5 season enters the Read More
The most startling thing about Saddam Hussein, when he was finally routed out of his rathole, was that he should emerge looking no more frightening than a bum who’d been dozing too long in Central Park. How astonishing to realize that this monster (as his former buddies in the American government had dubbed him) turned Read More
