On a September evening of the late aughts, Karita Mattila was singing in Tosca at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York.
Fifty years from now, the next Edith Wharton, if she could have seen the crowd that gathered to see Ms. Mattila on the evening of Sept. 21, 2009, could easily begin her great Read More
Nobody who heard Karita Mattila sing the title role of Strauss’s Salome on the opening night of the Metropolitan Opera’s 2004 production will ever forget it. That she stripped (briefly) nude at the climax of the Dance of the Seven Veils surely helped fuel the fire, but mainly it was stuff of the performance itself, Read More
Great opera singers are always engaged in a kind of striptease: They expose themselves in all their vulnerability-and, at the same time, drape themselves with a blanket of beautiful sound. The Met has lately been full of operatic peekaboos. A few weeks ago, we were treated to the now-you-hear-it-now-you-don’t phenomenon of Luciano Pavarotti’s voice in Read More
