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 […]
Category: Review
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Seeking the Truth About Julia Perry
I am always bitter about going to the established-yet-edgy New York venue (Le) Poisson Rouge—their cheapest beer is $10—but their programs make it impossible to stay away. The kickoff event for the Julia Perry Centenary Festival and Celebration on March 13 was no exception. Even more irresistibly, it was one of the first-ever concerts dedicated […]
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An Introduction to Music Herstory
When I enter London’s Brazilian Embassy at 6.49 p.m., “Let HER Music Play” is already six hours old, but only a quarter of the way through. Organized by the Donne Foundation, which advocates for women in the music industry, it’s an attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the longest acoustic live-streamed concert using […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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, […]
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Two Flutists Got Drunk and Listened to André 3000’s Flute Album
In late November, André 3000 released “New Blue Sun,” a CD immediately dubbed his “flute album”—though clearly as much for the picture on the cover as for the sound of the instrument 3000 plays. Nonetheless, as a lapsed, bad flutist, I decided to listen to the music with a current, extremely good flutist: Eric Lamb, […]
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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 […]
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Indifferent Flying Objects
Art is augmented reality. So when Bayreuth stages an AR “Parsifal,” to curiosity, doubt, disgust—the whole spectrum of emotions from desire to hatred—it’s worth taking a step back. Opera as a genre already augments reality. Janáček’s Katya Kabanova wonders why normal people can’t fly, opera lovers wonder why the same normal people don’t sing their […]
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Indeterminate Openness
As music director of the Vienna State Opera and then (briefly) of New York’s Metropolitan Opera, Gustav Mahler was steeped in the form. Despite this, he never wrote an opera. The closest Mahler came is probably the hour-long finale of the Eighth Symphony, which sets the final scene from Part Two of Goethe’s “Faust.” The […]