Parterre box

Parterre Box is an online magazine focused on opera, known for its playful, critical, and bold opinions, featuring a distinct gay perspective. It was established by James Jorden, a New Yorker and opera director, in 1993 while he was looking for work. Initially available in print, it has transitioned to a web-only format and is now recognized as a significant voice in the opera blogging community.

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Strauss is bustin’ out all over

3 days ago | parterre.com | Christopher Corwin

As usual, the Met concludes its season with two orchestral concerts at Carnegie Hall, the first is an all-Richard Strauss program that includes Yannick Nézet-Séguin leading Elza van den Heever in a selection of the composer’s Orchesterlieder. Chris’s Cache offers today a smörgåsbord of those sumptuous soprano songs performed by celebrated Straussians Edita Gruberovà, Genia Kühmeier, Soile Isokoski, and Asmik Grigorian along with five by Jonas Kaufmann, once again proving he can sing anything.
Voices of spring

1 week ago | parterre.com | Christopher Corwin

Spring is the tenuous nexus connecting this week’s Chris’s Cache which features Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Snow Maiden: A Spring Fairy Tale featuring the great Irina Arkhipova as Spring itself, along with pirates of Werther with Ileana Cotrubas and Luis Lima and a MeT Samson et Dalila with Elena Obraztsova seducing Guy Chauvet. Rimsky’s operas are rarely done outside Russia though Dmitri Tcherniakov’s beloved production of Tsar Sultan just completed a run in Madrid.
Carmen Paddock says you must watch The Talented Mr. Ripley

1 week ago | parterre.com | Carmen Paddock

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Reconcilable differences - Parterre Box

1 week ago | parterre.com | Cameron Kelsall

In the final weeks of their season at Severance Music Center, The Cleveland Orchestra proved the place of Jenufa as the most compelling music drama in the standard repertory. I said what I said, and I won’t take it back. Stripped of sets and costumes, this concert presentation sacrificed none of the emotional weight found in Leos Janácek’s surprisingly hopeful tragedy.
Concerto barocco

3 weeks ago | parterre.com | Christopher Corwin

Roberta Mameli, Rosa Feola, and Sophie Junker: three of the world’s most appealing sopranos have each just released a new CD of often entrancing 18th century vocal music. And they all are visiting the NYC area in 2025. One performed a concert just before spring arrived; one is at the Met until Saturday; and the third arrives in July to headline the crowning event of a nearby summer festival.
And ten for Mahler!

1 month ago | parterre.com | Christopher Corwin

Nigel Wilkinson’s recent review of a Brussels performance of Mahler’s gigantic choral Eighth Symphony stirred up some discussion about the ubiquity of the composer’s purely (or primarily) symphonic music in concert halls today. I’ll chime in to say that I too find the symphonies a chore, excepting the sublime “Adagietto” from Death in Venice — I mean, the Fifth Symphony.
Smash or pass | Broadway Review

1 month ago | parterre.com | David Fox |Cameron Kelsall

Cameron Kelsall: Shortly after the musical television series Smash debuted on NBC in 2012, the brilliant Gerard Alessandrini spoofed it in his evergreen parody revue, Forbidden Broadway.
Ritorna vincitrice - Parterre Box

1 month ago | parterre.com | Christopher Corwin

The Met’s first new Aïda since 1988 got off to an inauspicious start on New Year’s Eve when the ersatz-Indiana Jones who opens the show by descending to the stage floor struggled to disengage his harness. Things didn’t improve much after that for director Michael Mayer and Company when star tenor Piotr Beczala struggled through “Celeste Aïda”. Yet he continued, taking down every high note and embarrassing himself and Met General Manager Peter Gelb, who reportedly encouraged Beczala to continue.
Masques et bergamasques

1 month ago | parterre.com | John Yohalem

Twenty-six—I think. Or has it been twenty-eight? The number of different Donizetti operas I’ve seen in live performance. Not sure. But then, no one is quite sure how many he composed. Sixty-five or eighty. Something like that. He was a speed demon from his earliest years—it was a joke among the other boys studying under the renowned Giovanni Simone Mayr in Bergamo in the 1810s. You haven’t finished your overture yet? Donizetti’s reached his finale.
Sex power god | Houston Opera Review

1 month ago | parterre.com | Ilana Walder-Biesanz

What do a 9-year-old opera adapted from a psychological film and a 170-year-old opera based on medieval legend have in common? One answer: Sex and miracles. Another: they’re both can’t miss productions at Houston Grand Opera (HGO) right now. In Missy Mazzoli’s 2016 opera Breaking the Waves, a young woman from a traditional religious community in Scotland (Bess) marries an outsider (Jan) who suffers a terrible accident that leaves him paralyzed.