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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And ten for Mahler!

1 week 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 week 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 week 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 week 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 week 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.
Bachelor party - Parterre Box

3 weeks ago | parterre.com | Christopher Corwin

Each recording features a stellar Norina—Ruth Welting, Lisette Oropesa, and Sara Blanch. These broadcasts also include Giuseppe Taddei, Joshua Hopkins, and Xabier Anduaga, among others. Although I prefer L’elisir d’amore, Pasquale has considerable charms. Although its title role offers prime opportunities to its lead buffo for both comedy and pathos, the opera can often be stolen by its other three principals.
Pennies from heaven - Parterre Box

3 weeks ago | parterre.com | Christopher Corwin

The Brooklyn Academy of Music was hit unusually hard by COVID closures and had to make deep staffing cuts and severely reduce programming.
Povera Butterfly - Parterre Box

1 month ago | parterre.com | Eli Jacobson

Small local opera companies are like delicate exotic flowers: They blossom for a short time under unstable conditions and wither away when the cold winter of economic insecurity and vagaries of artistic endeavor hit them. They come and they go, providing valuable experience for budding young talent and leaving broken dreams and some dreams that came true behind.
Never enough hours in the days of a queen

1 month ago | parterre.com | Christopher Corwin

Spring 2025 brings to New York two contrasting versions of Giulio Cesare, Handel’s most popular work: The English Concert brings it to Carnegie Hall (as well as several other venues) in concert, while R. B. Schlather stages it in his continuing Handel cycle at Hudson Hall. As a preview Chris’s Cache offers a rare pirate recording featuring Cecilia Bartoli, Andreas Scholl, and Les Arts Florissants. After Bartoli sang her first Cleopatras in Zurich in 2005, she waited a few years to try it out again.
New world coming

1 month ago | parterre.com | Christopher Corwin

For the conclusion of “Under-appreciated soprano” month, Chris’s Cache choses Johann Gottlieb Naumann’s Cora och Alonso, a little-known late German (really Swedish) baroque opera whose title lovers are sung by a pair probably too little heard in many households: soprano Inga Kalna and mezzo soprano Bernarda Fink. Born in Germany in 1741, Naumann became one of many itinerant opera composers active in the 18th century.