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For the first time since the 2012--13 season, Franco Zeffirelli's production of ''Turandot'' has been buffed up and sent out to draw the crowds at the Metropolitan Opera. Crowned by [...]

The Metropolitan Opera puts it plainly in a program note: ''Star power has been the driving force behind productions of 'Andrea Chnier' since the work's Met premiere in 1921.'' The [...]

CORRECTION APPENDEDThe usual reason for a director to update the setting of a serious opera is to bring out the grim, contemporary darkness of the story. The most interesting aspect [...]

One of the most manipulative moments in opera occurs in Act II of Verdi's ''Aida,'' when the jealous Princess Amneris tricks Aida into revealing her love for the warrior Radames.The [...]

With its cackling Gypsies, mistaken identities and secret brothers, the convoluted plot of Verdi's ''Trovatore'' can seem like the setup for a joke. Already verging on chaos, it makes a [...]

The curse is broken. Actually, 'double curse' was the way Peter Gelb, the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, referred to the company's seeming inability to present a decent production […]

THERE is an air of wishful thinking in the world of operatic tenors, and it blows from east to west. Three times in the last three years the rumors hummed, […]

OPERA singers keep showing up in the wrong places. Sometimes they are good singers: Cecilia Bartoli, appearing as Susanna in the Metropolitan Opera's 'Marriage of Figaro'; Renee Fleming, very nearly […]

Gorgeous to look at but virtually uninhabited, the Metropolitan Opera's new 'Traviata' seems to have been the victim of a neutron bomb. Whatever happened during the process of preparation, Monday […]

GIUSEPPE DI STEFANO, the longtime partner of Maria Callas, was in a rage. On a visit to Buenos Aires in 1994, he had encountered a very fine but green tenor […]