Russell Platt

The Park Avenue Armory, that massive Victorian hulk situated between 66th and 67th streets, is well known for hosting the Annual Winter Antiques Show, where a well-heeled crowd enjoys its elegant preview parties, Young Collectors’ nights, and other pleasant rituals. Earlier this month, however, its cavernous Drill Hall was transformed for an event that demanded a rather different sort of ambiance—more like a Dantean circle of hell: The Lincoln Center Festival used it to present five performances of Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s 1965 opera Die Soldaten (The Soldiers).

If you haven’t heard of this opera, then you haven’t heard of its composer, either.  read more »

Last week in this newspaper, Rex Reed wrote, “The music scene has been more interesting lately than the movies, and that’s a fact.” I’ll drink to that—and did, at Minetta Tavern, just after attending the first session (on May 10) of “VOX 2008: Showcasing American Composers,” held at N.Y.U.’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts.

Four days later, the venerable Minetta Tavern went out of business. VOX, however, is stronger than ever in its ninth year.  read more »

Compared to the publicity blowout that preceded the season-opening production of Lucia di Lammermoor—a wild-eyed Natalie Dessay plastered over dozens of city buses—the Metropolitan Opera’s promotion of the company’s first production of Philip Glass’ 1980 opera, Satyagraha, which opened April 11, was almost restrained.

“Could an opera make us stand up for the truth?” asked one poster. “Could an opera make us warriors for peace?” asked another.  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, a heady mixture of fearless vocal fireworks and a daringly sexualized dramatic presence. When Ms. Mattila took her bow, a frenzy erupted: Students, scenesters, stockbrokers and socialites were all on their feet, screaming in amazement and delight.

Ms.  read more »

January may be a dead time for the movie business, but in New York, at least, classical music snaps back with a vengeance. Last week brought an exceptional head rush, as fond returns and new beginnings crowded the calendar.

At the center of it was Lorin Maazel, who, despite his advanced age—and the critical drubbing he regularly endures—remains the most resilient conductor on the American scene. On Jan. 7, after an absence of 45 years, he returned to the Metropolitan Opera to lead a triumphant revival of Die Walküre.  read more »

The most unpleasant experience of modern opera that I’ve ever had came last May at the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, N.C., which presented the American premiere of the French composer Pascal Dusapin’s opera Faustus, the Last Night. What plot the opera had was contained in its title: Amid waves of static, senseless music, the knowledge-hoarding ex-philosopher learns from a Beckett-esque character named Togod that, when it comes to all those big questions—the existence of God, the fate of the universe, et al.—the answer is that there is no answer.  read more »

That this event came off at all—and it did, with joy and skill and dedication—is a tribute to the hard work and imagination of Clive Gillinson, Carnegie’s executive and artistic director, and his indefatigable colleagues.  read more »

The novelist is in the house! He applauds as his words are married to music.  read more »

Margaret Garner is the best new opera that Lincoln Center has heard in quite a while.  read more »