…check out this blog post, and more importantly, the two renditions of “The Doll’s Song” from The Tales of Hoffman in it. Even if you don’t think that you like opera, it’s hard not to be impressed. It reminds me of the performance of Ariadne auf Naxos I saw in Vienna, where they were very proper and did not applaud for individual arias–except for Zerbinetta’s coloratura aria. For that, the audience kept going long enough that she had to break character and acknowledge it with a little bow to allow the performance to continue.
I was also lucky enough to catch Latonia Moore’s Met debut in Aida. Again, it wasn’t like that, but it was definitely something special.