Two waves

Time has cycled around to this blog's second birthday. For those who haven't followed its entire life (or who -- as I have -- have just forgotten things), I offer a sample of posts here to date:

On Don Carlo[s]
Review -- Julie Taymor's Magic Flute (revived later this month in English)
On song recitals (warning: broken links)
On La Clemenza di Tito
On Rostand and Alfano's Cyrano de Bergerac
On Marcelo Alvarez and Manon
On Maeterlinck and Dukas' Ariane et Barbe-Bleue
On the 2005 opera funding crisis in Italy
On the world premiere of Tobias Picker's An American Tragedy (and more)
On attention, onstage and off
On applause
Review -- Robert Wilson's Lohengrin
Review -- Röschmann/Bostridge duo recital
On the passing of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf
On the Joe Volpe era
Review -- recitals by Kožená and Röschmann

(More reviews can be found in the seasonal compilations to the right.)

To be honest, I'm not very satisfied. But that's what keeps me at it, I suppose.

[UPDATE 2008: I am appending subsequent "selected posts" lists to this post.]

On the world premiere of Tan Dun's The First Emperor
On Ramon Vargas in Onegin
On Meistersinger and Simon Boccanegra
On Strauss and Hofmannsthal's Die Ägyptische Helena
On Ruth Ann Swenson
On the "theatricality" of Met movie broadcasts
Review -- Matthias Goerne in recital
On vocal and theatrical values in historic context
On Peter Davis' exit
On a pop fan's discovery of opera
On Wagner's Ring
On Pavarotti's death
Review -- Mary Zimmerman's season-opening Lucia
On Samuel Barber's Vanessa

On Puccini's Manon Lescaut
On Johan Botha as Otello
On Peter Grimes as sea god (see second part of post)
On Ernani and Verdi's later tragedies
Review -- Ruth Ann Swenson in La Traviata
On Tristan & Isolde and Heppner & Voigt
On Ramon Vargas' unscheduled appearance in Ballo
On Jonathan Miller's jealous realism
Review -- Anja Harteros in La Traviata
On Gerard Mortier's abandonment of City Opera

On Maija Kovalevska and Puccini's La Boheme
On Puccini's La Rondine and Angela Gheorghiu
On Swiss soprano Lisa Della Casa's 90th birthday
On Verdi's Il Trovatore
On Dvorak's Rusalka
On Mary Zimmerman's production of Sonnambula
Review -- Metropolitan Opera 125th Anniversary Gala
On Diana Damrau's Gilda in Rigoletto
Review -- Rene Pape's recital debut
On the season's last Walküre
On Britten's Rape of Lucretia
On Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots
On the premiere of Luc Bondy's Tosca production
On Strauss and Hofmannsthal's Der Rosenkavalier

Review -- Carmen
On Riccardo Muti and Verdi's Attila
On Ambroise Thomas' Hamlet
Review -- Rossini's Armida
On the April revival of Tosca
On Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre
OT: a week of Sleeping Beauty at ABT
Review -- Robert LePage's Opening Night Rheingold
On OONY's Mascagni/Massenet double-bill
On Verdi's Il Trovatore in revival
On Strauss' Intermezzo at City Opera
On debuting tenor Yonghoon Lee as Don Carlo

On the baloney brutality of Willy Decker's Traviata
On Meyerbeer's L'Africane
On Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades and Russian Francophilia
On Schubert's Edenic Die schöne Müllerin
On Strauss' Capriccio
On Lully's Atys
Review: Siegfried
On Angela Gheorghiu and Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur

On Manon, Manon Lescaut, and Laurent Pelly's production of the former
On Janacek's tragic version of The Makropoulos Case
On the Peter Gelb era at the Metropolitan Opera
On Verdi's Requiem in performance

Amber Wagner in Ballo
On the struggle against time in Les Troyens
Review: Maria Stuarda and a DiDonato recital
On the Francois Girard/Met Parsifal's Parsifal, cast, conductor, physical production, and meaning
On the entrance of story into the Ring in The Valkyrie
Sondra Radvanovsky in Norma