Eli Jacobson

Maestro Keri-Lynn Wilson leads soprano Ailyn Pérez, mezzo-soprano Natalie Lewis, tenor René Barbera, bass Soloman Howard, and the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra in Verdi’s Requiem at David Geffen Hall on August 26, 2026, in New York City. Photo: Richard Termine / Met Opera Critics must always fight their prejudices in the pursuit of accuracy and truth. You can’t let personal attitudes about artists or public events cloud or color your judgment. But — it’s hard and many critics don’t even try.

Richard Strauss’s Die ägyptische Helena (1928) is a strange, static, talky, and often abstruse work. Hugo von Hofmannsthal thought the libretto was his best, originally envisioning it as a mythological farce in the style of Offenbach. It turned, however, into something more serious, surreal, and personal this is a story about the aftermath of war and betrayal and the healing that must take place.

Following Teatro Nuovo’s Don Giovanni, the other hellbound hero of the summer season was another familiar gent in an unfamiliar operatic work: Orpheus, aka Orphée, as depicted by Marc-Antoine Charpentier in La Descente de l’Orphée aux Enfers, a tragédie lyrique composed in 1686 as presented by Les Arts Florissants.