Opera Today
News
Excuse me, does my Boheme look big in this?
By Rosemary Sorensen [The Australian, 2 September 2010]
PUCCINI'S La Boheme is about Mimi, that pathetic creature who loves oh so briefly, then is snuffed out, coughing up her guts with a bad case of consumption. Never mind that she is able - poor and ill though she may be - to warble at the top of her spotty lungs and drive her lover to distraction. Mimi is a tragic maid.
Why no modern-day equals to 'Carmen,' 'Tosca'?
[SFGate.com, 2 September 2010]
Dear Mr. Kosman: How come we don't have any modern opera composers that approach those of the past? When you hear "Carmen" or "Tosca," you can hum the melodies of those compositions, but I dare anyone to hum the melodies of anything composed after 1930. It would be so nice to hear a new "warhorse" opera. Where is the modern-day version of Verdi, Wagner, Puccini or Bizet?
Mathematicians, Musicians and Chess Masters
By Dylan Loeb McClain [NY Times, 2 September 2010]
Sunday’s chess column was about Noam Elkies, a Harvard mathematics professor who is also a music composer and chess player. Though Elkies is unusual at being talented in all three areas, he is not entirely unique. Through the years, there have been a number of strong chess players who were excellent mathematicians or musicians.
WNO and Kennedy Center Opera House Conductor Heinz Fricke Set to Retire
By BWW News Desk [Broadway World, 1 September 2010]
Washington National Opera (WNO) and The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts have announced the retirement of Music Director Heinz Fricke. The announcement marks the conclusion of the German maestro's remarkable 18-year tenure leading the Washington National Opera Orchestra and the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, which cooperatively share a corps of 61 professional musicians.
Scottish Opera may survive and thrive as a smaller and leaner part-time company
By Alan Rodger [Herald Scotland, 31 August 2010]
Michael Tumelty’s trenchant criticism of the decision to reduce the orchestra of Scottish Opera to half-time working is high on anger and suggestions of mischief (“Hang your head in shame, Scottish Opera, you are a disgrace to the nation”, Herald Arts, August 28).
Salzburger Festspiele: Triumph jenseits von Dur und Moll
Walter Weidringer [Die Presse, 30 August 2010]
Die Berliner Philharmoniker unter Simon Rattle triumphierten mit Schönberg, Webern und Berg. Mit solch beredtem Ausdruck erfüllten die Berliner auch die bewegenden Totenklagen von Weberns.
Krisen und Triumphe: Jonas Kaufmann erinnert sich
[Focus, 30 August 2010]
Dies war der Fall nach seinem Debüt an der legendären New Yorker Metropolitan Opera in La Traviata im Februar 2006. Die Erinnerungen daran (Meinen die wirklich mich?) lässt ihn an die Anfänge seiner Karriere in Deutschland in der Provinz, aber auch an persönliche Krisen zurückdenken. Aber wenn eine große alte Dame der Opernkunst wie Christa Ludwig meint, nachdem sie Kaufmann zum ersten Mal gehört hat, das ist ganz große Kunst, dann lässt das aufhorchen.
Prom 51, Royal Albert Hall, London Tête à Tête Festival, Riverside Studios, London Così fan tutte, Village Underground, London
By Anna Picard [The Independent, 29 August 2010]
Gothic sensibility permeated the Royal Albert Hall on Monday evening: euphoric, melancholic, sun-dazzled and moon-drunk.
BBC Prom 54; La fanciulla del West; Joyce DiDonato; Simon Keenlyside; Kronos Quartet
By Fiona Maddocks [The Guardian, 29 August 2010]
Driven and obsessive, drawing on 1970s jazz funk, soul and gospel, Mark-Anthony Turnage's new BBC Proms commission Hammered Out burst noisily upon the world at Thursday's world premiere conducted by David Robertson. A scrunchy havoc of whip, sleigh bells, saxophones, bass guitar, as well as the full forces of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Nibelung note of a household hammer for good measure, bashed, danced and whirled through this 15-minute non-stop toccata.
At Bard Festival, placing Berg at center of modern musical Vienna
By Jeremy Eichler [Boston Globe, 29 August 2010]
ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. — The year in the photo is 1920. The great Viennese composer Alban Berg, 35 years old, stands at an open window of his Vienna home, gazing directly out at the camera yet also somehow beyond it. His face conceals like a mask. The breakthrough triumph of his first opera, “Wozzeck,’’ is five years in the unknowable future. We sense perhaps an air of reserved confidence, perhaps a tint of melancholy. But there is more to this picture.
Multimedia Opera Production to Debut at Roosevelt University
Chicago, IL, August 28, 2010 --(PR.com)-- On October 22, Roosevelt University will host a multimedia opera production composed and produced by Kyong Mee Choi, assistant professor of music composition in the university’s music conservatory and recipient of the prestigious Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. The opera will be held at Ganz Hall, Roosevelt University, 430 S. Michigan Ave., at 7:30 p.m.
Opera San Jose plans 'gigantic' production for West Coast premiere of 'Anna Karenina'
By Richard Scheinin [San Jose Mercury News, 28 August 2010]
Future operatic soprano Jasmina Halimic discovered Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" as a schoolgirl in Bosnia. But it wasn't until years later -- after moving to the United States in 1994 -- that she really got it: Tolstoy's masterpiece became an Oprah's Book Club selection in 2004, and Halimic reread it while studying music in Indiana.
La fanciulla del West/L’Heure espagnole, Usher Hall, Edinburgh
By Andrew Clark [Financial Times, 27 August 2010]
By choosing Oceans Apart for his 2010 theme, Edinburgh International Festival director Jonathan Mills opened up fertile avenues for exploration in spoken theatre and classical music, while leaving little room for manoeuvre in opera. The obvious choice was Puccini’s wild west thriller La fanciulla del West (The Girl of the Golden West). Premiered in New York 100 years ago and never previously heard in Scotland, it conjures a picture of the New World that, though seen through the eyes of a composer who had never experienced it, effectively captures the values of a frontier community.
Us and them is the cultural problem, not Pomp and Circumstance
By Lynsey Hanley [The Guardian, 27 August 2010]
There are more ways of divvying people up than according to how much money they've got. A survey this week by Reader's Digest concluded that a large proportion of Britain is culturally impoverished, with one-third of those surveyed never having listened to classical music and three-quarters unable to identify Edward Elgar as the composer of Pomp and Circumstance.
How we learned to start worrying and love Mahler
By Jessica Duchen [The Independent, 27 August 2010]
On Gustav Mahler's 11th birthday, the story goes, a family friend asked what he wanted to be when he grew up. "Jesus Christ," said the lad. To the astonished "Why?" he replied: "Because I want to suffer for other people."
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This weeks theme
Operas Based on French Literature
The current theme is operas based on French literature. The first offering is Oberst Chabert by Hermann Wolfgang von Waltershausen to a libretto adapted by the composer from La Comtesse à deux maris by Honoré de Balzac. This is followed by Verdi’s adaptation of Victor Hugo’s play Hernani.