Recently in Reviews
30 Aug 2010
A world premiere of a new opera holds the promise of an exciting new addition to the fairly calcified collection of masterpieces that comprise the standard repertory. »
29 Aug 2010
Like her impressive recording of Lieder by Dvořák (Harmonia Mundi CD 901824), Bernarda Fink’s recording of a selection of Lieder by Brahms not only offers a fine representation of the music, but also demonstrate the singer’s command of this repertoire. »
29 Aug 2010
This high-concept Salome takes place in Nazi Germany.The set has two levels: on top, Herod revels with the banqueters; below, we see a dingy basement, full of kitchen workers, relaxed soldiers, and the prostitutes who help them relax. »
24 Aug 2010
When it debuted at the Met in 1991 John Corigliano’s overwrought and somewhat all-too comic Ghosts of Versailles was praised largely as a vehicle for the long-celebrated artistry of Teresa Stratas and Marilyn Horne. »
24 Aug 2010
Sibelius’s 1892 symphonic poem for soloists, chorus, and orchestra is in the tradition of the cantata-like symphonies of the nineteenth century, as found in Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang or Mahler’s Second Symphony. »
24 Aug 2010
To frame it in nearby-Cooperstown sports metaphors, the enterprising Glimmerglass Opera scored two decisive ‘home runs,’ and a decent enough ‘single’ in its 2010 Festival season.
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24 Aug 2010
One of the leading lights of Berg’s Vienna was the architect Adolf Loos, the great crusader against ornament. »
24 Aug 2010
The greatest dramatic tenor and soprano roles have proven irresistible to Marcelo Alvarez, who started primarily as a lyric tenor, and Violeta Urmana, whose first career success came as a mezzo. »
24 Aug 2010
The fourteen year old Rossini composed his first opera Demetrio e Polibio in 1806 though it was not performed for another six years. »
18 Aug 2010
As the prelude plays, we see circles of fluorescent light moving slowly in uncertain black space. Are we seeing flights of flying saucers, as in Close Encounters of the Third Kind? »
18 Aug 2010
During a recent concert at the Grant Park Music Festival, held on this
occasion in the adjacent Harris Theater, members of the Ryan Opera Center of
Lyric Opera of Chicago presented ensembles from four operas, two each by Mozart
and by Rossini. »
18 Aug 2010
Robert Schumann’s only opera Genoveva (1850) is best known as a failure in its time and has since fallen into the list of succès d’estime, but with this new release, based on a production intended for television, conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt champions the work in his second recording of the score. »
15 Aug 2010
The performances of Jacques Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann
at Santa Fe Opera this summer are the based on Michael Kaye’s edition of
the score. »
15 Aug 2010
Seattle, the city of software and Starbucks, is also a summer site for serious Wagnerites. »
15 Aug 2010
There was a time when the works of Benjamin Britten, one of the
20th-Century’s supreme composers, were not welcome at Santa Fe Opera. »
15 Aug 2010
Does this Tan Dun opera prove or disprove that for East and West, the twain shall never meet? »
15 Aug 2010
Michael Christie, now 34, was too young to see John Corigliano’s Ghosts of Versailles when it was new at the Metropolitan Opera in 1991. »
11 Aug 2010
Although productions of Gioachino Rossini’s Mosè in Egitto
are infrequent, the lively debate on successive versions of the work has
generally led to questions of priority and to informative discussions on
performance history. »
10 Aug 2010
According to Paulus Diaconus’ Historia Langobardorum, both
Lombard sovereigns warring for supremacy in late 7th-century Italy — the
legitimate king Perctarit and Grimuald the usurper — behaved rather fairly to
each other and their families. »
06 Aug 2010
The noted operatic impresario and stage director, Lotfi Mansouri, with the professional help of writer Donald Arthur, has issued his memoirs under the title Lotfi Mansouri: An Operatic Journey. »
06 Aug 2010
Period instruments and nineteenth-century grand opera are seldom found on the same stage — or even the same sentence — but as adventurous practitioners increasingly experiment in the repertoire of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, it’s a sight and sound that will inevitably become more familiar. »
02 Aug 2010
Franz Schreker, born in 1878, was a youth in the age in which psychoanalysis
first bloomed. In music, far from coincidentally, it was the post-Wagnerian era
when western tonality had been liberated from traditional rules but was
uncertain which new path to take. »
01 Aug 2010
Maria di Rohan was Donizetti’s penultimate opera, composed in
Italian for Vienna in 1843, with revisions to appeal to the taste of Paris and
Milan following. »
26 Jul 2010
Fairy Tales are often short on character, motivation and development. The stock figures are either good or bad, they are usually archetypal, and stand not only for themselves but larger dimensions of humanity. »
26 Jul 2010
George Benjamin is the leading British composer of his generation. Into the Little Hill premiered in 2006, has been acclaimed a masterpiece. »
22 Jul 2010
Despite its length and pretentions to being serious opera, Jacques Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann, dating from the 1880s, remains a leaky vessel adrift on a sea of self-fulfilling prophesies of doom. »
22 Jul 2010
The operas of British composer Jonathan Dove enjoy a fairly high level of both critical and popular support in the U.K., where his best known work, Flight, premiered at the prestigious Glyndebourne Festival. »
21 Jul 2010
Bellini’s Norma was composed in 1831 and, in the era of such
singing actresses as Giuditta Pasta, Maria Malibran, Giuseppina Strepponi,
Giulia Grisi and Thérèse Tietjens (famous Normas all), soon came to be known as
the bel canto vehicle par excellence, the summit of vocal achievement. »
21 Jul 2010
Originally published in German as Herrin des Hügels, das Leben der Cosima Wagner (Siedler, 2007), this new book by Oliver Hilmes is an engaging portrait of one of the most important women in music during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. »
20 Jul 2010
Proms audiences have a tendency to be overly enthusiastic in showing their
appreciation, with an arsenal of rituals and traditions at the ready to show
their praise and adulation for their idols. »
20 Jul 2010
At the beginning of every summer, an oasis of music and theater appears like
magic in the suburbs of St. Louis. »
19 Jul 2010
The BBC Proms brought the Welsh National Opera’s hit Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg to the Royal Albert Hall and to the world, via international broadcast. »
18 Jul 2010
A performance of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony could only ever be relatively underwhelming; even a car crash of a performance would impress in some sense, indeed most likely in quite a few. »
18 Jul 2010
This was a recital of concentrated intensity — a remarkable dialogue between texts, timbres and idioms, across ages and among performers. »
18 Jul 2010
So when did you last shout “bravissima”? »
18 Jul 2010
There was a time when the likes of Luc Bondy and Francesca Zambello staged operas for the Chorégies d’Orange in its famed Théâtre Antique. »
18 Jul 2010
The annual Zürcher Festspiel banked on a heavy hitter to generate excitement for its revival of Der Rosenkavalier. »
15 Jul 2010
Poulenc’s only full-length opera is widely admired and not infrequently performed, but its claustral nature makes it tricky to stage. »
14 Jul 2010
This Glyndebourne production is, as far as I know, the first recording of any semi-opera that manages to impart a strong sense of what this peculiar, and peculiarly British, genre is like. »
13 Jul 2010
In 1881 Wagner and his wife were discussing the myth of Eros and Anteros,
and Wagner remarked, “Anteros is Parsifal.” Wagner considered
Parsifal a figure opposed to sexual love, Eros’s opposite. »
13 Jul 2010
The Aix Festival was known not so very long ago for pretentious productions. Perhaps now it will become known for good productions. »
12 Jul 2010
Something rather extraordinary happened to opera seria in 1738. The
acknowledged master of that time, London’s George Frideric Handel,
presented two new operas at the King’s Theatre: Faramondo and
Serse. »
12 Jul 2010
CENTRAL CITY — The story is banal: a single mother, an aging actress,
is alienated from her grown-up children. »
12 Jul 2010
Don Giovanni isn't new and most of the cast at Glyndebourne (led by Gerald Finley) are familiar. »
11 Jul 2010
The Parisian press was plastered with photos of Daniele de Niese. The
glamorous 31-year old Sri Lankan-Australian mega-star is everywhere these days:
a new TV series (“Diva Diaries”), a Decca greatest hits CD
(“Diva”), and, with her marriage to Guy Christie of the
Glyndebourne ruling clan, a secure position as the first lady of English opera. »
11 Jul 2010
We have Welsh National Opera to thank not only for providing the occasion for an auspicious role debut, but also for showcasing their world star in a wholly brilliant new production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. »
09 Jul 2010
This was my first Verdi performance in the theatre for thirteen years or so I must have been the least jaded of critics for the opening night of the revival of Sir Richard Eyre’s La Traviata. »
08 Jul 2010
David McVicar’s production of Salome received its first revival at Covent Garden, though McVicar left its revival in the capable hands of Justin Way. »
08 Jul 2010
Garsington Opera is moving to Wormsley Park. in 2011, but it marked its last production at Garsington Manor with a glorious coda, that augurs well for the future. As a friend remarked “We'll be talking about this for years to come”. »
![Lydia Teuscher as Gretel [Photo by Bill Cooper courtesy of Glyndebourne Festival 2010]](http://www.operatoday.com/H%26G_Glyndebourne_003.gif)