Recently in Reviews
23 Apr 2016
On April 16, 2016, San Diego Opera presented Giacomo Puccini’s sixth opera, Madama Butterfly, in an intriguing production by Garnett Bruce. Roberto Oswald’s scenery included the usual Japanese styled house with many sliding doors and walls. On either side, however, were blooming cherry trees with rough trunks and gnarled branches that looked as though they had been growing on the property for a hundred years. »
23 Apr 2016
New Co-Production Tristan und Isolde with Metropolitan: Simon
Rattle and Westbroek electrify Treliński’s Opera-Noir. »
20 Apr 2016
In an operatic world crowded with sure-fire bread and butter repertoire, Opera San Jose has boldly chosen to lavish a new production on a dark horse, Andre Previn’s A Streetcar Named Desire. »
18 Apr 2016
Choral symphony, oratorio, symphonic poem — Berlioz’s Roméo et Juliette does not fit into any mould. It has the potential to work as an opera-ballet, but incoherent storytelling and uninspired conducting undermined this production. »
14 Apr 2016
When Kasper Holten took the precaution of pre-warning ticket-holders that the Royal Opera House’s new production of Lucia di Lammermoor featured scene portraying ‘sexual acts’ and ‘violence’, one assumed that he was aiming to avert a re-run of the jeering and hectoring that accompanied last season’s Guillaume Tell. He even went so far as to offer concerned patrons a refund.
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12 Apr 2016
These are five very different reviews by students at the University of Maryland on its Opera Studio production of Regina — an interesting, informative and entertaining read . . . »
10 Apr 2016
‘Remember me, the one who is Pia;/ Siena made me, Maremma undid me.’ The speaker is Pia de’ Tolomei. She appears in a brief episode of Dante’s Divine Comedy (Purgatorio V, 130-136) which was the source for Gaetano Donizetti’s Pia de’ Tolomei - by way of Bartolomeo Sestini’s verse-novella of 1825.
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10 Apr 2016
"The large measure of formalism which forms the basis of De Materie does not in itself offer any guarantee that the work will be beautiful," says Dutch composer Louis Andriessen of his four-movement opera. »
07 Apr 2016
On April 1, 2016, Arizona Opera presented Falstaff by Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) and Arrigo Boito (1842-1918) in Phoenix. Although Boito based most of his libretto on Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, he used material from Henry IV as well. Verdi wrote the music when he was close to the age of eighty. He was concerned about his ability at that advanced age, but he was immensely pleased with Boito’s text and decided to compose his second comedy, despite the fact that his first, Un giorno di regno, had not been successful. »
06 Apr 2016
The brand new SF Opera Lab opened last month with artist William Kentridge’s staged Schubert Winterreise. Its second production just now, Svadba-Wedding — an a cappella opera for six female voices — unabashedly exposes the space in a different, non-theatrical configuration. »
05 Apr 2016
One may think of Tosca as the most Roman of all operas, after all it has been performed at the Teatro Costanzi (Rome’s opera house) well over a thousand times since 1900. Though equally, maybe even more Roman is Hector Berlioz’ Benvenuto Cellini that has had only a dozen or so performances in Rome since 1838. »
02 Apr 2016
Two new recordings from highly acclaimed specialists Opera Rara -
Gounod La Colombe and Donizetti Le Duc d'Albe. »
02 Apr 2016
Roll up! A new opera by Handel is to be performed, L’Elpidia overo li rivali generosi. It is based upon a libretto by Apostolo Zeno with music by Leonardo Vinci - excepting a couple of arias by Giuseppe Orlandini and, additionally, two from Antonio Lotti’s Teofane (which the star bass, Giuseppe Maria Boschi , on bringing with him from the Dresden production of 1719). »
02 Apr 2016
Radvanovsky in New York, Devia in Genoa — Donizetti queens are indeed in the news! Just now in Genoa Mariella Devia was the Elizabeth I for her beloved Roberto Devereux in a new trilogy of Donizetti queens (Maria Stuarda and Anne Bolena) directed by baritone Alfonso Antoniozzi. »
31 Mar 2016
‘All men become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man
does. That is his.’ ‘Is that clever?’ ‘It is perfectly
phrased!’ »
26 Mar 2016
Evolving in Mahler’s Third: Dudamel and L.A. Philharmonic’s impressive adaption to the Concertgebouw »
22 Mar 2016
Though all big opera is called grand opera, French grand opera itself is a very specific genre. It is an ephemeral style not at all easy to bring to life. For example . . . »
21 Mar 2016
That’s Walter Benjamin of the Frankfort School [philosophers in the interwar period (WW’s I and II) who were at home neither with capitalism, fascism or communism]. »
21 Mar 2016
1737 was Handel’s annus horribilis. His finances were in
disarray and his opera company was struggling in the face of the challenge
presented by the rival Opera of the Nobility. The strain and over-work led
to a stroke, as the Earl of Shaftesbury reported: »
20 Mar 2016
Nocturnal visions and reveries dominated this concert by the BBC
Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Hall, part of a two-day celebration of
the music of George Benjamin which also includes a concert performance of
the composer’s opera Written on Skin. »
18 Mar 2016
On March 5, 2016, San Diego Opera presented it’s star bass, Ferruccio Furlanetto, in a concert of arias with the San Diego Symphony Orchestra at the orchestra’s home, Copley Symphony Hall. »
18 Mar 2016
On March 12, 2016, Los Angeles Opera presented the local premiere of Lee Blakeley’s staging of Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly which had been seen in 2010 at Santa Fe Opera. When Blakeley’s Geisha, played magnificently by Ana Maria Martinez, forsakes her traditional religion and breaks the rules of her culture, she eventually faces a choice between total loss of honor and suicide. Everything that happened on the stage Saturday night pointed toward the tragedy. Puccini’s unforgettable music and exquisite singing by Los Angeles Opera’s top-notch cast kept audience members on the edges of their seats all evening. »
16 Mar 2016
‘And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’ John Donne’s metaphysical meditation might have made a
fitting sub-title for Richard Jones’s new production of Musorgky’s Boris Godunov at the Royal Opera House — the first
performance in the house of the original 1869 score. »
14 Mar 2016
By the time that he composed Ariodante, which was first performed
in January 1735, Handel had more than three decades of opera-composing
experience behind him. It’s surely one of his greatest music dramas not
least because, adapted from Ludovico Ariosto’s epic poem Orlando
Furioso, it is a very ‘human’ drama, telling of love and lust,
betrayal and healing. »
14 Mar 2016
Don Giovanni is Mozart at his mature zenith. He makes his musical statements directly with optimum economy and, even after more than two centuries, the dramatic scope of his work remains a source of wonder to operagoers. Charles Gounod called Don Giovanni “an unequalled and immortal masterpiece, the pinnacle of lyrical drama.” »
10 Mar 2016
Descending into the concrete cavern that is Ambika P3, at the University of
Westminster, I reflected that the bunker-like milieu was a fitting venue for
Royal Academy Opera’s production of Rimsky-Korsakov’s May
Night, which updated the original early-19th century locale to
the beginning of the Soviet era. »
10 Mar 2016
The English Concert’s travelling Orlando has been collecting
rave reviews. Here’s another one from Amsterdam, the last stop on their
tour before Carnegie Hall. »
03 Mar 2016
In 1728 Handel was down on his luck, following the demise of his ‘Royal
Academy’. Ever the entrepreneur, the following year he made a scouting tour of
Italy in search of the best singing talent and, returning with seven new virtuosos
— including the castrato Senesino. »
02 Mar 2016
Bryan Hymel, Irene Roberts & Julius Drake at Rosenblatt Recitals »
02 Mar 2016
Strong revival for Richard Jones 2011 production with cast mixing returnees and débutantes »
02 Mar 2016
Last year for his 60th anniversary as conductor, Bernard Haitink celebrated with one of his first orchestra’s the Dutch Radio Philharmonic. That performance of Mahler’s Fourth turned out such a success, he returned for another round at the NTR Saturday Matinee at the Concertgebouw. »
02 Mar 2016
It is not often that a major work by a forgotten composer gets rediscovered
and makes an enormously favorable impression on today’s listeners. That has
happened, unexpectedly, with Herculanum, a four-act grand opera by
Félicien David, which in 2014 was recorded for the first time. »
01 Mar 2016
In Musical Exoticism (Cambridge 2011) Ralph P. Locke undertook an
extensive appraisal of the portrayal of the ‘Other’ in works dating
from 1700 to the present day, an enquiry that embraced a wide range of genres
from Baroque opera to Algerian rap, and which was at once musical, cultural,
historical, political and ethical. »
29 Feb 2016
Dutch National Opera’s Khovanshchina’s finest asset was
Anita Rachvelishvili’s vocally ravishing Marfa. The darkly opalescent
Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra came in a close second. »
29 Feb 2016
The meaning of the term cantata (literally, ‘sung’
from the Italian verb, cantare) may have changed over time, but
whether sacred or secular, the form — with its combination of
declamatory narration and emotive arias — is undoubtedly a dramatic
one, as this performance by Dunedin at the Wigmore Hall of cantatas by J.S.
Bach and Handel confirmed. »
29 Feb 2016
With its City of Light presentations, honoring Paris and French inspired music, the Los Angeles Philharmonic offered its public an extraordinary concert performance of a unique opera — Pelléas et Mélisande by Claude Debussy. »
29 Feb 2016
Barrie Kosky, intendant of the Komische Oper in Berlin, initially thought of combining live performance with animation when he saw British theater company 1927’s production of Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. For that presentation, Suzanne Andrade and Paul Barritt mixed the worlds of silent film and music hall theater, a combination that Kosky wanted for his production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. »
