Recently in Reviews
03 Dec 2015
The American countertenor Bejun Mehta exhibited a considerable range of
vocal colours, refined phrasing and spectacular virtuosity in this programme of
Baroque cantatas and arias, with La Nuova Musica, under the direction of the
ensemble’s founder, David Bates. »
02 Dec 2015
There was a pre-curtain excited buzz, unusual these days, in the War Memorial Opera House. Word of mouth (and the major press) had spread the word — it’s a good show! »
01 Dec 2015
The New York Festival of Song, founded in 1988 by Michael Barrett and Steven Blier, offers unique evenings of songs rarely heard, or songs rarely heard in conjunction with one another. »
30 Nov 2015
Falstaff and Die Meistersinger are among the pinnacles if not the pinnacles of nineteenth century opera. Both operas are atypical of the composer and both operas are based on a Shakespeare play.
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30 Nov 2015
To borrow from the great Bard himself: “the course of true love never did run smooth.” »
30 Nov 2015
Florencia in el Amazonas was the first Spanish-language opera to be commissioned by major United States opera houses. »
30 Nov 2015
Gaetano Donizetti wrote a comedy or dramma giocoso called Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali (The Conventions and Inconveniences of the Theater), which is also known by the shorter title, Viva La Mamma!. »
30 Nov 2015
Vincenzo Bellini composed Norma to a libretto that Felice Romani had fashioned after Alexandre Soumet’s French play, Norma, ossia L'infanticidio (Norma, or The Infanticide). »
30 Nov 2015
In order to mount a successful production of Alban Berg’s opera Wozzeck, first performed in 1925, the dramatic intensity and lyrical beauty of the score must become the focal point for participants. »
30 Nov 2015
Félicien David’s intriguing Le désert, for vocal and orchestral forces plus narrator, was widely performed in its own day, then disappeared from the performing repertory for nearly a century. »
29 Nov 2015
During this exploration of music from the Austro-German Baroque, Florilegium
were joined by the baritone Roderick Williams in a programme of music which
placed the music and career of J.S. Bach in the context of three older
contemporaries: Franz Tunder (1614-67), Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1701) and
Heinrich Biber (1644-1704). »
29 Nov 2015
Charismatic charm, vivacious insouciance, fervent passion, dejected
self-pity, blazing anger and stoic selflessness: Zazà — a chanteuse
raised from the backstreets to the bright lights — is a walking compendium of
emotions. »
27 Nov 2015
‘Stay away from doctors; they are bad for your health.’ This seems to be the central message of L’Ospedale - a one-hour opera by an unknown seventeenth-century composer, with a libretto by Antonio Abati which presents a satirical critique of the medical profession of the day and those who had the misfortune to need curative treatment for their physical and mental ills.
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27 Nov 2015
‘In these times of heightened security … we are listening, watching …’
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16 Nov 2015
Arrigo Boito Mefistofele was broadcast livestream from the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich last night. What a spectacle ! »
14 Nov 2015
The monochrome palette of Picasso’s Guernica and the mural’s anti-war images of suffering dominate Calixto Bieito’s new production of Verdi’s The Force of Destiny for English National Opera. »
14 Nov 2015
The world premiere of Morgen und Abend by Georg Friedrich Haas at the Royal Opera House, London — so conceptually unique and so unusual that its originality will confound many. »
12 Nov 2015
Company XIV’s production of Cinderella is New York City theater
at its finest. With a nod to the court of Louis the XIV and the grandiosity of
Lully’s opera theater, Company XIV manages to preserve elements of the French
Baroque while remaining totally innovative, and never—in fact, not once for
the entire two and a half hour show—falls prey to the predictable. Not one
detail is left to chance in this finely manicured yet earthily raw production
of Cinderella. »
12 Nov 2015
This was a concert where immense satisfaction was derived equally from the
quality of musicianship displayed and the coherence and resourcefulness of the
programme presented. In 1610, Claudio Monteverdi published his Vespro della
Beata Vergine for soloists, chorus, and orchestra. »
12 Nov 2015
This well-packed disc is a delight and a revelation. Until now, even the
most assiduous record collector had access to only a few of the nearly 100
songs published by Félicien David (1810-76), in recordings by such notable
artists as Huguette Tourangeau, Ursula Mayer-Reinach, Udo Reinemann, and Joan
Sutherland (the last-mentioned singing the duet “Les Hirondelles”
with herself!). »
09 Nov 2015
If not timeless, Robert Carsen’s production of Francis Poulenc’s
Dialogues des Carmélites is highly age-resistant. »
05 Nov 2015
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari was one of the Italian composers of the post-Puccini generation (which included Licinio Refice, Riccardo Zandonai, Umberto Giordano and Franco Leoni) who struggled to prolong the verismo tradition in the early years of the twentieth century. »
05 Nov 2015
On Saturday evening October 31, 2015, the Nantucket whaling ship Pequod journeyed to Los Angeles Opera and began its sixth voyage in the attempt to kill the elusive whale called Moby-Dick. »
05 Nov 2015
Great Scott is a combination of a parody of bel canto opera and an
operatic version of All About Eve. Beloved American diva Arden Scott
(Joyce DiDonato), has discovered the score to a long-lost opera “Rosa
Dolorosa, Figlia di Pompeii” and has become committed to getting the work
revived as a vehicle for her. “Rosa Dolorosa” has grand musical
moments and a hilariously absurd plot. »
05 Nov 2015
The most recent instalment of the Wigmore Hall’s ambitious series, ‘Schubert: The Complete Songs’, was presented by soprano Lucy Crowe,
pianist Malcolm Martineau and harpist Lucy Wakeford. »
04 Nov 2015
This new release of John Taverner’s virtuosic and florid Missa
Corona spinea (produced by Gimell Records) comes two years after The
Tallis Scholars’ critically esteemed recording of the composer’s
Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas, which topped the UK Specialist Classical
Album Chart for 6 weeks, and with which the ensemble celebrated their
40th anniversary. The recording also includes Taverner’s two
settings of Dum transisset Sabbatum. »
01 Nov 2015
Gioachino Rossini’s La Cenerentola has returned to Lyric Opera of Chicago in a production new to this venue and one notable for several significant debuts along with roles taken by accomplished, familiar performers. »
01 Nov 2015
Back in 2000, Glyndebourne Touring Opera dragged Puccini’s sentimental
tale of suffering bohemian artists into the ‘modern urban age’, when
director David McVicar ditched the Parisian garrets and nineteenth-century
frock coats in favour of a squalid bedsit in which Rodolfo and painter Marcello
shared a line of cocaine under the grim glare of naked light bulbs and the
clientele at Café Momus included a couple of gaudily attired
transvestites. »
01 Nov 2015
Just as Orpheus embarks on a quest for his beloved Eurydice, so the Royal Opera House seems to be in pursuit of the mythical music-maker himself: this year the house has presented Monteverdi’s Orfeo at the Camden Roundhouse (with the Early Opera Company in January), Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice on the main stage (September), and, in the Linbury Studio Theatre, both Birtwistle’s The Corridor (June) and the Paris-music-hall style Little Lightbulb Theatre/Battersea Arts Centre co-production, Orpheus (September). »
31 Oct 2015
Wexford Festival Opera has served up another thought-provoking and musically rewarding trio of opera rarities — neglected, forgotten or seldom performed — in 2015. »
31 Oct 2015
Another highlight of the Wigmore Hall complete Schubert Song series - Christoph Prégardien and Christoph Schnackertz. The core Wigmore Hall Lieder audience were out in force. These days, though, there are young people among the regulars : a sign that appreciation of Lieder excellence is most certainly alive and well at the Wigmore Hall. . »
30 Oct 2015
How did it go? Reactions of my neighbors varied. Some left at the intermission, others remarked that they thought the singing was good. »
25 Oct 2015
In the first half of the 19th century, Spontini’s La Vestale was a hit. Empress Josephine sponsored its premiere, Parisians heard it hundreds of times, Berlioz raved about it and Wagner conducted it. »
22 Oct 2015
An intelligent updating and outstanding performance of the title role lead to a shattering climax in Puccini's Japanese opera
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21 Oct 2015
Handel’s genius is central focus to the new staging of Handel’s oratorio Theodora at Paris' Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. »
21 Oct 2015
1985 must have been a good year for founding a musical ensemble, or festival or organisation, which would have longevity. »
20 Oct 2015
Ossia Tannhauser and James Levine with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. »
20 Oct 2015
The past few years have marked a renaissance in Brooklyn's cultural life, from food to fashion, and quite notably, opera. From BAM to Bushwick, audiences have crowded in for a taste of something different. »
19 Oct 2015
Arizona Lady is the last operetta that Hungarian Jewish composer Emmerich Kálmán (1882-1953) wrote. A student at the Budapest Academy of Music, he learned from the same teachers as Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály. After successfully staging an operetta in Budapest, Kálmán moved to Vienna. »
17 Oct 2015
The only thing that is at all radical or even noteworthy about the current Metropolitan Opera season is its imbalance: five Donizetti operas to one Wagner. »
16 Oct 2015
On October 8, 2015, Los Angeles Opera presented Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek’s Song from the Uproar: The Lives and Deaths of Isabelle Eberhardt at REDCAT, the Roy and Edna Disney Cal Arts Theater in Walt Disney Concert Hall. The opera was part of L A O’s “Off Grand Program” which features chamber works in spaces smaller than the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. »
