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13 Oct 2013
Venerable San Francisco Opera kicked off its fall season with a wholly pleasing revival of a landmark production, complemented by an engrossing world premiere. »
13 Oct 2013
Carmen Lite: Singing shines in Syracuse Opera’s pocket-sized The Tragedy of Carmen »
13 Oct 2013
No matter how or where Carmen is produced, or by whom directed, costumed and performed, its promise of free wheeling sex and exciting rhythmic music, has made it one of the most popular operas in the world. »
13 Oct 2013
What do you get if you cross the sultry folk melodies of Greece, Spain and Italy with the formal repetitions of Baroque instrumental structures, and add a dash of the shady timbres and rhythmic litheness of jazz? »
13 Oct 2013
‘All Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.’ The sentiments of the closing lines of Gerald Manley Hopkins’ sonnet, ‘No worst, there is none. »
13 Oct 2013
Britten’s War Requiem is one of the defining artistic works of
the twentieth century. Consummate artwork, religious ritual and prayer,
ceremonial commemoration, ideological political statement, public expression of
mourning, and private avowal of faith, »
11 Oct 2013
James Conway’s production of Monteverdi’s final masterpiece, L’incoronazione di Poppea was »
10 Oct 2013
The company’s new production of the Tchaikovsky masterpiece is cramped and
cheap, leaving the listener longing for a return of the 1997 version »
09 Oct 2013
A rambunctious ensemble on the stage and in the pit. A star conductor. Falstaff showed its stuff as one of the repertory’s greatest masterpieces.
»
09 Oct 2013
Performances of Verdi’s Macbeth take shape and leave an overall impression from both individual and collective emphases. »
09 Oct 2013
Miah Persson and Florian Boesch sang Schumann with Malcolm Martineau at the Wigmore Hall for the latest of his Songlives series. »
07 Oct 2013
For the final instalment of Welsh National Opera’s Tudor trilogy, Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux, director »
07 Oct 2013
The second installment of Welsh National Opera’s Tudor trilogy, Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda saw »
07 Oct 2013
Once again, one can only applaud English Touring Opera’s sense of
adventure — and commitment. Its autumn season comprises three Venetian
operas: L’incoronazione di Poppea, Giasone, and
Agrippina, all in translation. »
07 Oct 2013
‘Chacun à son goût!’ cries the inebriated Prince Orlovsky, invigorated by champagne and high-living. An indifferent ‘each to his own’? »
06 Oct 2013
Coincidentally last Friday night was the closing night of San Francisco Opera’s Dolores Claiborne and the opening night of Ray of Light Theatre’s Carrie The Musical. »
05 Oct 2013
More than two centuries on, Fidelio may well remain the most misunderstood opera of all. »
05 Oct 2013
Welsh National Opera's new production of Donizetti's Anna Bolena is the first part of their trilogy of Donizetti's Tudor operas, Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux. »
30 Sep 2013
Vladimir Jurowski conducted a fascinating Peter Grimes with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall. Fascinating, because Jurowski finds things in Britten other conductors don't get in the first place. Jurowski approaches Britten as a composer, without the usual baggage of Britishness and Brittenish. »
30 Sep 2013
Johannes Erath's production of Verdi's La Traviata opened at the Staatsoper Hamburg in February this year, with Ailyn Perez in the title role. Perez returned with Stephen Costello as Alfredo for three performances in September 2013 »
29 Sep 2013
Charles Edwards’s production of Elektra, first seen in 2003, »
29 Sep 2013
Last week I enjoyed the opportunity to see Bampton Classical Opera’s
light-hearted, witty production of Mozart’s earliest opera — La finta
semplice — a work which, despite lacking the melodic variety and texture
dynamism of the later operas, is still a remarkably accomplished achievement
for a boy of merely twelve years of age. »
29 Sep 2013
In its annual concert presented to the city at Millennium Park, Lyric Opera of Chicago introduced its 2013-14 season on a recent weekend evening with a program of selections featuring several present, past, and future stars of the company. »
28 Sep 2013
Matthias Goerne and Andreas Haefliger’s recital at the Wigmore Hall was eagerly anticipated. Goerne and Haefliger are a Dream Team, who have worked together for over 15 years. »
26 Sep 2013
In the first of his two recitals at the Wigmore Hall this week, Matthias Goerne sang Schubert, but Schubert with a difference. »
26 Sep 2013
Opera in San Francisco is what occurs at the War Memorial Opera House. Every so often though you can think outside the box and find some interesting performances nearby. »
24 Sep 2013
I was a little taken aback by the reaction I received upon mentioning that I was looking forward to seeing American Lulu. »
22 Sep 2013
Dolores Claiborne, the heroine of the book Dolores Claiborne (1992), is a figment of the imagination of prolific pulp horror novelist Stephen King. »
22 Sep 2013
Here is the exception. The revival of an old opera production need not always be perceived as an expedient (read cheap) solution to getting a season of opera put together, but may pass instead as an artistically thoughtful choice. »
22 Sep 2013
Mozart cut his operatic teeth on La finta semplice, as a twelve-year-old prodigy being paraded before the Viennese court by his ambitious father, Leopold. »
19 Sep 2013
Scarcely had Julius Drake seated himself, when the piano’s turbulent stream of relentless semiquavers precipitously announced the opening of Schubert’s ‘Der Strom’ (The river), the opening song in Ian Bostridge’s recital series, Schubert Lieder. »
18 Sep 2013
Although this is their fifth outing, Tanya McCallin’s sets for David McVicar’s Le Nozze di Figaro remain a sumptuous feast for the eyes. »
16 Sep 2013
Thomas Hampson “lives” Mahler. He's the greatest Mahler singer of our time, and a serious Mahler scholar as well. »
10 Sep 2013
The Royal Opera's production of Puccini's Turandot is nearly 30 years old. Created for the 1984 Olympics, Andrei Serban's production has been
revived 15 times. »
10 Sep 2013
The Wigmore Hall 2013/14 season started in exuberant style. Simon Keenlyside, Bryn Terfel and Malcolm Martineau devised a programme that was festive and fun. And, this being the Wigmore Hall, the recital was as erudite as it was popular »
09 Sep 2013
Das Rheingold launches what is perhaps the single most ambitious project in opera, Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen. »
06 Sep 2013
Stefan Herheim’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in Salzburg will transfer to the Met. Will audiences collapse in hysteria? »
27 Aug 2013
This live performance of Laurent Pelly’s Glyndebourne staging of
Humperdinck’s affectionately regarded fairy tale opera, was recorded at
Glyndebourne Opera House in July and August 2010, and the handsomely produced
disc set — the discs are presented in a hard-backed, glossy-leaved book and
supplemented by numerous production photographs and an informative article by
Julian Johnson — is certainly stylish and unquestionably recommendable. »
27 Aug 2013
Recorded at a live performance in 2012, this CD brings together an eclectic
selection of turn-of-the-century orchestral songs and affirms the extraordinary
versatility, musicianship and technical accomplishment of mezzo-soprano
Magdalena Kožená. »
27 Aug 2013
Prom 57’s Parsifal (Mark Elder, the Hallé) brought us John Tomlinson, perhaps the greatest Wagnerian bass of our time. »
22 Aug 2013
Once I was: Songs by Ricky Ian Gordon features an assortment of
songs by Ricky Ian Gordon interpreted by soprano Stacey Tappan, a longtime
friend of the composer since their work on his opera Morning Star at
the Lyric Opera of Chicago. »
22 Aug 2013
An overly sophisticated L’italiana in Algeri, a sublime, interminable Guillaume Tell (William Tell), a nostalgic L’occasione fa il ladro. »
22 Aug 2013
This programme of twentieth-century British music burst dazzlingly into life with the blazing flourishes of Michael Tippett’s Fanfare No.5, arranged by Meirion Bowen from music drawn from the composer’s oratorio, The Mask of Time. »
19 Aug 2013
Alfredo Kraus, one of the most astute artists in operatic history in terms of careful management of technique and vocal resources, once said in an interview that ‘you have to make a choice when you start to sing and decide whether you want to service the music, and be at the top of your art, or if you want to be a very popular tenor.’ »
19 Aug 2013
In generations past, an important singer’s first recording of Italian arias would almost invariably have included the music of Verdi. »
19 Aug 2013
In the first of her two visits to the Royal Albert Hall this summer, Marin Alsop led the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and its associated Choir through three nineteenth-century works which are united by their romantic intensity and progression from darkness to light. »
19 Aug 2013
On Wednesday August 7, Santa Fe Opera presented an energetic, fun-loving production of Jacques Offenbach, Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy's The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein. »
19 Aug 2013
On Thursday, August 8, Santa Fe Opera revived the Bruce Donnell production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. »
19 Aug 2013
Commonly viewed as a ‘second-rate’ composer — a European radical persecuted by the Nazis whose trans-Atlantic emigration represented a sell-out to an inferior American popular culture — »
17 Aug 2013
Sir Michael Tippett's The Midsummer Marriage has a lot of things against it, it requires a large cast including dancers and a large chorus and orchestra, the plot with its elements of Jungian analysis is confusing, the composer's libretto with its colloquial elements now sounds rather dated and frankly a bit embarrassing. »
13 Aug 2013
Based on Sir Walter Scott’s narrative poem “The Lady of the Lake,” the opera by Rossini and librettist Andrea Leone Tottola was first seen in 1819 at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. »
