Recently in Reviews
27 Aug 2011
The New York Festival of Song, created and run by Steven Blier and Michael Barrett, dedicates itself to what one might call “American lieder” — art songs by top American composers, classic Broadway, and operatic numbers. »
27 Aug 2011
It was a no-brainer. The Old Testament Egyptians had to become today’s Palestinians. »
25 Aug 2011
What is to be done about Armida? »
20 Aug 2011
Gaetano Donizetti is arguably the established opera composer with the highest ratio of failures to successes. »
19 Aug 2011
This concert of three substantial choral and orchestral works by Benjamin Britten recreated the ‘50th birthday’ Promenade concert which Britten himself conducted on 12 September 1963. »
19 Aug 2011
A breath of fresh air is making its way through the Glimmerglass Opera festival, and her name is Francesca Zambello. »
19 Aug 2011
The chief classical music and opera critic for the Los Angeles Times often criticizes any new operas based on familiar films or classic novels, on the basis of artistic timidity and conservatism. »
19 Aug 2011
This is where Puccini composed many of his operas until the lake got so polluted he had to move to nearby Viareggio.
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14 Aug 2011
Today’s general public labors under the unfortunate misconception that in order to enjoy opera, one needs to be educated and at ease with mobility in social circles largely consisting of decrepit old rich people. »
14 Aug 2011
For its seventh program of the Summer 2011 season the Grant Park Music Festival presented concert ensembles performed by members of the Ryan Opera Center of Lyric Opera of Chicago. »
14 Aug 2011
For opera lovers who are serious enough to even think of a performing career, the path is an arduous one. »
14 Aug 2011
Brahms’s Violin Concerto and Mahler’s Das klagende Lied
did not seem to be the most obvious bedfellows — there has been some
rather peculiar programming at this year’s Proms — and even after
further consideration, the only real connection I could muster was that they
were written at the same time: the concerto in 1878, the cantata between 1878
and 1880. »
14 Aug 2011
It seems very appropriate that a record company called Naïve should elect to release a solo recital for a soprano in her very early 20s. »
14 Aug 2011
In the waning days of the annual summer festival, Munich’s Bavarian State Opera fielded enough star power to fire up a minor galaxy with its wholly absorbing production of I Capuleti e i Montecchi. »
13 Aug 2011
Great characters are at the center of all operatic masterpieces, yet opera almost never treads into “operatic biography” territory. »
13 Aug 2011
Gounod you know, but how about Gouvy? »
12 Aug 2011
Bonus features on opera DVDs usually get generic names, such as “Interview” or “Backstage with…” »
12 Aug 2011
A handsome black steed bows its head, eyes open, peering into the darkness around it. »
12 Aug 2011
How the saga of Italian unification in 1861 is being (half-heartedly) celebrated by opera composers. »
02 Aug 2011
From the bombastic sweeps of Richard Strauss’ Don Juan, to the
blissful rhapsodies of Walton’s Violin Concerto, and through the rhythmic
surges of Prokofiev’s choral manifesto of socialist realism, conductor Andris
Nelsons fizzed — indeed, almost exploded with energy and zest — and
inspired clarity, control and freshness from the City of Birmingham Symphony
Orchestra, on this their only visit to the Proms this season. »
01 Aug 2011
An appreciation of La traviata plus La clemenza di Tito and Le Nez/The Nose at the Aix-en-Provence Festival. »
01 Aug 2011
Alfredo Catalani’s La Wally is known for its arias, but the full opera is rarely performed. Expectations were high for this production at Opera Holland Park, London. »
31 Jul 2011
In the modern operatic world, respect for the oeuvre of any given composer, as well as his stylistic development and placement in operatic history, is sacrosanct. »
31 Jul 2011
Rodelinda is about as serious an opera as any that Handel wrote: attempted regicide and infanticide, violent death, betrayal and a marriage sorely tried. »
29 Jul 2011
It’s always a good idea to ferret away a sure-fire winner amongst the rarities, and Opera Holland Park’s Rigoletto certainly meets, and in some aspects surpasses, expectations. »
28 Jul 2011
This year’s venture for the annual Boston Midsummer Opera is an elegant reading of Rossini’s fizzy masterpiece of 1813, l’Italiana in Algeri. »
27 Jul 2011
There’s hell to pay for profligate publicity; Giuseppe Verdi and Francisco Maria Piave knew this to be true. »
26 Jul 2011
Not only did Verdi’s Requiem make its debut, rather remarkably, in the church of San Marco in Milan but the performance was as a liturgical one; Verdi’s intentions were quite firmly to provide a memorial mass for the Italian patriot, Manzoni. »
22 Jul 2011
I was feeling cowed by Herr Engels. The four of us had retired from the Stravinsky performance to a Billy Wilder-themed bar in Berlin, the least horrible late-night option in the high end mediocrity of Potsdamer Platz. »
22 Jul 2011
Buxton, like Wexford, makes a point of offering its clientele the opportunity to sample works that are unjustly neglected by the major houses, and for his final festival as director, Andrew Greenwood served up a typical feast of operatic rarities reflecting the increasingly ambitious approach which has characterised his musical stewardship. »
19 Jul 2011
The BBC Proms has given Havergal Brian’s Symphony no. 1 the best and most
extensive exposure the composer has ever enjoyed.
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18 Jul 2011
Operatic fashions are fickle and, more to the point, often plain wrong. We all have our grievance lists of works that are ‘scandalously neglected’. »
16 Jul 2011
The First Night of the Proms seems to be edging back, if a little hesitantly, from the strange, unsatisfying ‘tasting menu’ approach adopted for a few years. »
15 Jul 2011
Luke Bedford’s first opera, Seven Angels, had its London premiere at the Linbury Studio Theatre, London.
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13 Jul 2011
Handel’s Rinaldo at the Glyndebourne Festival is a triumph in musical terms. Don’t miss it when it appears at the BBC Proms this summer in concert performance, because some of the singing is very good indeed. »
12 Jul 2011
To commemorate the hundredth anniversary of Gustav Mahler’s death Carlos
Kalmar and the Grant Park Orchestra gave in early July two performances of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde featuring the vocal soloists Alexandra Petersamer and Christian Elsner. »
12 Jul 2011
Opera Holland Park’s unique selling point has always been a devotion to the more obscure works of Puccini and his Italian contemporaries. »
12 Jul 2011
Words, stories, books — the gateway to a world of fantasy in which anything is possible. »
12 Jul 2011
For classical music fans, summer means only one thing: summer festivals. The goal of these festivals is to showcase a wide range of repertory with thought provoking creativity. »
10 Jul 2011
The celebrated New Mexico opera festival has, in its fifty-fifth season, created a production of Charles Gounod’s 1859 masterpiece Faust, its first ever. »
07 Jul 2011
Even before a note was sounded at Opera Holland Park on Saturday evening, the still summer evening was ruffled by a breeze of unease. »
07 Jul 2011
By 1825, as Rossini’s operatic vein was approaching exhaustion, the
Neapolitan Saverio Mercadante ranked as a front-runner for his succession
alongside Bellini and Donizetti; much more so, however, in the field of serious
drama than in opera buffa. »
06 Jul 2011
I recently got the chance to see Juan, the Kaspar Holten film version of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, at the Seattle International Film Festival. »
06 Jul 2011
Some of the experts said it was the best Ring ever, others merely
said it was one of the best (these were lecturers at a Wagner Society
symposium). »
30 Jun 2011
Opera Theatre of St. Louis has demonstrated yet again that it is an indispensable summer festival to be counted on for adventurous programming, thought-provoking productions, and exciting talent discoveries. »
29 Jun 2011
This Madama Butterfly at the Royal Opera House, London, brings out
the depth and intelligence of the human story Puccini might be trying to tell
us, beneath the surface gloss. »
26 Jun 2011
You would have had to be deaf and blind — or perhaps just a very wise
monkey — not to have been aware that a young American composer called
Nico Muhly was about to open at the English National Opera in London last night
with a work called Two Boys. »
26 Jun 2011
Garsington Opera — in its superb new home on the Wormsley estate in
rural Oxfordshire — has yet again confirmed the merit of its decision to
promote Vivaldi’s long-ignored operas. »
24 Jun 2011
It can be fascinating, although not necessarily pleasant, to see oneself through the eyes of others. »
23 Jun 2011
One of Richard Wagner’s most enduring contributions to music history is a concept known as gesamtkunstwerk. »
23 Jun 2011
Willy Decker’s production of Peter Grimes, first seen at
Covent Garden in 2004, should perhaps be renamed The Borough. »
21 Jun 2011
A funny thing happened on the way to Anna Bolena… »
20 Jun 2011
Need something remedial for “what ails you?” »
20 Jun 2011
The Boston Early Music Festival (hereinafter BEMF) has grown up. »
20 Jun 2011
As it turned out, it was a mild and mainly dry evening. »
16 Jun 2011
The Voltaire maxim usually given in English as “The perfect is the enemy of the good” illuminates the artistic conflicts surrounding many a Wagner production. »
