Recently in Reviews
12 Oct 2010
In the final scene of Shakespeare’s King Lear, faced with the dreadful sight of the distraught Lear cradling in his arms the body of his dead daughter Cordelia, the Earl of Kent asks: “Is this the promised end?” »
11 Oct 2010
No question that Nicola Luisotti is a conducting genius, and no question that genius runs amuck from time to time. In the case of Mo. Luisotti fairly often. »
11 Oct 2010
The opening night of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, in Rome
in 1816, was violently disrupted by vociferous protests from supporters loyal
to Paisiello, whose own comic interpretation of Beaumarchais’
politically-charged play had appeared in 1782. »
10 Oct 2010
In the popular view, the modern celebration of Christmas seems to have begun
with Charles Dickens’s revivifying A Christmas Carol (1843). »
10 Oct 2010
As good a performance of Rossini’s opera as this disc provides, for some equal entertainment value may potentially arise from the booklet essay by one Bernd-Rüdiger Kern (as translated into English by David Stevens). »
10 Oct 2010
Mahler’s well-known revisions of music he conducted include the four symphonies by Robert Schumann, and while these Retuschen have been performed from time to time, a recording of all four of them is now available from Decca. »
10 Oct 2010
Handel’s Radamisto came to the ENO at the Coliseum in glorious technicolour. »
08 Oct 2010
Haven’t you always secretly felt that singers who reach for high notes
(and make them) ought to levitate and maintain themselves in mid-air
when they do it? »
08 Oct 2010
It will be no surprise to me, a year or five from now, when someone falls to
her or his death from the guy-wires that configure so much of Robert
Lepage’s new state-of-the-art (ah! But which art?) production of Der
Ring des Nibelung. »
07 Oct 2010
Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de Perles is notoriously hard to stage. Because the plot’s so grandiose, the imagination works overtime, dwarfing the music, making it seem puny in comparison. There’s a lot to be said in favour of concert performances because they shift the balance back to Bizet. »
06 Oct 2010
Based on performances given on 18 and 21 October 2008 and 16 and 17 January 2009, this recording of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra offers its latest release of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, a work associated with the group since the composer’s lifetime. »
29 Sep 2010
Perhaps because the rather stolidly Victorian character of both its music
and its morality, Gounod’s Faust has been out of fashion in the
UK in recent decades, and owes a debt to David McVicar and his darkly Gothic
production for the Royal Opera in 2004 (now, at last, available on DVD) for the
restoration of its footing in the standard repertoire. »
28 Sep 2010
Minnesota Opera pulled out all the stops for its 2010-2011 season with its production of Gluck’s Orpheo ed Eurydice. »
27 Sep 2010
Almost irrespective of the results, it was quite a statement to open the Philharmonia’s London concert season with a performance of Nietzsche’s ‘opus metaphysicum of all true art,’ Tristan und Isolde. »
26 Sep 2010
The Royal Opera is hardly renowned for its commitment to baroque opera, and
even the great Handel still gets short shrift in his adopted city’s major
house. »
24 Sep 2010
It has been twenty-five years since San Francisco Opera has staged a Werther. so it was high time that Massenet’s whiney, weepy masterpiece be given another chance. »
23 Sep 2010
In their programme note, Christopher Alden and Peter Littlefield explain the
concept which informs this dark, dystopian production of Janáček’s
penultimate opera, The Makropulos Case — a production first seen
at ENO in 2004: »
21 Sep 2010
Opera as circus. The current San Francisco Aida comes from the English National Opera where an inspired and probably very excited administrator proposed a production by aging London fashionista Zandra Rhodes. »
20 Sep 2010
Kafka's In the Penal Colony set as an opera by Philip Glass? Against all expectations, it was a powerful and deeply moving experience. »
19 Sep 2010
Vocally impressive, Michael Tilson Thomas’s new recording of Gustav Mahler’s symphonic song cycle Das Lied von der Erde merits attention for various reasons. »
19 Sep 2010
Verdi’s 1859 hit Un ballo in maschera is an inspired choice to open an operatic season. »
16 Sep 2010
In this recital of thirty-four songs selected from Hugo Wolf’s
Spanisches Liederbuch, Ian Bostridge and Angelika Kirchschlager
revealed the profound emotional intensity of Wolf’s art; the concentrated
ardour of their performance intimated the heightened passion and expressive
angst which, as well as driving Wolf’s creative spirit, also led to
persistent depression and resulted in insanity and finally death in mental
asylum at the age of 42. »
15 Sep 2010
This show, a revival of Jonathan Miller’s 2004 production (first seen at the Maggio Musicale in Florence) is certainly a feast for the eyes. »
14 Sep 2010
At some point it became a matter of honor for elite composers to have at least one go at a full length opera. »
14 Sep 2010
It doesn’t take long for the summer’s new Lohengrin to reveal its entire bag of tricks as a large chorus of rats (yes, the chorus-as-rodents) scurries on at curtain-rise into the white science laboratory setting. »
13 Sep 2010
Everyone loves Mozart. The Royal Opera House's 2010-2011 season began with Così fan tutte, and simultaneous live international broadcast. »
12 Sep 2010
The release of Röntgen’s Faust setting on CPO makes available a recording of yet another composer’s perspective on Goethe’s famous dramatic poem. »
08 Sep 2010
Realism never comes more authentic than this RAI Rigoletto filmed live on location in Mantua, Italy and broadcast simultaneously in 148 countries.. »
07 Sep 2010
Recorded live on 13 August 2005, this recent release on the Orfeo label in its Festspiel Dokumente imprint makes available a recital given by soprano Diana Damrau and pianist Stephan Matthias Lademann during the 2005 Salzburg Festival and given at the Mozarteum. »
01 Sep 2010
The annual visit of Glyndebourne Opera to the BBC Proms has become an eagerly awaited event. »
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.
»
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 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. »
