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10 Aug 2010
According to Paulus Diaconus’ Historia Langobardorum, both
Lombard sovereigns warring for supremacy in late 7th-century Italy — the
legitimate king Perctarit and Grimuald the usurper — behaved rather fairly to
each other and their families. »
06 Aug 2010
The noted operatic impresario and stage director, Lotfi Mansouri, with the professional help of writer Donald Arthur, has issued his memoirs under the title Lotfi Mansouri: An Operatic Journey. »
06 Aug 2010
Period instruments and nineteenth-century grand opera are seldom found on the same stage — or even the same sentence — but as adventurous practitioners increasingly experiment in the repertoire of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, it’s a sight and sound that will inevitably become more familiar. »
02 Aug 2010
Franz Schreker, born in 1878, was a youth in the age in which psychoanalysis
first bloomed. In music, far from coincidentally, it was the post-Wagnerian era
when western tonality had been liberated from traditional rules but was
uncertain which new path to take. »
01 Aug 2010
Maria di Rohan was Donizetti’s penultimate opera, composed in
Italian for Vienna in 1843, with revisions to appeal to the taste of Paris and
Milan following. »
26 Jul 2010
Fairy Tales are often short on character, motivation and development. The stock figures are either good or bad, they are usually archetypal, and stand not only for themselves but larger dimensions of humanity. »
26 Jul 2010
George Benjamin is the leading British composer of his generation. Into the Little Hill premiered in 2006, has been acclaimed a masterpiece. »
22 Jul 2010
Despite its length and pretentions to being serious opera, Jacques Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann, dating from the 1880s, remains a leaky vessel adrift on a sea of self-fulfilling prophesies of doom. »
22 Jul 2010
The operas of British composer Jonathan Dove enjoy a fairly high level of both critical and popular support in the U.K., where his best known work, Flight, premiered at the prestigious Glyndebourne Festival. »
21 Jul 2010
Bellini’s Norma was composed in 1831 and, in the era of such
singing actresses as Giuditta Pasta, Maria Malibran, Giuseppina Strepponi,
Giulia Grisi and Thérèse Tietjens (famous Normas all), soon came to be known as
the bel canto vehicle par excellence, the summit of vocal achievement. »
21 Jul 2010
Originally published in German as Herrin des Hügels, das Leben der Cosima Wagner (Siedler, 2007), this new book by Oliver Hilmes is an engaging portrait of one of the most important women in music during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. »
20 Jul 2010
Proms audiences have a tendency to be overly enthusiastic in showing their
appreciation, with an arsenal of rituals and traditions at the ready to show
their praise and adulation for their idols. »
20 Jul 2010
At the beginning of every summer, an oasis of music and theater appears like
magic in the suburbs of St. Louis. »
19 Jul 2010
The BBC Proms brought the Welsh National Opera’s hit Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg to the Royal Albert Hall and to the world, via international broadcast. »
18 Jul 2010
A performance of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony could only ever be relatively underwhelming; even a car crash of a performance would impress in some sense, indeed most likely in quite a few. »
18 Jul 2010
This was a recital of concentrated intensity — a remarkable dialogue between texts, timbres and idioms, across ages and among performers. »
18 Jul 2010
So when did you last shout “bravissima”? »
18 Jul 2010
There was a time when the likes of Luc Bondy and Francesca Zambello staged operas for the Chorégies d’Orange in its famed Théâtre Antique. »
18 Jul 2010
The annual Zürcher Festspiel banked on a heavy hitter to generate excitement for its revival of Der Rosenkavalier. »
15 Jul 2010
Poulenc’s only full-length opera is widely admired and not infrequently performed, but its claustral nature makes it tricky to stage. »
14 Jul 2010
This Glyndebourne production is, as far as I know, the first recording of any semi-opera that manages to impart a strong sense of what this peculiar, and peculiarly British, genre is like. »
13 Jul 2010
In 1881 Wagner and his wife were discussing the myth of Eros and Anteros,
and Wagner remarked, “Anteros is Parsifal.” Wagner considered
Parsifal a figure opposed to sexual love, Eros’s opposite. »
13 Jul 2010
The Aix Festival was known not so very long ago for pretentious productions. Perhaps now it will become known for good productions. »
12 Jul 2010
Something rather extraordinary happened to opera seria in 1738. The
acknowledged master of that time, London’s George Frideric Handel,
presented two new operas at the King’s Theatre: Faramondo and
Serse. »
12 Jul 2010
CENTRAL CITY — The story is banal: a single mother, an aging actress,
is alienated from her grown-up children. »
12 Jul 2010
Don Giovanni isn't new and most of the cast at Glyndebourne (led by Gerald Finley) are familiar. »
11 Jul 2010
The Parisian press was plastered with photos of Daniele de Niese. The
glamorous 31-year old Sri Lankan-Australian mega-star is everywhere these days:
a new TV series (“Diva Diaries”), a Decca greatest hits CD
(“Diva”), and, with her marriage to Guy Christie of the
Glyndebourne ruling clan, a secure position as the first lady of English opera. »
11 Jul 2010
We have Welsh National Opera to thank not only for providing the occasion for an auspicious role debut, but also for showcasing their world star in a wholly brilliant new production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. »
09 Jul 2010
This was my first Verdi performance in the theatre for thirteen years or so I must have been the least jaded of critics for the opening night of the revival of Sir Richard Eyre’s La Traviata. »
08 Jul 2010
David McVicar’s production of Salome received its first revival at Covent Garden, though McVicar left its revival in the capable hands of Justin Way. »
08 Jul 2010
Garsington Opera is moving to Wormsley Park. in 2011, but it marked its last production at Garsington Manor with a glorious coda, that augurs well for the future. As a friend remarked “We'll be talking about this for years to come”. »
07 Jul 2010
CENTRAL CITY — No matter how much verismo you heap onto Madama
Butterfly, the opera — the favorite of American companies —
remains a threadbare — if tragic — tale of a love that failed. »
04 Jul 2010
The Royal Opera's intriguingly staged Manon had all the trappings of success including a soprano at the top of her game, and a tenor on the brink of his fame.
»
02 Jul 2010
Plácido Domingo isn’t a tenor, a baritone or even a singer. He’s a phenomenon. Dozens stood by the stage door at the Royal Opera House to greet him with bouquets. »
28 Jun 2010
Ring fever rages on. San Francisco has just unveiled its Walküre the completed cycle to take place next June. Gratefully the price of the SFO effort has not become a topic of conversation, as has the cost of the just completed L.A. Ring »
27 Jun 2010
What sort of production would be optimal for an opera that with more style than content? »
23 Jun 2010
Richard Wagner’s 200th birthday is just around the corner in 2013 — and the composer was, after all, born in Leipzig. »
22 Jun 2010
A bizarre rock cliff attributed in the program booklet to one Antonio Nigro was the sole background for San Francisco Opera’s production of Puccini’s version of a play named The Girl of the Golden West by San Francisco born David Belasco (1853-1931). »
22 Jun 2010
Mozart was reputedly more attached to this musical drama of hubris and honour set during the Trojan War than to any other of his stage works. »
21 Jun 2010
This recital was the last in a series of five put together by Roger Vignoles
to celebrate the lieder of Richard Strauss — a series which, comprising
85 of Strauss’ songs, has highlighted the composer’s role as heir
to the nineteenth-century German lieder masters and reminded us of the
ravishing beauty and varied emotional range of these unjustly neglected
songs. »
21 Jun 2010
With Opera Theatre of St. Louis’ stunning A Little Night
Music, at long last we have been treated to a multi-faceted production
that not only equals, but in many ways surpasses the dazzling original. »
21 Jun 2010
$32,000,000, and it would have been a bargain at $50,000,000. Los Angeles Opera went for broke, and it paid off with a Ring that has raised the worldwide Ring bar to a dizzying height. »
19 Jun 2010
Early Greek writings say that Orpheus was the son of the muse Calliope and either Apollo, the god of prophecy and music or Oeagrus, the river god. »
18 Jun 2010
Paris Opéra recently served up two past productions in vibrant performances that were fresh-as-new. »
18 Jun 2010
Recorded in May and June 2008, this new Unitel Classica Blu-Ray disc of Götterdämmerung is the final opera in the staging of Richard Wagner’s Ring der Nibelungen staged at the Palau de les Arts “Reina Sofia”, Valencia, by La Fura dels Baus, Valencia, conducted by Zubin Mehta, and directed by Carlus Padrissa. »
18 Jun 2010
A Franco Zeffirelli production for The Metropolitan Opera typically prompts the use of adjectives such as “grandiose,” or “gorgeous” on the positive end or “gaudy” and “gratuitous” on the negative. »
10 Jun 2010
Garsington has become a distinctive part of the English summer opera season. »
09 Jun 2010
György Ligeti (1923-2006) was a naughty boy, and he reveled in it. »
09 Jun 2010
The opening tableau of Penny Woolcock’s new production depicts deep waters with rays of sun hitting the surface; in the murky blue depths, three harnessed acrobats glide down to the sea bed and back up again. »
