Recently in Reviews
09 Jun 2010
Siegfried is a challenging opera to stage effectively, and the presentation by La Fura dels Baus in Zubin Mehta’s new Ring cycle merits attention on various counts. »
08 Jun 2010
It was more the ruins than the remnants of a once-great voice that Jessye Norman brought to Israel’s new, 6500-seat outdoor opera theater at the foot of historic Masada Mountain. »
08 Jun 2010
Israel Opera Nabucco includes three Va pensiero’s It’s apocrypha, of course, but legend has it that since its 1843 premiere at La Scala audiences have wanted an encore of the chorus Va pensiero when Verdi’s Nabucco is on stage. »
08 Jun 2010
Faust has long since left the French repertory to enter the international repertory, meaning that, like Disneyland, it has been absorbed into diverse cultures where it discovers new resonances. »
08 Jun 2010
Detailed and precise, but never fussy, David McVicar’s thought-provoking production of Le Nozze di Figaro is ‘busy’ from the opening rushing semi-quavers of the overture. »
07 Jun 2010
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, son of an Italian mother and a German father, was born
in Venice but acclaimed only when he took his operas to Germany, where he
became quite popular during the first decades of the twentieth century. »
07 Jun 2010
Opera Australia regularly commission new work. Usually serious subjects
drawn from notable Australian literature or dealing with an event or hero from
Australian history. »
07 Jun 2010
During its recently concluded season Lyric Opera of Chicago presented two
musical pieces based on the theme of “Faust.” »
07 Jun 2010
Everyone knows the tunes from Bizet's Carmen even if they don't know it's an opera. Now the Royal Opera House, London, is making the world's best known opera into the world's first 3D opera film. »
07 Jun 2010
In Europe only a few theater stage directors are operatically more famous than Peter Stein (pronounced Pay-tear), to mention Sir Peter Hall, Patrice Chereau and Giorgio Strehler as examples. »
07 Jun 2010
Seeing Tosca at the Coliseum brings back happy memories, as it was a
performance of Tosca (in a revival of the Keith Warner production in the 1990s) which occasioned my very first trip to the ENO. That also happens to have been
the first time I ever saw Tosca. »
06 Jun 2010
Bringing their recent recording of Schubert’s late songs to the concert stage, Ian Bostridge and Antonio Pappano swept through a sequence which ranged from bitter-sweet regret to angry self-reproach, from hesitant hope to turbulent despair, in this the second of two performances at the Wigmore Hall. »
05 Jun 2010
Alban Berg died in 1935, but his music was generations ahead of his time
– as one could not help but conclude during the recent revival of
Lulu at the Met whenever the vibraphone played “doorbell”
music, reminding us of the intrusion of cell phones into theaters. »
01 Jun 2010
One very tall and gaunt,one short and stocky, one introspective, one effusive : Ian Bostridge and Antonio Pappano, Music Director of the Royal Opera house make an odd couple, but they've partnered each other musically for many years. It's a good relationship, as this recital at the Wigmore Hall demonstrated. »
27 May 2010
The second of Zubin Mehta’s new Ring cycle on DVD, the staging of Die Walküre by La Fura dels Baus, is as engaging as the production of Das Rheingold in its innovative presentation and effective performance of one of Wagner’s most popular operas. »
22 May 2010
Star born through stutter? It’s immediately obvious that Jacques Imbrailo’s
Billy Budd at Glyndebourne is an extraordinary portrayal. His stammer is more expressive than speech. »
20 May 2010
Listeners who have appreciated Gerald Finley’s stylish and moving
singing of baritone roles in operas by Mozart and other composers will be
pleased with the recent CD release of Great Operatic Arias in English. »
20 May 2010
Expectations were running high for the opening night of Elaine Kidd’s
revival of Laurent Pelly’s production of Donizetti’s mad-cap romp,
La Fille du regiment — almost as high as Tonio’s infamous
top Cs. »
19 May 2010
At the Wigmore Hall, performers can chose daring repertoire, because audiences there are unusually receptive. »
18 May 2010
Some fortunate operas have any number of fine live versions available on DVD. »
17 May 2010
Recorded live at the Palau de les Arts “Reina Sofia”,
Valencia, this new video of Richard Wagner’s Das Rheingold
is based on the staging of La Fura dels Baus, with Carlus Padrissa, stage
director, and featuring an international cast conducted by Zubin Mehta. »
17 May 2010
Back in 1989 Ken Russell opened his Genovese Mefistofele with heavenly choirs contemplating the divinity of a praying mantis. »
17 May 2010
“If you could take any one memory with you to eternity, which one would you choose?” In Michel van der Aa’s After Life several people meet in a waiting room. »
15 May 2010
Tristan has been a fairly frequent visitor in Genoa over the past sixty years (post WW II). Tullio Serafin conducted the Isolde of Maria Callas there in 1948. »
12 May 2010
Richard Eyre’s production of La traviata is so beautiful that it can be watched repeatedly, yet still yield pleasure. But appearances, however splendid, aren’t quite enough to make a completely satisfying evening. »
10 May 2010
It’s glorious and it’s gripping; it’s grand — and
it’s good! Indeed, Jake Heggie’s Moby Dick,
premiered by Dallas Opera in its handsome new Winspear Opera House on April 30,
is a work that restores meaning to basic vocabulary made banal by overuse
through the decades. »
10 May 2010
London’s Wigmore Hall is one of the world’s great centres for art song. This recital, by Susan Bickley and Iain Burnside, specialists in the genre, showed that English language art song is alive and thriving. »
02 May 2010
Armida is fabulous. That is to say, the story is a fable. Rinaldo,
the very type of Christian warrior, is torn between his duty to lead the First
Crusade and the sensual ecstasies offered by the beautiful sorceress Armida. »
02 May 2010
It’s time Verdi got attention in Aida, not elephants. »
28 Apr 2010
Thomas Adès’s Powder Her Face is back at the Linbury Studio Theatre at the Royal Opera House. It's a classic. Once again, Joan Rodgers sings the Duchess, supported by Alan Ewing, Iain Paton and the incomparable Rebecca Bottone, all in multiple roles. »
27 Apr 2010
Fifty-five years after its premiere, composer and creator reunite for a new
production at Boston University »
27 Apr 2010
The story of Gioachino Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia (The
Barber of Seville) is based on Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais’
1775 play, Le barbier de Séville. »
27 Apr 2010
It started with a bang and ended with a whimper. Juilliard’s
production of Francis Poulenc’s opera Dialogues des Carmélites
opened on Wednesday, April 21 and the performance started out strong. »
26 Apr 2010
Pick the word: soupçon? snippet? tidbit? quark? to describe the infinitesimal bite of Wagner bestowed upon us by the Met this year — and we had to wait till the end of April, to boot! »
26 Apr 2010
Chaos and disorder rule at Los Angeles Opera of late, and not just in the fervid imagination of director Achim Freyer, the artistic force behind the controversial staging of Richard Wagner’s four-evening glorification of chaos and disorder. »
24 Apr 2010
The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland
— College Park is presenting Shadowboxer, an opera based on the
life of Joe Louis, with music composed by Frank Proto to a libretto by John
Chenault. »
24 Apr 2010
From the Maryland Opera Studio comes a riveting new opera that transforms
the life of American boxing legend Joe Louis (“The Brown Bomber”)
into an epic tale of human struggle, triumph, and failure. »
24 Apr 2010
This month, the Maryland Opera Studio (MOS) at the University of Maryland,
College Park, marked its spot in opera history with the world premiere of
Shadowboxer, a jazz-infused opera based on the life of iconic American
boxer Joe Louis. »
24 Apr 2010
The Shadowboxer project, an opera about the life of heavyweight
boxing champion Joe Louis, began as an idea in director Leon Major’s mind
twenty years ago. »
24 Apr 2010
The University of Maryland Opera Studio premiered a new commission this
week: Shadowboxer, composed by Frank Proto, and based on the life of
boxing champion Joe Louis. »
24 Apr 2010
An opera about boxer Joe Louis might seem like a futile undertaking:
according to 1930s New York Times reporter Meyer Berger, “Joe
Louis avoids meeting people, hates conversation (even fight talk) and says less
than any man in sports…” »
23 Apr 2010
The abiding elegance and beauty of Christopher Maltman’s baritone,
complemented by the interpretative wisdom and experience of Graham Johnson, one
of the finest vocal accompanists of recent times, made this an evening of
assured musicianship and expressive poise. »
20 Apr 2010
Previously released on DVD, the Netherlands Opera recording of
Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk »
20 Apr 2010
This disc neatly captures a central dichotomy of the career of composer Aaron Copland. »
19 Apr 2010
‘Come sweet death … for I am weary of the world’: thus,
the opening lines of Bach’s aria, ‘Komm Süßer Tod’, from the
Schemelli Liederbuch, led us into the realms of the afterlife, and
encapsulated the central sentiment of this evening of songs meditating on, and
calling for, release from toilsome human cares. »
19 Apr 2010
Opera festival DVDs often seem to be produced as tempting advertisements meant to induce viewers to consider a trip to that festival for the next season. »
19 Apr 2010
‘Each action will derive new grace
From order, measure, time and place;’ (Milton, Il
Penseroso) »
