Recently in Reviews
19 Sep 2008
Iannis Xenakis once stood among the leading composers of the avant-garde, mentioned in a (long, drawn-out, amelodic, taped and fed back) breath with Babbitt, Berio, Boulez, Henze, Penderecki and Stockhausen: internationally famous among academics, ignored or deplored by the concert-going public. »
19 Sep 2008
Last year saw Cecilia Bartoli’s recording dedicated to the memory, and repertoire, of the early 19th century singer Maria Malibran, “Maria.” »
16 Sep 2008
The Verdi Requiem is a regular feature at the Proms, having appeared every few years in past decades, usually to full houses. »
16 Sep 2008
Sunday 24th August at the Proms promised a day dedicated to the music of Bach, beginning with an organ recital in the afternoon by Simon Preston and ending with a late-night performance of the first three of the six Cello Suites by Chinese cellist Jian Wang by way of a palate-cleanser. »
14 Sep 2008
The Last Night of the Proms is notorious because it’s an excuse for jingoistic excess. »
14 Sep 2008
There may be no name more famous in the world of film music than that of Bernard Herrmann. William Perry, however, is a name unlikely to set off many bells. »
14 Sep 2008
Of these three productions staged for the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the beautifully dressed Entführung and refined Tancredi present the company as a theater for tasteful, stylish productions, just a tad on the dull side. »
09 Sep 2008
Even a concert performance of Messiaen’s St François d’Assise could hardly fail to be an event. »
08 Sep 2008
Luciano Pavoritti died on September 6, 2007. The all-too-ample figure and the fables associated with him are already retreating from memory. »
08 Sep 2008
Every time an artist walks onto the performance stage, he or she attempts to give the performance of their lives, focusing on everything they have learned prior to, and giving of themselves in an unprecedented way. »
07 Sep 2008
Kashchey is a gnarled old ogre who imprisons a beautiful young princess in his gloomy underworld. It’s classic psychodrama. Kashchey has supernatural powers, so how can the Princess be saved ? »
07 Sep 2008
I’ve rarely seen a performance of Tristan und Isolde where I was quite so conscious of the singers’ teeth. »
07 Sep 2008
The startup of a new opera company is always cause for cheering; it is getting harder and harder (that is, more and more expensive) to do, especially in New York. »
07 Sep 2008
Because Turangâlìla is such a panorama, taking in Hollywood, Hindus and Peruvians, Wagner and Gurrelieder, it’s easy to assume it’s all surface Technicolor. »
07 Sep 2008
Perhaps it will be enough to tell you that I wasn’t halfway through this book before I searched the web for a copy of Professor Ewans’s study of Wagner and Aeschylus’s Oresteia, and ordered it forthwith: It has to be good. »
05 Sep 2008
The Netherlands Opera opened its season at the Muziektheater with a stunning new production of Die Frau ohne Schatten, setting the bar very high indeed for all that is to follow in the repertoire. »
04 Sep 2008
Although performances of Handel’s more obscure large-scale works are relatively common in London, it is far less common that they are given in a venue as large and high-profile as the Royal Albert Hall, with a line-up of conductor and soloists that will attract a full house for a lengthy and static work on a hot summer evening. »
03 Sep 2008
Janáček’s music has already been well served in this year’s Proms in a memorable evening conducted by Boulez (reviewed on this site by Anne Ozorio). »
29 Aug 2008
With the revival of a 1876 Cleopatra by the local composer Lauro Rossi, a couple of world premieres in chamber opera and sacred oratorio (by Marco Tutino and Alberto Colla, respectively) and Verdi’s Attila canceled because of budget constraints, the 44th installment of the Macerata Festival will nevertheless be remembered as a bumper season, if one not particularly friendly to mainstream taste. »
29 Aug 2008
The venerable Wagner Festival in Bayreuth has never shied away from provocative productions. »
26 Aug 2008
In a nod to the 150th anniversary of Puccini's birth, the Manchester-based BBC Philharmonic Orchestra visited the Proms with their chief conductor, Gianandrea Noseda, for a performance of the first opera of Il trittico. »
26 Aug 2008
“Only in the realm of the dead is everything pure.” »
21 Aug 2008
Contrary to popular assumption, Janáček wasn’t “folkloric” per se, much as he loved his Moravian heritage. Boulez’s perceptive approach shows how inventive and original Janáček’s music can be. »
21 Aug 2008
I hoped it was not an omen of the evening to come at Torre del Lago’s Puccini Festival, when the audience was made to wait at the closed gates until about twenty minutes before curtain rise, listening to the orchestra and chorus a hundred yards away rehearse chunks of that night’s Edgar. »
19 Aug 2008
Glyndebourne Festival Opera’s annual appearance at the Proms is always an eagerly-awaited event, but there is a varying degree of success with which the productions adapt from a full staging at Glyndebourne to a semi-staging suitable for the small platform and cavernous space of the Royal Albert Hall. »
19 Aug 2008
A soprano originally from South Africa and a tenor from Sweden sang their way to top honors in the 2008 International Wagner Competition staged by the Seattle Opera on August 16 in Marion Oliver McCaw Hall, the company's handsome home. »
18 Aug 2008
“Stage direction should not follow fashion, for fashion is the sister of death”. »
17 Aug 2008
The haunting, unsettling opening moments of the Glyndebourne premiere of Peter Eötvös’ “Love and Other Demons” promised much, with sensitive playing by the solo celesta and harp, flutter-tongued flutes, and jarring bass stings. »
17 Aug 2008
The lyricism characteristic of the instrumental music of Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937) is at the core of his songs, and the two collections found on this recording represent his vocal music well. »
17 Aug 2008
The 100th anniversary of his birth inevitably produces a flood of releases from the catalog of conductor Herbert von Karajan. »
17 Aug 2008
Bedrich Smetana (1824-1884) is, perhaps known best for his opera The Bartered Bride (1863, rev. 1870), a touchstone of comic opera fused with eastern-European nationalism and, as much as that work has much to offer, his other efforts deserve attention. »
17 Aug 2008
Premiered in 1938 in Zurich, Mathis der Maler was then the most recent of Paul Hindemith’s provocative operas. »
17 Aug 2008
The festal days of Christmas, New Year’s, St. Stephen and St. Thomas Becket are rich in musical celebration, and this recording from the Orlando Consort brings together a wide range of organa, motets, chansons, and carols to remind us of that fact. »
30 Jul 2008
Star-studded casts graced end of the season performances at the Wiener Staatsoper, with two versions of Verdi’s Don Carlo on its menu. »
30 Jul 2008
For its ninth program of the Summer 2008 season the Grant Park Music Festival offered a balance of vocal, choral, and orchestral works from the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. »
30 Jul 2008
I discovered many delights in my first ever visit to the Chautauqua Opera, not least of which was the lovely environment of the hilly Chautauqua Institution grounds which are dotted with picturesque and inviting old frame houses. »
30 Jul 2008
The novelty feature drawing veteran opera enthusiasts in general, and Richard Wagnerites in particular to Glimmerglass Opera this summer is that composer’s “Das Liebesverbot,” in what is touted as the North American fully staged premiere of this seldom-talked-about-and-even-less-performed early piece. »
30 Jul 2008
For two years, the subdued rumble of anticipation had been building to a forte. »
30 Jul 2008
The Philharmonia Orchestra has made a far more comprehensive effort than any other British ensemble to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the death of Ralph Vaughan Williams, with concerts taking place over the course of seven months in London, Leicester and Bedford including a complete symphony cycle. »
29 Jul 2008
Dynamic now offers most of its product in CD and DVD formats, the latter in High Definition, no less. »
29 Jul 2008
With these three CDs of highlights from three Verdi operas - Nabucco, Il Trovatore, and Aida — Classics for Pleasure gives a snapshot of the arc of his career. »
28 Jul 2008
Chinese bass Hao Jiang Tian was 30, when he enrolled as an undergraduate at the University of Denver 1983. »
23 Jul 2008
It’s not so long ago that the opening night of the Proms was given over to a single major choral work, but in more recent times it has become more of an overt opener to the season, presenting a taster menu of the themes running through the season’s subsequent 70-plus concerts. »
22 Jul 2008
Eugenia Zukerman asked for a 10-minute chamber work — a piano quintet, perhaps — and she got Green Sneakers for Baritone, String Quartet and Empty Chair, which lasts exactly an hour. »
20 Jul 2008
“Quelle plaisir” to encounter Gustave Charpentier’s seldom performed “Louise” at the Paris Opera in a production where most everything went spectacularly right. »
20 Jul 2008
The Bayerische Staatsoper, based in three spectacular houses where Mozart, Wagner and many other composers premiered their works, presents over 300 annual performances to a discerning public. »
20 Jul 2008
The opera world, always ravenous for talented, charismatic tenors, felt desperate hunger pains last summer, when Rolando Villazón canceled dates with an explanation that a health crisis necessitated a sabbatical from singing. »
20 Jul 2008
With a composer as widely beloved as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, for an opera to be all but forgotten suggests the work has problems beyond redemption. »
20 Jul 2008
For the opera of average length, a decent highlights disc can feature as much as half the score. »
