Recently in Reviews
05 Oct 2020
This tenth of ten Live from London concerts was in fact a recorded live performance from California. It was no less enjoyable for that, and it was also uplifting to learn that this wasn’t in fact the ‘last’ LfL event that we will be able to enjoy, courtesy of VOCES8 and their fellow vocal ensembles (more below …). »
01 Oct 2020
Ever since Wigmore Hall announced their superb series of autumn concerts, all streamed live and available free of charge, I’d been looking forward to this song recital by Ian Bostridge and Imogen Cooper. »
30 Sep 2020
The Sixteen continues its exploration of Henry Purcell’s Welcome Songs for Charles II. As with Robert King’s pioneering Purcell series begun over thirty years ago for Hyperion, Harry Christophers is recording two Welcome Songs per disc. »
27 Sep 2020
Although Stile Antico’s programme article for their Live from London recital introduced their selection from the many treasures of the English Renaissance in the context of the theological debates and upheavals of the Tudor and Elizabethan years, their performance was more evocative of private chamber music than of public liturgy. »
26 Sep 2020
In February this year, Albanian soprano Ermonela Jaho made a highly lauded debut recital at Wigmore Hall - a concert which both celebrated Opera Rara’s 50th anniversary and honoured the career of the Italian soprano Rosina Storchio (1872-1945), the star of verismo who created the title roles in Leoncavallo’s La bohème and Zazà, Mascagni’s Lodoletta and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. »
24 Sep 2020
Evidently, face masks don’t stifle appreciative “Bravo!”s. And, reducing audience numbers doesn’t lower the volume of such acclamations. For, the audience at Wigmore Hall gave soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn and pianist Simon Lepper a greatly deserved warm reception and hearty response following this lunchtime recital of late-Romantic song. »
23 Sep 2020
Collapsology. Or, perhaps we should use the French word ‘Collapsologie’ because this is a transdisciplinary idea pretty much advocated by a series of French theorists - and apparently, mostly French theorists. It in essence focuses on the imminent collapse of modern society and all its layers - a series of escalating crises on a global scale: environmental, economic, geopolitical, governmental; the list is extensive. »
21 Sep 2020
For this week’s Live from London vocal recital we moved from the home of VOCES8, St Anne and St Agnes in the City of London, to Kings Place, where The Sixteen - who have been associate artists at the venue for some time - presented a programme of music and words bound together by the theme of ‘reflection’. »
19 Sep 2020
'Such is your divine Disposation that both you excellently understand, and royally entertaine the Exercise of Musicke.’ »
18 Sep 2020
Amongst an avalanche of new Mahler recordings appearing at the moment (Das Lied von der Erde seems to be the most favoured, with three) this 1991 Mahler Second from the 2nd Kassel MahlerFest is one of the more interesting releases. »
17 Sep 2020
‘And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven … that old serpent … Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.’ »
17 Sep 2020
If there is one myth, it seems believed by some people today, that probably needs shattering it is that post-war recordings or performances of Wagner operas were always of exceptional quality. This 1949 Hamburg Tristan und Isolde is one of those recordings - though quite who is to blame for its many problems takes quite some unearthing. »
14 Sep 2020
There was never any doubt that the fifth of the twelve Met Stars Live in Concert broadcasts was going to be a palpably intense and vivid event, as well as a musically stunning and theatrically enervating experience. »
14 Sep 2020
‘Love’ was the theme for this Live from London performance by Apollo5. Given the complexity and diversity of that human emotion, and Apollo5’s reputation for versatility and diverse repertoire, ranging from Renaissance choral music to jazz, from contemporary classical works to popular song, it was no surprise that their programme spanned 500 years and several musical styles. »
13 Sep 2020
The Academy of St Martin in the Fields have titled their autumn series of eight concerts - which are taking place at 5pm and 7.30pm on two Saturdays each month at their home venue in Trafalgar Square, and being filmed for streaming the following Thursday - ‘re:connect’. »
10 Sep 2020
The London Symphony Orchestra opened their Autumn 2020 season with a homage to Oliver Knussen, who died at the age of 66 in July 2018. The programme traced a national musical lineage through the twentieth century, from Britten to Knussen, on to Mark-Anthony Turnage, and entwining the LSO and Rattle too. »
06 Sep 2020
With the Live from London digital vocal festival entering the second half of the series, the festival’s host, VOCES8, returned to their home at St Annes and St Agnes in the City of London to present a sequence of ‘Choral Dances’ - vocal music inspired by dance, embracing diverse genres from the Renaissance madrigal to swing jazz. »
05 Sep 2020
Just a few unison string wriggles from the opening of Mozart’s overture to Le nozze di Figaro are enough to make any opera-lover perch on the edge of their seat, in excited anticipation of the drama in music to come, so there could be no other curtain-raiser for this Gala Concert at the Royal Opera House, the latest instalment from ‘their House’ to ‘our houses’. »
31 Aug 2020
"Before the ending of the day, creator of all things, we pray that, with your accustomed mercy, you may watch over us." »
30 Aug 2020
The doors at The Metropolitan Opera will not open to live audiences until 2021 at the earliest, and the likelihood of normal operatic life resuming in cities around the world looks but a distant dream at present. But, while we may not be invited from our homes into the opera house for some time yet, with its free daily screenings of past productions and its pay-per-view Met Stars Live in Concert series, the Met continues to bring opera into our homes. »
27 Aug 2020
The voices of six women composers are celebrated by baritone Jeremy Huw Williams and soprano Yunah Lee on this characteristically ambitious and valuable release by Lontano Records Ltd (Lorelt). »
25 Aug 2020
Music-making at this year’s Grange Festival Opera may have fallen silent in June and July, but the country house and extensive grounds of The Grange provided an ideal setting for a weekend of twelve specially conceived ‘promenade’ performances encompassing music and dance. »
22 Aug 2020
As Paul Spicer, conductor of the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir, observes, the worship of the Blessed Virgin Mary is as ‘old as Christianity itself’, and programmes devoted to settings of texts which venerate the Virgin Mary are commonplace. »
18 Aug 2020
Ethel Smyth’s last large-scale work, written in 1930 by the then 72-year-old composer who was increasingly afflicted and depressed by her worsening deafness, was The Prison – a ‘symphony’ for soprano and bass-baritone soloists, chorus and orchestra. »
14 Aug 2020
‘Hamilton Harty is Irish to the core, but he is not a musical nationalist.’ »
10 Aug 2020
There’s a “slide of harmony” and “all the bones leave your body at that moment and you collapse to the floor, it’s so extraordinary.” »
05 Aug 2020
‘After silence, that which comes closest to expressing the inexpressible is music.’ Aldous Huxley’s words have inspired VOCES8’s new disc, After Silence, a ‘double album in four chapters’ which marks the ensemble’s 15th anniversary. »
02 Aug 2020
A song-cycle is a narrative, a journey, not necessarily literal or linear, but one which carries performer and listener through time and across an emotional terrain. Through complement and contrast, poetry and music crystallise diverse sentiments and somehow cohere variability into an aesthetic unity. »
26 Jul 2020
“Music for a while, shall all your cares beguile.” »
25 Jul 2020
One of the nicest things about being lucky enough to enjoy opera, music and theatre, week in week out, in London’s fringe theatres, music conservatoires, and international concert halls and opera houses, is the opportunity to encounter striking performances by young talented musicians and then watch with pleasure as they fulfil those sparks of promise. »
18 Jul 2020
“It’s forbidden, and where’s the art in that?” »
13 Jul 2020
Dublin-born John F. Larchet (1884-1967) might well be described as the father of post-Independence Irish music, given the immense influenced that he had upon Irish musical life during the first half of the 20th century - as a composer, musician, administrator and teacher. »
13 Jul 2020
The English Civil War is raging. The daughter of a Puritan aristocrat has fallen in love with the son of a Royalist supporter of the House of Stuart. Will love triumph over political expediency and religious dogma? »
07 Jul 2020
Beethoven Symphony no 9 (the Choral Symphony) in D minor, Op. 125, and the Choral Fantasy in C minor, Op. 80 with soloist Kristian Bezuidenhout, Pablo Heras-Casado conducting the Freiburger Barockorchester, new from Harmonia Mundi. »
07 Jul 2020
The hum of bees rising from myriad scented blooms; gentle strains of birdsong; the cheerful chatter of picnickers beside a still lake; decorous thwacks of leather on willow; song and music floating through the warm evening air. »
04 Jul 2020
A Louise Brooks look-a-like, in bobbed black wig and floor-sweeping leather trench-coat, cheeks purple-rouged and eyes shadowed in black, Barbara Hannigan issues taut gestures which elicit fire-cracker punch from the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. »
30 Jun 2020
‘Signor Piatti in a fantasia on themes from Beatrice di Tenda had also his triumph. Difficulties, declared to be insuperable, were vanquished by him with consummate skill and precision. He certainly is amazing, his tone magnificent, and his style excellent. His resources appear to be inexhaustible; and altogether for variety, it is the greatest specimen of violoncello playing that has been heard in this country.’ »
28 Jun 2020
All good things come to an end, so they say. Let’s hope that only the ‘good thing’ part of the adage is ever applied to Wigmore Hall, and that there is never any sign of ‘an end’. »
27 Jun 2020
Baritone Roderick Williams seems to have been a pretty constant ‘companion’, on my laptop screen and through my stereo speakers, during the past few ‘lock-down’ months. »
22 Jun 2020
Countertenor Iestyn Davies and lutenist Elizabeth Kenny kicked off the final week of live lunchtime recitals broadcast online and on radio from Wigmore Hall. »
18 Jun 2020
Melodramas can be a difficult genre for composers. Before Richard Strauss’s Enoch Arden the concept of the melodrama was its compact size – Weber’s Wolf’s Glen scene in Der Freischütz, Georg Benda’s Ariadne auf Naxos and Medea or even Leonore’s grave scene in Beethoven’s Fidelio. »
15 Jun 2020
I’m not ashamed to confess that I watched this live performance, streamed from the stage of the Royal Opera House, with a tear in my eye. »
12 Jun 2020
At the start of this lunchtime recital, Roderick Williams set out the rationale behind the programme that he and pianist Joseph Middleton presented at Wigmore Hall, bringing to a close a second terrific week of live lunchtime broadcasts, freely accessible via Wigmore Hall’s YouTube channel and BBC Radio 3. »
07 Jun 2020
In the annals of musical controversies, the Missa Scala Aretina debate does not have the notoriety of the Querelle des Bouffons, the Monteverdi-Artusi spat, or the audience-shocking premiere of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. »
02 Jun 2020
Robert Browning, Lord Alfred Tennyson, Charles Kingsley, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, A.E. Housman … the list of those whose work Sir Arthur Somervell (1863-1937) set to music, in his five song-cycles, reads like a roll call of Victorian poetry - excepting the Edwardian Housman. »
27 May 2020
Mark Stone and Stephen Barlow present Volume 3 in their series The Complete Roger Quilter Songbook, on Stone Records. »
26 May 2020
A contemporary telling of the Passion story which uses texts from both the Christian and the Jewish traditions to create a very different viewpoint. »
25 May 2020
In 1770, during an extended tour of France and Italy to observe the ‘present state of music’ in those two countries, the English historian, critic and composer Charles Burney spent a month in Naples - a city which he noted (in The Present State of Music in France and Italy (1771)) ‘has so long been regarded as the centre of harmony, and the fountain from whence genius, taste, and learning, have flowed to every other part of Europe.’ »
18 May 2020
At last, Herbert Howells’s Missa Sabrinensis (1954) with David Hill conducting the Bach Choir, with whom David Willcocks performed the piece at the Royal Festival Hall in 1982. Willcocks commissioned this Mass for the Three Choirs Festival in Worcester in 1954, when Howells himself conducted the premiere. »
17 May 2020
Sailing home to Corinth, bearing treasures won in a music competition, the mythic Greek bard, Arion, found his golden prize coveted by pirates and his life in danger. »
06 May 2020
The life of Alessandro Stradella was characterised by turbulence, adventure and amorous escapades worthy of an opera libretto. Indeed, at least seven composers have turned episodes from the 17th-century Italian composer’s colourful life into operatic form, the best known being Flotow whose three-act comic opera based on the Lothario’s misadventures was first staged in Hamburg in 1844. »
27 Apr 2020
Among the few compensations opera lovers have had from the COVID crisis is the abundance – alas, plethora – of streamed opera productions we might never have seen or even known of without it. »
11 Apr 2020
In 1877, Ethel Smyth, aged just nineteen, travelled to Leipzig to begin her studies at the German town’s Music Conservatory, having finally worn down the resistance of her father, General J.H. Smyth. »
11 Apr 2020
This new recording of excerpts from Wagner’s Der Ring des Niebelungen is quite exceptional - and very unusual for this kind of disc. The words might be missing, but the fact they are proves to have rather the opposite effect. It is one of the most operatic of orchestral Wagner discs I have come across. »
10 Apr 2020
Simon Rattle has never particularly struck me as a complex conductor. He is not, for example, like Furtwängler, Maderna, Boulez or Sinopoli - all of whom brought a breadth of learning and a knowledge of composition to bear on what they conducted. »
29 Mar 2020
Antonín Dvořák Requiem op.89 (1890) with Jakub Hrůša conducting the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. The Requiem was one of the last concerts Jiří Bělohlávek conducted before his death and he had been planning to record it as part of his outstanding series for Decca. »
26 Mar 2020
As an opera composer, Philip Venables writes works quite unlike those of many of his contemporaries. They may not even be operas at all, at least in the conventional sense - and Denis & Katya, the most recent of his two operas, moves even further away from this standard. But what Denis & Katya and his earlier work, 4.48 Psychosis, have in common is that they are both small, compact forces which spiral into extraordinarily powerful and explosive events. »
15 Mar 2020
Making his main stage debut at ENO with this new production of The Marriage of Figaro, theatre director Joe Hill-Gibbins professes to have found it difficult to ‘develop a conceptual framework for the production to inhabit’. »
14 Mar 2020
“Non so più cosa son, cosa faccio … Now I’m fire, now I’m ice, any woman makes me change colour, any woman makes me quiver.” »
07 Mar 2020
Last year the world’s opera companies presented only nine staged runs of Béla Bartòk’s Bluebeard’s Castle. »
03 Mar 2020
If obsession is key to understanding the dramatic and musical fabric of Tchaikovsky’s opera The Queen of Spades, the current production at Lyric Opera of Chicago succeeds admirably in portraying such aspects of the human psyche. »
03 Mar 2020
Unveiled by Welsh National Opera last autumn, this Carmen is now in its first revival. Original director Jo Davies has abandoned picture postcard Spain and sun-drenched vistas for images of grey, urban squalor somewhere in modern-day Latin America. »
02 Mar 2020
Making Fidelio - Beethoven’s paean to liberty, constancy and fidelity - an emblem of the republican spirit of the French Revolution is unproblematic, despite the opera's censor-driven ‘Spanish’ setting. »
02 Mar 2020
Beach balls and parasols. Strolls along the strand. Cocktails on the terrace. Laura Attridge’s new production of Così fan tutte which opened English Touring Opera’s 2020 spring tour at the Hackney Empire, is a sunny, insouciant and often downright silly affair. »
27 Feb 2020
The visual beauty of Anthony Minghella’s 2005 production of Madama Butterfly, now returning to the Coliseum stage for its seventh revival, still takes one’s breath away. »
26 Feb 2020
It appears that Charlie Parker’s Yardbird has reached the end of its road in Seattle. Since it opened in 2015 at Opera Philadelphia it has played Arizona, Atlanta, Chicago, New York, and the English National Opera. »
25 Feb 2020
The most notable of all Péricholes of Offenbach’s sentimental operetta is surely the legendary Hortense Schneider who created the role back in 1868 at Paris’ Théâtre des Varietés. Alas there is no digital record. »
23 Feb 2020
It’s very rare that you go to a concert and your expectation of it is completely turned on its head. This was one of those. Three works, each composed exactly a century apart, beginning and ending with performances of such clarity and brilliance. »
23 Feb 2020
‘Yes, in my opinion no rhetoric more persuadeth or hath greater power over the mind; hath not Musicke her figures, the same which Rhetorique? What is a but her Antistrophe? her reports, but sweet Anaphora's? her counterchange of points, Antimetabole's? her passionate Aires but Prosopopoea's? with infinite other of the same nature.’ »
23 Feb 2020
Jakub Hrůša has an unusual gift for a conductor and that is to make the mightiest symphony sound uncommonly intimate. There were many moments during this performance of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony where he grappled with its monumental scale while reducing sections of it to chamber music; times when the power of his vision might crack the heavens apart and times when a velvet glove imposed the solitude of prayer. »
20 Feb 2020
Verdi’s sublimely memorable melodies inform and redeem his setting of the dramatically muddled Il Trovatore, the most challenging piece to stage of his middle-period successes. »
19 Feb 2020
Storm Dennis posed no disruption to this revival of Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, first unveiled at Leeds Grand Theatre in 2010, but there was plenty of emotional turbulence. »
16 Feb 2020
Verdi's Luisa Miller occupies an important position in the composer's operatic output. Written for Naples in 1849, the work's genesis was complex owing to problems with the theatre and the Neapolitan censors. »
16 Feb 2020
A splendid 1997 provincial production of Tchaikovsky’s take on Pushkin’s Bryonic hero found its way onto a major Provençal stage just now. The historic Opéra Municipal de Marseille possesses a remarkable acoustic that allowed the Pushkin verses to flow magically through Tchaikovsky’s ebullient score. »
12 Feb 2020
If opera can sometimes seem unyieldingly conservative, even reactionary, it made quite the change to spend an evening hearing and seeing something which was so radically done. »
12 Feb 2020
The first performance of Handel's two-act Acis and Galatea - variously described as a masque, serenata, pastoral or ‘little opera’ - took place in the summer of 1718 at Cannons, the elegant residence of James Brydges, Earl of Carnavon and later Duke of Chandos. »
11 Feb 2020
Are critics capable of humility? The answer should always be yes, yet I’m often surprised how rare it seems to be. It took the film critic of The Sunday Times, Dilys Powell, several decades to admit she had been wrong about Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom, a film excoriated on its release in 1960. It’s taken me considerably less time - and largely because of this astounding recital - to realise I was very wrong about Lise Davidsen. »
07 Feb 2020
Aurélien Bory, director of a small, avant garde theater company in Toulouse, staged a spellbinding Parsifal at the Théâtre du Capitole, Toulouse’s famed Orchestre National du Capitole in the pit — FYI the Capitole is Toulouse’s city hall, the opera house is a part of it. »
04 Feb 2020
‘The world’s most acclaimed Soprano’: the programme booklet produced for Ermonela Jaho’s Wigmore Hall debut was keen to emphasise the Albanian soprano’s prestigious status, as judged by The Economist, and it was standing-room only at the Hall which was full to capacity with Jaho’s fervent fans and opera-lovers. »
03 Feb 2020
John Eliot Gardiner's Schumann series with the London Symphony Orchestra, demonstrate the how Schumann’s Lieder and piano music influenced his approach to symphonic form and his interests in music drama.
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03 Feb 2020
Richard Wagner chose to finish his Good Friday opera while residing in Sicily’s Palermo, partaking of the natural splendors of its famed verdant basin, the Conca d’Oro, and reveling in the golden light of its surreal Monreale cathedral. »
03 Feb 2020
“Siegfried is the Man of the Future, the man we wish, the man we will, but cannot make, and the man who must create himself through our annihilation.” This was Richard Wagner, writing in 1854, his thoughts on Siegfried. The hero of Wagner’s Siegfried, however, has quite some journey to travel before he gets to the vision the composer described in that letter to August Roeckel. Watching Torsten Kerl’s Siegfried in this - largely magnificent - concert performance one really wondered how tortuous a journey this would be. »
03 Feb 2020
Shakespearean sentiments may gracefully enrich Gounod’s Romeo et Juliet, but powerful Baroque tensions enthrall us in the bel canto complexities of Vincenzo Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi. Conductor Daniele Gatti’s offered a truly fine bel canto evening at Rome’s Teatro dell’Opera introducing a trio of fine young artists. »
01 Feb 2020
Finnish conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali has been making waves internationally for some time. The chief conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra is set to take over from Esa-Pekka Salonen as principal conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra in 2021. »
01 Feb 2020
East German stage director Ralf Pleger promised us a Tristan unlike anything we had ever seen. It was indeed. And Slovakian conductor Jura Valčuha gave us a Tristan as never before heard. All of this just now in the most Wagnerian of all Italian cities — Bologna!
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31 Jan 2020
What does it feel like to be depressed? “It’s like water seeping into my heart” is how one young sufferer put it. »
31 Jan 2020
Puccini’s only comedy, the one act Gianni Schicchi is most often programmed with a second short piece of tragic fare, but the adventurous Pacific Opera Project has banked on a fanciful Ravel opus to sustain the mood and send the audience home with tickled ribs and gladdened hearts. »
30 Jan 2020
‘Men Behaving Badly’ wouldn’t be a bad subtitle for Calixto Bieito’s production of Carmen, currently being revived at ENO. »
26 Jan 2020
Twilight people: existing betwixt and between states, slipping the bounds of categorisation, on the edge of the norm. »
25 Jan 2020
A French Affair, as this programme was called, was a promising concept on paper, but despite handsomely sung contributions from the featured soloists and much energetic direction from David Bates, it never quite translated into a wholly satisfying evening’s performance. »
19 Jan 2020
Passion! Pain! Poetry! (but hold the irony . . .) »
17 Jan 2020
Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla conducts the music of Raminta Šerkšnytė with the Kremerata Baltica, in this new release from Deutsche Grammophon. »
17 Jan 2020
If you might have thought a late 17thcentury semi-opera about a somewhat precious fairy tale monarch might not be your cup of twee, Long Beach Opera cogently challenges you to think again. »
17 Jan 2020
How do you like your Schubert? Let me count the ways … »
16 Jan 2020
On paper this seemed a fascinating recital, but as I was traveling to the Wigmore Hall it occurred to me this might be a clash of two great artists. Both Marianne Crebassa and Fazil Say can be mercurial performers and both can bring such unique creativity to what they do one thought they might simply diverge. In the event, what happened was quite remarkable. »
14 Jan 2020
Baroque at the Edge describes itself as the ‘no rules’ Baroque festival. It invites ‘leading musicians from all backgrounds to take the music of the Baroque and see where it leads them’. »
11 Jan 2020
Richard Jones' production of Puccini's La bohème is back at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden after its debut in 2017/18. The opening night, 10th January 2020, featured the first of two casts though soprano Sonya Yoncheva, who was due to sing Mimì, had to drop out owing to illness, and was replaced at short notice by Simona Mihai who had sung the role in the original run and is due to sing Musetta later in this run. »
08 Jan 2020
“How weary we are of wandering/Is this perhaps death?” These closing words of ‘Im Abendrot’, the last of Richard Strauss’s Vier letzte Lieder, and the composer’s own valedictory work, now seem unusually poignant since they stand as an epitaph to Mariss Jansons’s final Strauss recording. »
05 Jan 2020
Latest in the highly acclaimed Hyperion series of Ralph Vaughan Williams symphonies, Symphonies no 3 and 4, with Martyn Brabbins and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, recorded in late 2018 after a series of live performances.
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05 Jan 2020
Mozart’s Don Giovanni returned to Lyric Opera of Chicago in the Robert Falls updating of the opera to the 1930s. The universality of Mozart’s score proves its adaptability to manifold settings, and this production featured several outstanding, individual performances. »
05 Jan 2020
'Of chord and cassiawood is the lute compounded;/ Within it lie ancient melodies'. »
31 Dec 2019
During those ‘in-between’ days following Christmas and before New Year, the capital’s cultural institutions continue to offer fare both festive and more formal. »
31 Dec 2019
This Accentus release of J.S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, recorded live on 15/16th December 2018 at St. Thomas’s Church Leipzig, takes the listener ‘back to Bach’, so to speak. »
29 Dec 2019
Writing in April 1923 in The Bookman, of which he was editor, about Ethel Smyth’s The Boatswain’s Mate (1913-14) - the most frequently performed of the composer’s own operas during her lifetime - Rodney Bennett reflected on the principal reasons for the general neglect of Smyth’s music in her native land. »
26 Dec 2019
The death of his friend and mentor Franz Seiler, notary at the St Florian monastery to which he had returned as a teaching assistant in 1845, was the immediate circumstance which led the 24-year-old Anton Bruckner to compose his first large-scale sacred work: the Requiem in D minor for soloists, choir, organ continuo and orchestra, which he completed on 14th March 1849. »
22 Dec 2019
Robust carol-singing, reindeer-related muzak tinkling through department stores, and light-hearted festive-fare offered by the nation’s choral societies may dominate the musical agenda during the month of December, but at Kings Place on Friday evening Gesualdo Six and the Brodsky Quartet eschewed babes-in-mangers and ding-donging carillons for an altogether more sedate and spiritual ninety minutes of reflection and ‘musical prayer’. »
20 Dec 2019
Professional opera in Japan is roughly a century old. When the Italian director and choreographer Giovanni Vittorio Rosi (1867-1940) mounted a production of Cavalleria Rusticana in Italian in Tokyo in 1917, with Japanese singers, he brought a period of timid experimentation and occasional student performances to an end. »
19 Dec 2019
For those of us who live in a metropolitan bubble, where performances of Handel's Messiah by small professional ensembles are common, it is easy to forget that for many people, Handel's masterpiece remains a large-scale choral work. My own experiences of Messiah include singing the work in a choir of 150 at the Royal Albert Hall, and the venue's tradition of performing the work annually dates back to the 19th century. »
19 Dec 2019
La Scala’s season opened last week with Tosca. This was perhaps the preeminent event in Italian cultural and social life: paparazzi swarmed politicians, industrialists, celebrities and personalities, while almost three million Italians watched a live broadcast on RAI 1. Milan was still buzzing nine days later, when I attended the third performance of the run. »
19 Dec 2019
There is a very good reason why Covent Garden has stuck with Richard Eyre’s 25-year old production of La traviata. Like Zeffirelli’s Tosca, it comes across as timeless whilst being precisely of its time; a quarter of a century has hardly faded its allure, nor dented its narrative clarity. All it really needs is a Violetta to sweep us off our feet, and that we got with Hrachuhi Bassenz. »
18 Dec 2019
Brilliant Emmerich Kálmán’s Ein Herbstmanöver from the Stadttheater, Giessen in 2018, conducted by Michael Hofstetter now on Oehms Classics, in a performing version by Balázs Kovalik. »
17 Dec 2019
Boretti, Predieri, Conti, Matteis, Orlandini, Mattheson: masters of the Baroque? Yes, if this recital by Polish countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński is anything by which to judge. »
12 Dec 2019
I have seen productions of Verdi’s Otello which have been revolutionary, even subversive. I have now seen one which is the complete antithesis of that.
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11 Dec 2019
When Marc-Antoine Charpentier returned from Rome to Paris in 1669 or 1670, he found a musical culture in his native city that was beginning to reject the Italian style, which he had spent several years studying with the Jesuit composer Giacomo Carissimi, in favour of a new national style of music. »
10 Dec 2019
In 1979, the Franco-American harpsichordist and conductor, William Christie, founded an early music ensemble, naming it Les Arts Florissants, after a short opera by Marc-Antoine Charpentier. »
09 Dec 2019
Gian Carlo Menotti’s holiday classic, Amahl and the Night Visitors, was the first recorded opera I ever heard. Each Christmas Eve, while decorating the tree, our family sang along with the (still unmatched) original cast version. We knew the recording by heart, right down to the nicks in the LP. Ever since, no matter what the setting or the quality of a performance, I cannot get through it without tearing up. »
08 Dec 2019
It is perhaps not surprising that the Hamburg-born composer Detlev Glanert should count Hans Werner Henze as one of the formative influences on his work - he did, after all, study with him between 1984 to 1988. »
08 Dec 2019
This death in Venice is not the end, but the beginning. »
30 Nov 2019
There were eighteen rather than sixteen singers. And, though the concert was entitled Saint Cecilia the repertoire paid homage more emphatically to Mary, Mother of Jesus, and to the spirit of Christmas. »
29 Nov 2019
An ambitious new series focusing on the songs of Franz Liszt, starting with all three versions of the Tre Sonetti del Petrarca, (Petrarca Sonnets), S.270a, S.270b and S.161 with Andrè Schuen and Daniel Heide for Avi-music.de. »
26 Nov 2019
At the Wigmore Hall, Andrè Schuen and Daniel Heide in a recital of Schubert and Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen and Rückert-Lieder. Schuen has most definitely arrived, at least among the long-term cognoscenti at the Wigmore Hall who appreciate the intelligence and sensitivity that marks true Lieder interpretation. »
26 Nov 2019
It’s an opera by Vicentino composer Domenico Freschi that premiered in 1681 at the country home of the son of the doge of Venice. Villa Contarini is a couple of hours on horseback from Vicenza, and a few hours by gondola from Venice). »
26 Nov 2019
It would be an extraordinary, even an unimaginable Wozzeck that failed to move, to chill one to the bone. This was certainly no such Wozzeck; Marie’s reading from the Bible, Wozzeck’s demise, the final scene with their son and the other children: all brought that particular Wozzeck combination of tears and horror. »
25 Nov 2019
Une soirée chez Berlioz – an evening with Berlioz, songs for voice, piano and guitar, with Stéphanie D’Oustrac, Thibaut Roussel (guitar), and Tanguy de Williencourt (piano). »
25 Nov 2019
I approached this evening as something of a sceptic regarding work and director. My sole prior encounter with Simon Stone’s work had not been, to put it mildly, a happy one. Nor do I count myself a subscriber or even affiliate to the Korngold fan club, considerable in number and still more considerable in fervency. »
25 Nov 2019
Thanks to the enterprise and vision of Lynton Atkinson - Artistic Director of Dorset-based Hurn Court Opera - two promising young singers on the threshold of glittering careers gave an outstanding recital at Salisbury’s prestigious Art Centre. »
25 Nov 2019
An exceptional Lohengrin, this. I had better explain. Yes, it was exceptional in the quality of much of the singing, especially the two principal female roles, yet also in luxury casting such as Martin Gantner as the King’s Herald. »
22 Nov 2019
This Grimm’s fairytale in its operatic version found its way onto the War Memorial stage in the guise of a new “family friendly” production first seen last holiday season at London’s Royal Opera House. »
22 Nov 2019
Spot-lit in the prevailing darkness, Gustav von Aschenbach frowns restively as he picks up an hour-glass from a desk strewn with literary paraphernalia, objects d’art, time-pieces and a pair of tall candles in silver holders - by the light of which, so Thomas Mann tells us in his novella Death in Venice, the elderly writer ‘would offer up to art, for two or three ardently conscientious morning hours, the strength he had garnered during sleep’. »
20 Nov 2019
A baroque Christmas from Harmonia Mundi, this year’s offering in their acclaimed Christmas series. Great value for money - four CDs of music so good that it shouldn’t be saved just for Christmas. The prize here, though is the Pastorale de Noël by Marc-Antoine Charpentier with Ensemble Correspondances, with Sébastien Daucé, highly acclaimed on its first release just a few years ago. »
18 Nov 2019
Jean Cocteau’s 1950 Orphée - and Philip Glass’s chamber opera based on the film - are so closely intertwined it should not be a surprise that this new production for English National Opera often seems unable to distinguish the two. There is never a shred of ambiguity that cinema and theatre are like mirrors, a recurring feature of this production; and nor is there much doubt that this is as opera noir it gets. »
17 Nov 2019
“Don’t miss this final chance – ever! – to see Die Walküre”, urges the Dutch National Opera website. »
17 Nov 2019
Christmas at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, with the Choir of St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, James Vivian, organist and conductor. New from Hyperion, this continues their series of previous recordings with this Choir. The College of St George, founded in 1348, is unusual in that it is a Royal Peculiar, a parish under the direct jurisdiction of the monarch, rather than the diocese. »
16 Nov 2019
A little under a month ago, I reflected on Vladimir Jurowski’s tempi in Mahler’s ‘Resurrection’. That willingness to range between extremes, often within the same work, was a very striking feature of this second concert, which also fielded a Mahler symphony - this time the Fifth. But we also had a Wagner prelude and Strauss songs to leave some of us scratching our heads. »
15 Nov 2019
Of the San Francisco Opera Manon Lescauts (in past seasons Leontyne Price, Mirella Freni, Karita Mattila among others, all in their full maturity) the latest is Armenian born Parisian finished soprano Lianna Haroutounian in her role debut. And Mme. Haroutounian is surely the finest of them all. »
14 Nov 2019
A double celebration was the occasion for a packed house at the Barbican: the 150th
anniversary of Berlioz’s birth, alongside Michael Tilson Thomas’s fifty-year association with the London Symphony Orchestra.
»
12 Nov 2019
The Anvil in Basingstoke was the first location for a strenuous seven-concert UK tour by the Prague Symphony Orchestra - a venue-hopping trip, criss-crossing the country from Hampshire to Wales, with four northern cities and a pit-stop in London spliced between Edinburgh and Nottingham. »
10 Nov 2019
As a musicologist, particularly when working in the field of historical documents, one is always hoping to discover that unknown score, letter, household account book - even a shopping list or scribbled memo - which will reveal much about the composition, performance or context of a musical work which might otherwise remain embedded within or behind the inscrutable walls of the past. »
10 Nov 2019
Charlie Chaplin was a master of slapstick whose rag-to-riches story - from workhouse-resident clog dancer to Hollywood legend with a salary to match his status - was as compelling as the physical comedy that he learned as a member of Fred Karno’s renowned troupe. »
10 Nov 2019
Robert Carsen’s production of Rinaldo, first seen at Glyndebourne in 2011, gives a whole new meaning to the phrases ‘school-boy crush’ and ‘behind the bike-sheds’. »
09 Nov 2019
At a party hosted by a corrupt and dissolute political leader, wealthy patriarchal predators bask in excess, prowling the room on the hunt for female prey who seem all too eager to trade their sexual favours for the promise of power and patronage. ‘Questa o quella?’ the narcissistic host sings, (this one or that one?), indifferent to which woman he will bed that evening, assured of impunity. »
08 Nov 2019
Jo Davies’ new production of Carmen for Welsh National Opera presents not the exotic Orientalism of nineteenth-century France, nor a tale of the racial ‘Other’, feared and fantasised in equal measure by those whose native land she has infiltrated. »
07 Nov 2019
When did anyone leave a performance of Mozart’s Singspiel without some serious head scratching? »
05 Nov 2019
‘Exit, pursued by an octopus.’ The London Underground insignia in the centre of the curtain-drop at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama’s Silk Street Theatre, advised patrons arriving for the performance of Joseph Haydn’s La fedeltà premiata (Fidelity Rewarded, 1780) that their Tube journey had terminated in ‘Arcadia’ - though this was not the pastoral idyll of Polixenes’ Bohemia but a parody of paradise more notable for its amatory anarchy than any utopian harmony. »
03 Nov 2019
When native son Jaap van Zweden conducts in Amsterdam the house sells out in advance and expectations are high. Last Saturday, he returned to conduct another Wagner opera in the NTR ZaterdagMatinee series. The Concertgebouw audience was already cheering the maestro loudly before anyone had played a single note. By the end of this concert version of Die Walküre, the promise implicit in the enthusiastic greeting had been fulfilled. This second installment of Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung was truly memorable, and not just because of Van Zweden’s imprint. »
01 Nov 2019
Passing the competing Union and EU flags on College Green beside the Palace of Westminster on my way to St John’s Smith Square, where Paul McCreesh’s Gabrieli Consort & Players were to perform Henry Purcell’s 1691 'dramatic opera' King Arthur, the parallels between England now and England then were all too evident. »
31 Oct 2019
I greatly enjoyed the premiere of The Dallas Opera’s co-production with Santa Fe Opera of Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Golden Cockerel when it debuted at the latter in the summer festival of 2018. »
31 Oct 2019
For its second production of the current season Lyric Opera of Chicago is featuring Giuseppe Verdi’s Luisa Miller. »
31 Oct 2019
Philip Glass has described Music with Changing Parts as a transitional work, its composition falling between earlier pieces like Music in Fifths and Music in Contrary Motion (both written in 1969), Music in Twelve Parts (1971-4) and the opera Einstein on the Beach (1975). Transition might really mean aberrant or from no-man’s land, because performances of it have become rare since the very early 1980s (though it was heard in London in 2005). »
30 Oct 2019
New from Albion, Time and Space: Songs by Holst and Vaughan Williams, with Mary Bevan, Roderick Williams, William Vann and Jack Liebeck, highlighting the close personal relationship between the two composers. »
28 Oct 2019
The 68th Wexford Festival Opera, which runs until Sunday 3rd November, is bringing past, present and future together in ways which suggest that the Festival is in good health, and will both blossom creatively and stay true to its roots in the years ahead. »
28 Oct 2019
Seattle Opera’s current staging of Cenerentola is mostly fun to watch. It is also a great example of how trying too hard to inflate a smallish work to fill a huge auditorium can make fun seem more like work. »
26 Oct 2019
On Friday evening October 25, 2019, Opera Southwest opened its 47th season with composer Giovanni Bottesini and librettist Emilio Taddei’s Alì Babà in a version reconstructed from the original manuscript score by Conductor Anthony Barrese. »
24 Oct 2019
There were two works on this London Philharmonic Orchestra programme given by Vladimir Jurowski – Colin Matthews’s Metamorphosis and Gustav Mahler’s ‘Resurrection’. The way Jurowski played it, however, one might have been forgiven for thinking we were listening to a new work by Mahler, something which may not have been lost on those of us who recalled that Matthews had collaborated with Deryck Cooke on the completion of Mahler’s Tenth Symphony. »
21 Oct 2019
‘All opera is Orpheus,’ Adorno once declared - although, typically, what he meant by that was rather more complicated than mere quotation would suggest. Perhaps, in some sense, all music in the Western tradition is too - again, so long as we take care, as Harrison Birtwistle always has, never to confuse starkness with over-simplification. »
20 Oct 2019
San Francisco Opera rolled out the first installment of its new Mozart/DaPonte trilogy, a handsome Nozze, by Canadian director Michael Cavanagh to lively if mixed result. »
20 Oct 2019
The 23-year-old Giacomo Puccini was still three months from the end of his studies at the Conservatoire in Milan when, in April 1883, he spotted an announcement of a competition for a one-act opera in Il teatro illustrato, a journal was published by Edoardo Sonzogno, the Italian publisher of Bizet's Carmen. »
18 Oct 2019
To try to conceive of Schumann’s Dichterliebe as a unified formal entity is to deny the song cycle its essential meaning. For, its formal ambiguities, its disintegrations, its sudden breaks in both textual image and musical sound are the very embodiment of the early Romantic aesthetic of fragmentation. »
16 Oct 2019
Is Donizetti’s Don Pasquale a charming comedy with a satirical punch, or a sharp psychological study of the irresolvable conflicts of human existence? »
14 Oct 2019
Until Verdi turned his attention to Shakespeare’s Fat Knight in 1893, Il giorno di regno (A King for a Day), first performed at La Scala in 1840, was the composer’s only comic opera. »
14 Oct 2019
O Lieb! presents the lieder of Franz Liszt with a distinctive spark from Cyrille Dubois and Tristan Raës, from Aparté. Though young, Dubois is very highly regarded. His voice has a luminous natural elegance, ideal for the Mélodie and French operatic repertoire he does so well. With these settings by Franz Liszt, Dubois brings out the refinement and sophistication of Liszt’s approach to song. »
13 Oct 2019
Q. “Is there an art form you don't relate to?” A. “Opera. It's a dreadful sound - it just doesn't sound like the human voice.” »
11 Oct 2019
First unveiled in 1980, this celebrated WNO production shows no sign of running out of steam. Thanks to director David Pountney and revival director Elaine Tyler-Hall, this Vixen has become a classic, its wide appeal owing much to the late Maria Bjørnson’s colourful costumes and picture book designs (superbly lit by Nick Chelton) which still gladden the eye after nearly forty years with their cinematic detail and pre-echoes of Teletubbies. »
09 Oct 2019
With a charmingly detailed revival of Gioachino Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia Lyric Opera of Chicago has opened its 2019-2020 season. The company has assembled a cast clearly well-schooled in the craft of stage movement, the action tumbling with lively motion throughout individual solo numbers and ensembles. »
09 Oct 2019
When she won the Rosenblatt Recital Song Prize in the 2007 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition, soprano Elizabeth Watts placed rarely performed songs by a female composer, Elizabeth Maconchy, alongside Austro-German lieder from the late nineteenth century. »
08 Oct 2019
‘If the present is already lost, then I want to save the future.’ »
07 Oct 2019
The final performance of San Francisco Opera’s deeply flawed production of the Gounod masterpiece became, in fact, a triumph — for the Romeo of Pene Pati, the Juliet of Amina Edris, and for Charles Gounod in the hands of conductor Yves Abel. »
07 Oct 2019
“Opera is not a play”, or so William Alwyn wrote when faced with criticism that his adaptation of Strindberg’s Miss Julie wasn’t purist enough. The plot is, in fact, largely intact; what Alwyn tends to strip out is some of Strindberg’s symbolism, especially that which links to what were (then) revolutionary nineteenth-century ideas based around social Darwinism. What the opera and play do share, however, is a view of class - of both its mobility and immobility - and this was something this BBC concert performance very much played on. »
06 Oct 2019
The Academy of Ancient Music’s new release of Handel’s Brockes-Passion - recorded around the AAM's live performance at the Barbican Hall on the 300th anniversary of the first performance in 1719 - combines serious musicological and historical scholarship with vibrant musicianship and artistry. »
05 Oct 2019
Dutch National Opera’s October offering is Così fan tutte, a revival of a 2006 production directed by Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito, originally part of a Mozart triptych that elicited strong audience reactions. This Così, set in a hotel, was the most positively received. »
05 Oct 2019
As the cheerfully optimistic opening bars of the overture to Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail (here The Seraglio) sailed buoyantly from the Hackney Empire pit, it was clear that this would be a youthful, fresh-spirited Ottoman escapade - charming, elegant and stylishly exuberant, if not always plumbing the humanist depths of the opera. »
02 Oct 2019
ENO’s 2019-20 season opens by going back to opera’s roots, so to speak, presenting four explorations of the mythical status of that most powerful of musicians and singers, Orpheus. »
01 Oct 2019
This recital at Wigmore Hall, by Ian Bostridge, Steven Isserlis and Olli Mustonen was thought-provoking and engaging, but at first glance appeared something of a Chinese menu. And, several re-orderings of the courses plus the late addition of a Hungarian aperitif suggested that the participants had had difficulty in deciding the best order to serve up the dishes. »
27 Sep 2019
Handel’s English pastoral masque Acis and Galatea was commissioned by James Brydges, Earl of Carnavon and later Duke of Chandos, and had it first performance sometime between 1718-20 at Cannons, the stately home on the grand Middlesex estate where Brydges maintained a group of musicians for his chapel and private entertainments. »
27 Sep 2019
Walk for 10 minutes or so due north of the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden and you come to Brunswick Square, home to the Foundling Museum which was established in 1739 by the philanthropist Thomas Coram to care for children lost but lucky. »
24 Sep 2019
It is hard to imagine a more animated, engaging, and musically accomplished night at the Academy of Music than with Opera Philadelphia’s winning new staging of The Love for Three Oranges. »
24 Sep 2019
She makes a virtue of her deceit, her own accusers come to her defence, and her crime brings her reward. Agrippina - great-granddaughter of Augustus Caesar, sister of Caligula, wife of Emperor Claudius - might seem to offer those present-day politicians hungry for power an object lesson in how to satisfy their ambition. »
23 Sep 2019
San Francisco Opera’s Billy Budd confirms once again that Britten’s reworking of Melville’s novella is among the great masterpieces of the repertory. It boasted an exemplary cast in an exemplary production, and enlightened conducting. »
23 Sep 2019
From Albion, The Song of Love featuring songs by Ralph Vaughan Williams, with Kitty Whately, Roderick Williams and pianist William Vann. Albion is unique, treasured by Vaughan Williams devotees for rarely heard repertoire from the composer’s vast output, so don’t expect mass market commercial product. Albion recordings often highlight new perspectives. »
23 Sep 2019
“To remove the misery of slave motherhood and the curse of unwanted children, and to secure that every baby is loved before it is born.” »
22 Sep 2019
‘By the year 2006, half the performances of the piano music of Haydn, Mozart and the early Beethoven will be played on replicas of 18th-century instruments. Then I’d give it another 20 or 30 years for the invasion of period instruments to have taken over late Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin and Schumann as well. If that prediction seems far out to you, consider how improbable it seemed in 1946 that by the mid-’70s Bach on the harpsichord would have developed from exoticism to norm.’ »
21 Sep 2019
I don’t know what the rest of Operadom is doing to cast Baroque opera at the moment, for the world’s most superlative Handel specialists all seem to have converged on Opera Philadelphia’s stylish Semele. »
20 Sep 2019
Taking risks is part of what Opera Philadelphia’s O19 Festival is all about, and the opening night performance emphatically gambled and won. »
19 Sep 2019
The star-crossed lovers were entrapped in an opera mess worlds away from the smooth elegance of Gounod’s score effected by Canadian conductor Yves Abel. »
19 Sep 2019
You can literally count on the fingers of one hand the UK presentations of Martinů's final opera, The Greek Passion: Welsh National Opera in 1981, Royal Opera in 2000 (both under Charles Mackerras), a revival four years later, and now this new production from Opera North. »
18 Sep 2019
I’ve always wondered whether Massenet’s Werther actually works as an opera at all. It’s a fundamentally uneven work from a dramatic viewpoint which just happens to have one of the most glorious musical scores of any nineteenth-century opera. How I wish Massenet had written something like Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony; alas, what we have is a reasonably short opera that can seem unbearably long - and with a tenor role which is almost invariably miscast. »
18 Sep 2019
Last week the Office of National Statistics published figures showing that in the UK the number of women getting married has fallen below 50%. »
18 Sep 2019
Henze’s Das Floß der Medusa is in some ways a work with a troubled and turbulent history. It is defined by the time in which it was written – 1968 – a period of student protest throughout central Europe. Its first performance was abandoned because the Hamburg chorus refused to perform under the Red Flag which had been placed on stage; and Henze himself decided he wouldn’t conduct it at all after police stormed the concert hall to remove protesters, among them the librettist Ernst Schnabel. »
16 Sep 2019
The clatter of information was overwhelmed by soaring bel canto, Verdi’s domestic tragedy destroyed by director Simon Stone, resurrected by conductor Michele Mariotti, a tour de force for South African soprano Pretty Yende. »
16 Sep 2019
Opera San Jose vivaciously kicked off its 2019–2020 season with a heady version of Strauss’ immortal Die Fledermaus that had all the effervescence of vintage champagne. »
16 Sep 2019
Two Russian love letters to the tragic thirteenth century noblewoman Francesca da Rimini inaugurated the Saturday matinee series at the Concertgebouw. »
16 Sep 2019
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
»
15 Sep 2019
Lyric Opera of Chicago presented this year’s annual concert, Stars of Lyric Opera at Millennium Park. The evening’s program featured a range of selections from works to be presented in the 2019–2020 season along with arias and scenes from other notable and representative operas. »
15 Sep 2019
Ceremony, drama and passion: this Beethoven Night by the NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover under their Chief Conductor Andrew Manze had all three and served them up with vigour and a compelling freshness, giving Prommers at this eve-of-Last-Night concert an exciting and uplifting evening. »
12 Sep 2019
Rarely can any singer have made such an unforgettable UK debut in just twelve minutes of music. That was unquestionably the case with the Russian soprano, Elena Stikhina, who in a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Letter Scene from Eugene Onegin, sang with such compelling stage magnetism and with a voice that has everything you could possibly want. »
12 Sep 2019
Wagner Nights at the Proms were once enormously popular, especially on the programmes of Sir Henry Wood. They have become less so, perhaps because they are simply unfashionable today, but this one given by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Marc Albrecht steered clear of the ‘bleeding chunk’ format which was usually the norm. It was still chunky, but in an almost linear, logical way and benefited hugely from being operatic (when we got to the Wagner) rather than predominantly orchestral. »
09 Sep 2019
On the page this looked rather a ‘pick-and-mix’ sort of Prom from the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen under Greek conductor Constantinos Carydis, who was making his Proms debut. In the event, it was not so much a Chinese take-away as a Michelin-starred feast for musical gourmands. »
07 Sep 2019
Stendhal (as recorded in his Life of Rossini) was not a fan of Rossini’s La Cenerentola, complaining that after the first few bars of the Introduzione he was already suffering from a ‘faint feeling of nausea’, a condition which ‘never entirely dissipated, [recurring] periodically throughout the opera, and with increasing violence’. »
03 Sep 2019
There is esoteric opera — 16,500 spectators at this year’s Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, and there is pop opera — upwards of 500,000 spectators for the opera festival at the Arena di Verona, one quarter of them for an over-the-top new production of La traviata, designed and directed by Franco Zeffirelli. »
03 Sep 2019
Berlioz' Benvenuto Cellini is quite rarity on UK stages. Covent Garden last performed it in 1976 and English National Opera performed it for the first time in 2014 (in Terry Gilliam's riotous production), and yet the opera never quite goes away either. »
02 Sep 2019
There are many ways and means to tell a story: through prose, poetry, sounds, pictures, colours, movement. »
02 Sep 2019
British music with an English and strong European accent marked this Prom featuring three well-wrought works, stylistically worlds apart but each characterised by a highly individual musical personality. »
01 Sep 2019
‘It is well known that Eisler was a master of the art of self-contradiction, using non-sequitur, change of tack and playing devil’s advocate in a brilliantly ironic way in an attempt to look at a problem from every angle, to expose it fully to the gaze of his interlocutor. For an ordinary person to take part in this, let alone keep up with the pace and fully appreciate the wide range of references, which his enormous reading threw out, was wonderfully stimulating, and exhausting.’ »
31 Aug 2019
‘For many it is the masterpiece among his oratorios.’ »
29 Aug 2019
The original production of HMS Pinafore opened at the Opera Comique in London on 25th May 1878 and ran for an astonishing 571 performances. Opera della Luna’s HMS Pinafore, which has been cresting the operatic oceans for over twenty years now, has notched up almost as many performances. »
29 Aug 2019
‘We see him now as one of the most important creators of his generation, certainly comparable to Schoenberg.’ T.J. Anderson, who reconstructed the score of Scott Joplin’s only surviving opera, Treemonisha, for its first staged production in 1972, was probably rather over-enthusiastic in his assessment. »
28 Aug 2019
Earlier this month I reported from the Macerata Opera Festival – a largely Italian affair frequented by few foreigners. One week later I attended the 40th anniversary gala of the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, about 100 km north in the same region of Le Marche and a prominent stop on the international circuit. One one hears much English, French, German and Japanese, and the printed program features a long list of non-Italian financial sponsors. »
28 Aug 2019
Berthold Goldschmidt’s Beatrice Cenci at last on DVD, from the Bregenzer Festspiele in 2018, with Johannes Debus conducting the Wiener Symphoniker, directed by Johannes Erath, and sung in German translation. »
26 Aug 2019
A merciless and neurotic ruler, whose right to govern is ambiguous and disputed. A dignified Queen whose star is setting, as her husband’s heart burns with new love and her lady-in-waiting betrays her. A courtier whose devotion to the Queen, his first love, is undimmed and destined to push both towards a tragic end. No, not Donizetti’s Anna Bolena but Bellini’s Beatrice di Tenda, written three years later, in 1833, for Venice’s La Fenice. »
25 Aug 2019
The pleasures (immense) and pain of Gioachino Rossini’s Semiramide (Venice, 1823). Uncut. »
23 Aug 2019
L’equivoco stravagante (The Bizarre Misunderstanding), the 18 year-old Gioachino Rossini's first opera buffa, is indeed bizarre. Its heroine Ernestina is obsessed by literature and philosophy and the grandiose language of opera seria.
»
22 Aug 2019
This was a notable occasion for offering three colossal scores whose execution filled the Albert Hall’s stage with over 150 members of the London Symphony Orchestra and 300 singers drawn from the Barcelona-based Orfeó Català and Orfeó Català Youth Choir, along with the London Symphony Chorus. »
22 Aug 2019
Nina Simone was one of the towering figures of twentieth-century music. But she was much more than this; many of her songs came to be a clarion call for disenfranchised and discriminated against Americans. When black Americans felt they didn’t have a voice, Nina Simone gave them one. »
21 Aug 2019
‘Abwärts rinnen die Ströme ins Meer.’ Down flow the rivers, down into the sea. These are the ‘sadly-resigned words in the consciousness of his declining years’ that, as reported by The Athenaeum in February 1866 upon the death of Friedrich Rückert, the poet had written ‘some time ago, in the album of a friend of ours, then visiting him at his rural retreat near Neuses’. Such melancholy foreboding - simultaneously sincere and sentimental - infused this recital at Snape Maltings by Ian Bostridge and Julius Drake. »
21 Aug 2019
For the annual production of a classic American musical that has become part of Glimmerglass Festival’s mission, the company mounted a wholly winning version of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s immortal Showboat. »
20 Aug 2019
“On the wings of song, I’ll bear you away …” So sings the poet-speaker in Mendelssohn’s 1835 setting of Heine’s ‘Auf Flügeln des Gesanges’. And, borne aloft we were during this lunchtime Prom by Louise Alder and Gary Matthewman which soared progressively higher as the performers took us on a journey through a spectrum of lieder from the first half of the nineteenth century. »
20 Aug 2019
From the first haunting, glistening sound of the orchestral strings to the ponderous final strokes in the score that echoed the dying heartbeats of a doomed heroine, Glimmerglass Festival’s superior La Traviata was an indelible achievement. »
20 Aug 2019
Though Luigi Cherubini long outlived the carnage of the French Revolution his 1797 opéra comique [with spoken dialogue] Médée fell well within the “horror opera” genre that responded to the spirit of its time. These days however Médée is but an esoteric and extremely challenging late addition to the international repertory.
»
19 Aug 2019
Tchaikovsky’s grand opera The Queen of Spades might seem an unlikely fit for the multi-purpose room of the Pavilion on the Glimmerglass campus but that qualm would fail to reckon with the superior creative gifts of the production team at this prestigious festival. »
19 Aug 2019
Glimmerglass Festival has commendably taken on a potent social theme in producing the World Premiere of composer Jeanine Tesori and librettist Tazewell Thompson’s Blue.
»
19 Aug 2019
From the shimmering first sounds and alluring opening visual effects of Glimmerglass Festival’s The Ghosts of Versailles, it was apparent that we were in for an evening of aural and theatrical splendors worthy of its namesake palace. »
19 Aug 2019
For months we were threatened with a “feminist take” on Verdi’s boiling 1851 melodrama; the program essay was a classic mashup of contemporary psychobabble perfectly captured in its all-caps headline: DESTRUCTIVE PARENTS, TOXIC MASCULINITY, AND BAD DECISIONS. »
18 Aug 2019
It’s an inescapable reference. Among the myriad "Viva Genova!" tweets the Genovese populace shared celebrating its new doge, the pirate Simon Boccanegra, one stood out — “Make Genoa Great Again!” A hell of a mess ensued for years and years and the drinking water was poisonous as well.
»
17 Aug 2019
In this era of operatic globalization, I don’t recall ever attending a summer opera festival where no one around me uttered a single word of spoken English all night. Yet I recently had this experience at the Macerata Opera Festival. This festival is not only a pure Italian experience, in the best sense, but one of the undiscovered gems of the European summer season. »
17 Aug 2019
Notwithstanding the cancellation of Dame Sarah Connolly and Sir Mark Elder, due to ill health, and an inconsiderate audience in moments of heightened emotion, this performance was an unequivocal joy, wonderfully paced and marked by first class accounts from four soloists and orchestral playing from the Hallé that was the last word in refinement. »
17 Aug 2019
Stage director Tobias Kratzer sorely tempts destruction in his Bayreuth deconstruction of Wagner’s delicate Tannhäuser, though he was soundly thwarted at the third performance by conductor Christian Thielemann pinch hitting for Valery Gergiev.
»
17 Aug 2019
Oper im Steinbruch (Opera in the Quarry) presents opera in the 2000 quarry at St Margarethen near Eisenstadt in Austria. Opera has been performed there since the late 1990s, but there was no opera last year and this year is the first under the new artistic director Daniel Serafin, himself a former singer but with a degree in business administration and something of a minor Austrian celebrity as he has been on the country's equivalent of Strictly Come Dancing twice. »
17 Aug 2019
Sea Pictures: both the name of Elgar’s five-song cycle for contralto and orchestra, performed at this BBC Prom by Catriona Morison, winner of the Cardiff Singer of the World Main Prize in 2017, and a fitting title for this whole concert by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Elim Chan, which juxtaposed a first half of songs of the sea, fair and fraught, with, post-interval, compositions inspired by paintings. »
16 Aug 2019
As much as the Proms strives to stand above the events of its time, that doesn’t mean the musicians, conductors or composers who perform there should necessarily do so. »
11 Aug 2019
Site-specific operas are commonplace these days, but at The Octagon Barn in Norwich, Genevieve Raghu, founder and Artistic Director of Into Opera, contrived to make a site persuasively opera-specific. »
09 Aug 2019
Nathalie Stutzmann really is an impressive conductor. The sheer elegance she brings to her formidable technique, the effortless drive towards making much of the music she conducts sound so passionate and the ability to shock us into hearing something quite new in music we think we know is really rather refreshing. Why then did this Prom sometimes feel weary, even disappointing at times? »
06 Aug 2019
Sandrine Piau and Le Concert de la Loge (Julien Chauvin), Si j’ai aimé, an eclectic collection of mélodies demonstrating the riches of French orchestral song. Berlioz, Duparc and Massenet are included, but also Saint-Saëns, Charles Bordes, Gabriel Pierné, Théodore Dubois, Louis Vierne and Benjamin Godard. »
06 Aug 2019
Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer have become an indispensable presence in the contemporary opera world, and their latest premiere, If I Were You, found the duo at the very top of their game. »
05 Aug 2019
Santa Fe Opera continues its remarkable record for producing World (and American) Premieres with The Thirteenth Child, music by Poul Ruders, libretto by Becky and David Starobin. »
05 Aug 2019
Among classical music lovers, Wagner inspires equal measures of devotion and disdain. Some travel far and sit for hours to hear his operas live. Others eschew them completely. »
03 Aug 2019
And still they come. The opera world’s obsession with Handel’s operas shows no sign of abating. The Bavarian State Opera has, since Peter Jonas’s Intendancy, stood at the forefront of Handel staging; this new production of Agrippina was dedicated to him. As ever, I was pleased to see one of these operas for the first time in the theatre – how could I not be pleased to see almost anything in Munich’s wonderful Prinzregententheater – but again, as ever, I was left unable ever quite to put to one side the dramaturgical difficulties/problems/flaws/inadequacies. (Call them what you will.) »
03 Aug 2019
Benjamin Britten’s early, brilliant Piano Concerto and Gustav Mahler’s late symphonic song-cycle Das Lied von der Erde might seem strange concert partners, but there are links between the two works. Both have an uncertainty of form, Britten’s concerto is almost a suite, whilst Mahler’s song-cycle is effectively a symphony. Also, both works were introduced into the UK by Sir Henry Wood. It is this latter connection which drew Britten’s Piano Concerto and Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde into Thursday night’s Prom as part of this year’s celebration the 150th anniversary of Sir Henry Wood’s birth. »
01 Aug 2019
Graham Vick and Jonathan Dove's adaptation of Wagner's Ring was created in the early 1990s for Vick's City of Birmingham Touring Opera, reducing the four evenings and 15 hours music of the cycle down to just two evenings. Dove's orchestration skilfully reduced Wagner's demands down to just 18 instrumentalists, thus allowing a touring version of the Ring (done by Vick in an imaginative production which remarkably followed most of Wagner's stage directions) sung by younger voices. »
01 Aug 2019
‘Es klang so neu und war doch ein bißchen alt’? »
31 Jul 2019
Many Puccini cognoscenti will speak of La fanciulla del West as Puccini’s finest opera - or at least his most musically interesting. In the latter case, I think I can hear what they mean, even if I do not agree. I continue to struggle, with the former claim, although this performance at the Munich Opera Festival made the most convincing case I have yet heard for the work. Its virtues were predominantly musical, in keeping with the work’s general valuation. »
31 Jul 2019
The enchanting grounds of West Green House in the heart of rural Hampshire offer the ideal venue for Rossini’s fairy-tale-based opera, La Cenerentola. Glass side panels bring the 400-seater auditorium’s leafy surroundings a little closer and heighten the impact of a derelict Renault and no less shabby looking Land Rover that front the stage with a boldness redolent of Banksy’s ‘Monet with Shopping Trolley’. »
30 Jul 2019
This lunchtime Prom at Cadogan Hall celebrated the 400th anniversary of the Venetian singer, composer and poet, Barbara Strozzi, but it might equally have been announced as a tribute to the musical form which underpinned so much of the exquisite invention and rhetoric during Strozzi’s era - the circular bass pattern of the ground, chaconne and passacaglia. »
28 Jul 2019
Des Moines Metro Opera closed their wholly winning 47th festival season with a wondrously sung, theatrical vivid, and emotionally bewitching treatment of
Puccini’s evergreen masterpiece, La bohème. »
27 Jul 2019
The version of Bernstein’s and (too-many-collaborators-to-mention) Candide that inhabited the Des Moines Metro Opera festival had a great deal to recommend it.
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27 Jul 2019
If any further proof were needed that Des Moines Metro Opera is at the forefront of operatic excellence in America, their theatrically searing, musically impeccable Wozzeck would cement this assertion. »
25 Jul 2019
Des Moines Metro Opera delights in coming up with site-specific operatic presentations, and Bon Appetit was triumphantly produced in the handsome hall of the Iowa Culinary Institute. »
24 Jul 2019
Where might you hear medieval monophony by the late 12th-century French composer Pérotin, Renaissance polyphony by William Byrd, a vocal arrangement of the stirring theme from Sibelius’s tone poem Finlandia, alongside a newly commissioned work, ‘Vertue’ (2019) by Jonathan Dove, followed by an arrangement of the Irish folksong ‘Danny Boy’ and a snappy rendition of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s ‘One Note Samba’ arr. for eight voices by Naomi Crellin, all within 90 minutes? »
24 Jul 2019
In an essay published in 1868, Tolstoy wrote: ‘What is War and Peace? It is not a novel, still less a poem, still less a historical chronicle. War and Peace is that which the author wished and was able to express in the form in which it has been expressed.’ »
23 Jul 2019
If you need a sweet bonbon to accompany the canapés and champagne on a sparkling summer evening, then Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari’s one-act trifle is a safe bet, especially if presented, as at Opera Holland Park by director John Wilkie and designer takis, as a confection of pink and purple, and performed by two splendid singing actors. »
23 Jul 2019
From Hyperion, Gerald Finzi choral works with the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge, conducted by Stephen Layton. An impressive Magnificat (1952) sets the tone. »
22 Jul 2019
This year’s Jette Parker Young Artists Summer Performance offered a veritable operatic smörgåsbord, presenting sizable excerpts from operas ranging from Gluck to Saint-Saëns, from Mozart to Debussy, by way of some Italian masterpieces, courtesy of Rossini and Verdi. »
21 Jul 2019
In a rank order of suicidal depressives, Federico - the Provençal peasant besotted with ‘the woman from Arles’, L’arlesiana, who yearns to break free from his mother’s claustrophobic grasp, who seeks solace from betrayal and disillusionment in the arms of a patient childhood sweetheart, but who is ultimately broken by deluded dreams and unrequited passion - would surely give many a Thomas Hardy protagonist a run for their money. »
20 Jul 2019
The young American conductor Karina Canellakis made history as the first woman to conduct the First Night of the Proms last night (19 July 2019) as she conducted the BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Chorus and BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall with soloists Asmik Grigorian (soprano), Jennifer Johnston (mezzo-soprano), Ladislav Elgr (tenor), Jan Martiník (bass) and Peter Holder (organ) in Zosha Di Castri's Long is the Journey, Short Is the Memory (the world premiere of a BBC commission), Antonin Dvořák’s The Golden Spinning Wheel and Leoš Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass. »
19 Jul 2019
No one would pretend that Emanuel Schikaneder’s libretto for Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte would go down well with the #MeToo generation. Or with first, second or third wave feminists for that matter. »
18 Jul 2019
Ron Howard’s latest music documentary after The Beatles: Eight Days a Week and Made in America is a poignant tribute that allows viewers into key moments of Pavarotti’s career – but lacks a deeper, more well-rounded view of the artist. »
17 Jul 2019
Along with the celestial Mozart Requiem, a doomed Tosca and a gloriously witty Mahagonny the Aix Festival’s new artistic director Pierre Audi regaled us with three chamber operas — the premiere of a brilliant Les Mille Endormis, the technically playful Blank Out (on a turgid subject), and a heavy-duty Jakob Lenz. »
15 Jul 2019
The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge has played a role in the evolution of British music. This recording honours this heritage and Stephen Cleobury’s contribution in particular by focusing on Herbert Howells, who transformed the British liturgical repertoire in the 20th century. »
12 Jul 2019
French soprano Sabine Devieilhe seems to find feisty adolescence a neat fit. I first encountered her when she assumed the role of a pill-popping nightclubbing ‘Beauty’ - raced from ecstasy-induced wonder to emergency ward - when I reviewed the DVD of Krzysztof Warlikowski’s production of Handel’s Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno at Aix-en-Provence in 2016. »
12 Jul 2019
Make no mistake, this is about you! Jim laid-out dead on the stage floor, conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen brought his very loud orchestra (London’s Philharmonia) to an abrupt halt. Black out. The maestro then turned his spotlighted face to confront us and he held his stare. There was no mistake, the music was about us. »
11 Jul 2019
There was a full house at Wigmore Hall for Classical Opera’s/The Mozartists’ final concert of the 2018-19 season: a musical paysage which chartered, largely chronologically, Mozart’s youthful travels from London to The Hague, on to Paris, then Rome, concluding - following stop-overs in European cultural cities such as Munich and Vienna - with an arrival at his final destination, Prague. »
09 Jul 2019
From the sublime — the Mozart Requiem — to the ridiculous, namely stage director Christophe Honoré's Tosca. A ridiculous waste of operatic resources.
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08 Jul 2019
One might describe Christopher Oram’s set for Louisa Muller’s new production of The Turn of the Screw at Garsington as ‘shabby chic’ … if it wasn’t so sinister. »
08 Jul 2019
Pierre Audi, now the directeur général of the Festival d’Aix as well as the artistic director of New York City’s Park Avenue Armory opens a new era for this distinguished opera festival in the south of France with a new work by the Festival’s signature composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. »
06 Jul 2019
It is Rachmaninov’s major works for orchestra - the Second and Third Piano Concertos, the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, the Symphonic Dances - alongside the All-Night Vespers and the music for solo piano, which have earned the composer a permanent place in the concert repertoire today. »
01 Jul 2019
There are a dizzying array of choices for music entertainment in Las Vegas
ranging from Celine Dion and Cher to Paul McCartney and Aerosmith.
Admittedly, these performers are a far cry from opera, but the point is
that Las Vegas residents have many options when it comes to live music. »
01 Jul 2019
David McVicar's production of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, has been a remarkable success since it debuted in 2006. Set with the Count of Almaviva's fearfully grand household in 1830, McVicar's trick is to surround the principals by servants in a supra-naturalistic production which emphasises how privacy is at a premium. »
30 Jun 2019
The presence of a large cast of ‘animals’ in Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen can encourage directors and designers to create costume-confections ranging from Disney-esque schmaltz to grim naturalism. »
30 Jun 2019
Stage director Laurent Pelly is famed for his Offenbach stagings, above all others his masterful rendering of Les Contes d’Hoffmann as a nightmare. Mr. Pelly has staged eleven of Offenbach’s ninety-nine operettas over the years (coincidently this production of Barbe-Bleue is Mr. Pelly’s ninety-eighth opera staging). »
29 Jun 2019
Mieczysław Weinberg witnessed the Holocaust firsthand. He survived,
though millions didn’t, including his family. His Symphony no. 21
“Kaddish” (Op. 152) is a deeply personal statement. Yet its
musical qualities are such that they make it a milestone in modern
repertoire. »
29 Jun 2019
The Princeton Festival has adopted a successful and sophisticated operatic
programming strategy, whereby the annual opera alternates between a
standard warhorse and a less known, more challenging work. Last year
Princeton presented Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. This year
the choice is Nixon in China by modern American composer John
Adams, which opened before a nearly full house of appreciative listeners. »
28 Jun 2019
When Engelbert Humperdinck's sister, Adelheid Wette, wrote the libretto to Hansel and Gretel the idea of a poor family living in a hut near the woods, on the bread-line, would have had an element of realism to it despite the sentimental layers which Wette adds to the tale. »
28 Jun 2019
What a treat to see members of The Sixteen letting their hair down. This was no strait-laced post-concert knees-up, but a full on, drunken orgy at the court of the most hedonistic ruler in the Old Testament. »
26 Jun 2019
Although some works by a number of composers have had to wait uncommonly lengthy periods of time to receive Japanese premieres - one thinks of both Mozart’s Jupiter and Beethoven’s Fifth (1918), Handel’s Messiah (1929), Wagner’s Parsifal (1967), Berlioz’s Roméo et Juliette (1966) and even Bruckner’s Eighth (1959, given its premiere by Herbert von Karajan) - Mahler might be considered to have fared somewhat better. »
25 Jun 2019
A brutalist Don Giovanni at the Palais Garnier, Belgian set designer Jan Versweyveld installed three huge, a vista raw cement towers that overwhelmed the Opéra Garnier’s Second Empire opulence. The eight principals faced off in a battle royale instigated by stage director Ivo van Hove. Conductor Philippe Jordan thrust the Mozart score into the depths of expressionistic conflict. »
24 Jun 2019
Based on Hogarth’s 18th-century morality tale in eight paintings and with a pithy libretto by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman, Stravinsky’s operatic farewell to Neo-classicism charts Tom Rakewell’s ironic ‘progress’ from blissful ignorance to Bedlam. »
21 Jun 2019
‘When war shall cease this lonely unknown spot,/ Of many a pilgrimage will be the end,/ And flowers will shine in this now barren plot/ And fame upon it through the years descend:/ But many a heart upon each simple cross/ Will hang the grief, the memory of its loss.’ »
20 Jun 2019
There are never any real surprises with a Richard Jones production and Covent Garden’s Boris Godunov, first seen in 2016, is typical of Jones’s approach: it’s boxy, it’s ascetic, it’s over-bright, with minimalism turned a touch psychedelic in the visuals. »
19 Jun 2019
If you go out in the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise. And, it will be no picnic! For, deep in the broomstick forest that director Timothy Sheader and designer Peter McKintosh have planted on the revolving stage at Regent’s Park Theatre is a veritable Witches’ Training School. »
18 Jun 2019
Offenbach's Fantasio is one of the works where, replacing the mad-cap satire of his earlier operettas with a more romantic melancholy, he paved the way for Les contes d'Hoffmann. Unpopular during his lifetime, Fantasio disappeared and only work by the musicologist Jean-Christophe Keck brought the score together again. »
16 Jun 2019
It must be a dream. Though really it is a nightmare. The water sprite Rusalka tortures herself if she is telling the story, or tortures the man who has imagined her if he is telling the story. Either way the bizarrely construed confusion of Czech fairy tales has no easily apparent meaning or message. »
16 Jun 2019
George Frederic Handel was both victim and survivor of the San Francisco Opera’s Orlando seen last night on the War Memorial stage. »
13 Jun 2019
There are those in England who decorate their front lawns with ever-smiling garden gnomes, but in rural Gloucestershire the Graham family has gone one better; their converted barn is inhabited, not by diminutive porcelain figures, but fantasy creatures of Norse mythology - dwarves, giants and gods. »
12 Jun 2019
A razzle-dazzle, bloodless Carmen at the War Memorial, further revival of Francesca Zambello’s 2006 Covent Garden production already franchised to Oslo, Sidney and Washington, D.C. »
12 Jun 2019
Strictly speaking, The Weimar Republic began on 11th August 1919 when the Weimar Constitution was announced and ended with the Enabling Act of 23rd March 1933 when all power to enact laws without the involvement of the Reichstag was disbanded. »
11 Jun 2019
Investec Opera Holland Park’s brilliantly cast new production of Un ballo in maschera reunites several of the creative team from last year’s terrific La traviata, with director Rodula Gaitanou, conductor Matthew Kofi Waldren and lighting designer Simon Corder being joined by the designer, takis. »
11 Jun 2019
Where better than The Grange’s magnificent grounds to present Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. Hampshire’s neo-classical mansion, with its aristocratic connections and home to The Grange Festival, is the perfect setting to explore 18th century class structures as outlined in Lorenzo da Ponte’s libretto. »
10 Jun 2019
Grange Park Opera opened its 2019 season with a revival of Jo Davies fine production of Verdi's Don Carlo, one of the last (and finest) productions in the company's old home in Hampshire. »
10 Jun 2019
The first woman composer to receive the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize could not have been a worthier candidate. »
08 Jun 2019
The renown and repute of Josquin des Prez (c.1450-1521) both during his lifetime and in the years following his death was so extensive and profound that many works by his contemporaries, working in Northern France and the Low Countries, were mis-attributed to him. One such was the six-part Requiem by Jean Richafort (c.1480-c.1550) which formed the heart of this poised concert by the vocal ensemble Cinquecento at Wigmore Hall, in which they gave pride of place to Josquin’s peers and successors and, in the final item, an esteemed forbear. »
07 Jun 2019
Symphonie fantastique and Lélio together, as they should be, with François-Xavier Roth and Les Siècles livestreamed from the Philharmonie de Paris (link below). Though Symphonie fantastique is heard everywhere, all the time, it makes a difference when paired with Lélio because this restores Berlioz’s original context. »
06 Jun 2019
In 1917 Leoš Janáček travelled to Luhačovice, a spa town in the Zlín Region of Moravia, and it was here that he met for the first time Kamila Stösslová, the young married woman, almost 40 years his junior, who was to be his muse for the remaining years of his life. »
06 Jun 2019
At this end of this performance of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut at Investec Opera Holland Park, the first question I wanted to ask director Karolina Sofulak was, why the 1960s? »
04 Jun 2019
Stockhausen. Cosmic Prophet. Two sequential concerts. Music written for piano, percussion, sound diffusion and the voice. We are in the mysterious labyrinth of one of the defining composers of the last century. That at least ninety-minutes of one of these concerts proved to be an event of such magnitude is as much down to the astonishing music Stockhausen composed as it is to the peerless brilliance of the pianist who took us on the journey through the Klavierstücke. Put another way, in more than thirty years of hearing some of the greatest artists for this instrument - Pollini, Sokolov, Zimerman, Richter - this was a feat that has almost no parallels. »
03 Jun 2019
A violent splash of black paint triggers the D minor chord which initiates the Overture. The subsequent A major dominant is a startling slash of red. There follows much artistic swishing and swirling by Don Giovanni-cum-Jackson Pollock. The down-at-heel artist’s assistant, Leporello, assists his Master, gleefully spraying carmine oil paint from a paint-gun. A ‘lady in red’ joins in, graffiti-ing ‘WOMAN’ across the canvas. The Master and the Woman slip through a crimson-black aperture; the frame wobbles. »
02 Jun 2019
Is it love or money that brings one happiness? The village mayor and marriage broker, Kecal, has passionate faith in the banknotes, while the young beloveds, Mařenka and Jeník, put their own money on true love. »
01 Jun 2019
In staging this Gluck double bill for Classical Opera, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, director John Wilkie took a reverent approach to classical allegory. »
31 May 2019
Superlatives to describe Lise Davidsen’s voice have been piling up
since she won Placido Domingo’s 2015 Operalia competition, blowing
everyone away. She has been called “a voice in a million” and
“the new Kirsten Flagstad.” »
31 May 2019
From Hyperion comes a particularly fine account of Leoš Janáček’s song cycle The Diary of One Who Disappeared. Handsome-voiced Nicky Spence is the young peasant who loses his head over an alluring gypsy and is never seen again. »
29 May 2019
Christina Pluhar would presumably irritate the Brexit Party: she delights in crossing borders and boundaries. Mediterraneo, the programme that she recorded and performed with L’Arpeggiata in 2013, journeyed through the ‘olive frontier’ - Portugal, Greece, Turkey, Spain, southern Italy - mixing the sultry folk melodies of Greece, Spain and Italy with the formal repetitions of Baroque instrumental structures, and added a dash of the shady timbres and rhythmic litheness of jazz. »
29 May 2019
Sitting through Tosca - and how we see and hear it these days - does sometimes make one feel one hasn’t been to the opera but to a boxing match. Joseph Kerman’s lurid, inspired or plain wrong-headed description of this opera as ‘a shabby little shocker’ was at least half right in this tenth revival of Jonathan Kent’s production. »
27 May 2019
‘It will be a dream, a fairy tale that will warm your heart’: so promised a preview article in Moravské noviny designed to whet the appetite of the Brno public before the first performance of Leoš Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen at the town’s Na hradbách Theatre on 6th November 1924. »
24 May 2019
On 24th May 1594 just a few weeks before his death on 14 June, the elderly Orlando di Lasso signed the dedication of his Lagrime di San Pietro - an expansive cycle of seven-voice penitential madrigale spirituali, setting vernacular poetry on the theme of Peter’s threefold denial of Christ - to Pope Clement VIII. »
23 May 2019
Stockhausen was one of the most visionary of composers, and no more so than in his Licht operas, but what you see can often get in the way of what you hear. I’ve often found fully staged productions of his operas a distraction to the major revelation in them - notably the sonorities he explores, of the blossoming, almost magical acoustical chrysalis, between voices and instruments. »
22 May 2019
Is Umberto’s Giordano’s Andrea Chenier a verismo opera? Certainly, he is often grouped with Mascagni, Cilea, Leoncavallo and Puccini as a representative of this ‘school’. And, the composer described his 1876 opera as a dramma de ambiente storico. »
21 May 2019
Oratorio? Opera? Cantata? A debate about the genre to which Berlioz’s ‘dramatic legend’, La damnation de Faust, should be assigned could never be ‘resolved’. »
20 May 2019
Why did Jean Sibelius suppress Kullervo (Op. 7, 1892)? There are many theories why he didn’t allow it to be heard after its initial performances, though he referred to it fondly in private. This new recording, from Hyperion with Thomas Dausgaard conducting the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, soloists Helena Juntunen and Benjamin Appl and the Lund Male Chorus, is a good new addition to the ever-growing awareness of Kullervo, on recording and in live performance. »
20 May 2019
“Oh! I do like to be beside the seaside!
I do like to be beside the sea!”
And, it was off to the Victorian seaside that we went for Hampstead Garden Opera’s production of Handel’s Partenope - not so much for a stroll along the prom, rather for boisterous battles on the beach and skirmishes by the shore. »
19 May 2019
A song of love and death, loss and renewal. Opera was born from the ambition of Renaissance humanists to recreate the oratorical and cathartic power of Greek tragedy, so it is no surprise that Greek myths have captivated composers of opera, past and present, offering as they do an opportunity to engage with the essential human questions in contexts removed from both the sacred and the mundane. »
15 May 2019
Is it in any sense aspirational to imitate - or even to try to create something original - based on one of Stockhausen’s works? This was a question I tried to grapple with at the world premiere of Actress x Stockhausen Sin {x} II. »
12 May 2019
The biblical account of the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt is the defining event of Jewish history. By contrast, Handel’s oratorio Israel in Egypt has struggled to find its ‘identity’, hampered as it is by what might be termed the ‘Part 1 conundrum’, and the oratorio has not - despite its repute and the scholarly respect bestowed upon it - consistently or fully satisfied audiences, historic or modern. »
12 May 2019
A rather charming story recently appeared in the USA of a nine-year old boy who, at a concert given by Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society, let out a very audible “wow” at the end of Mozart’s Masonic Funeral Music. I mention this only because music – whether you are neurotypical or not – leads to people, of any age, expressing themselves in concerts relative to the extraordinary power of the music they hear. Measha Brueggergosman’s recital very much had the “wow” factor, and on many distinct levels. »
09 May 2019
The quincentennial of the death Leonardo da Vinci is one of the major events this year – though it doesn’t noticeably seem to be acknowledged in new music being written for this. »
07 May 2019
Not the familiar version of Mahler's Symphony no 1, but the “real” Mahler Titan at last, as it might have sounded in Mahler's time! François-Xavier Roth and Les Siècles present the symphony in its second version, based on the Hamburg/Weimar performances of 1893-94. This score is edited by Reinhold Kubik and Stephen E.Hefling for Universal Edition AG. Wien. »
06 May 2019
In 1982, while studying in Germany, I had the good fortune to see Aribert Reimann’s opera Lear sung in München by the original cast, which included Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Júlia Várady and Helga Dernesch. A few years later, I heard it again in San Francisco, with Thomas Stewart in the title role. Despite the luxury casting, the harshly atonal music—filled with quarter-tones, long note rows, and thick chords—utterly baffled my twenty-something self. »
05 May 2019
It was high time the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra programmed Hector Berlioz’s Grande Messe des morts. They hadn’t performed it since 1989, and what better year to take it up again than in 2019, the 150th anniversary of Berlioz’s death? »
02 May 2019
I was very much looking forward to this concert at Temple Church, curated by bass Matthew Rose and designed to celebrate music for voice commissioned by the Michael Cuddigan Trust, not least because it offered the opportunity to listen again to compositions heard recently - some for the first time - in different settings, and to experience works discussed coming to fruition in performance. »
01 May 2019
There seems little to connect the aesthetics of French neoclassical theatre of the late-seventeenth century and English oratorio of the early-eighteenth. But, in the early 1730s Handel produced several compositions based on Racine’s plays, chief among them his Israelite-oratorios, Esther (1732) and Athalia (1733). »
30 Apr 2019
It has often been the case that the destruction wrought by wars, especially the Second World War, has been treated unevenly by composers. Theodor Adorno’s often quoted remark, from his essay Prisms, that “to write poetry after Auschwitz would be barbaric” - if widely misinterpreted - is limited by its scope and in a somewhat profound way composers have looked on the events of World War II in the same way. »
29 Apr 2019
Although this concert was devoted to a single composer, Ravel, I was initially a little surprised by how it had been programmed. Thematically, all the works had the essence of Spain running through them - but chronologically they didn’t logically follow on from each other. »
29 Apr 2019
Renaissance patronage was a phenomenon at once cultural, social, political and economic. Wealthy women played an important part in court culture and in religious and secular life. In particular, music, musical performances and publications offered a female ruler or aristocrat an important means of ‘self-fashioning’. Moreover, such women could exercise significant influence on the shaping of vernacular taste. »
28 Apr 2019
Leonel Power, Bittering, Roy Henry [‘Henry Roi’?], John Pyamour, John Plummer, John Trouluffe, Walter Lambe: such names are not likely to be well-known to audiences but alongside the more familiar John Dunstaple, they were members of the generation of Englishmen during the Middle Ages whose compositions were greatly admired by their fellow musicians on the continent. »
27 Apr 2019
Manitoba Opera capped its season on a high note with its latest production
of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, sung in the key of
goofiness that has inspired even a certain “pesky wabbit,”
a.k.a. Bugs Bunny’s The Rabbit of Seville. »
26 Apr 2019
From Leonardo vs. Michelangelo to Picasso vs. Matisse; from Mozart vs. Salieri to Reich v. Glass: whether it’s Maria Callas vs. Renata Tebaldi or Herbert von Karajan vs. Wilhelm Furtwängler, the history of culture is also a history of rivalries nurtured and reputations derided - more often by coteries and aficionados than by the artists themselves. »
26 Apr 2019
“Billy always attracted me, of course, the radiant young figure; I felt there was going to be quite an opportunity for writing nice dark music for Claggart; but I must admit that Vere, who has what seems to me the main moral problem of the whole work, round [him] the drama was going to centre.” »
24 Apr 2019
It is hard to imagine a more beautifully sung Cio-Cio-San than Elena Stikhina’s. »
21 Apr 2019
Kurt Weill’s “American opera,” Street Scene debuted this past weekend in the Kay Theatre at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, with a diverse young cast comprised of students and alumni of the Maryland Opera Studio (MOS). »
20 Apr 2019
Perhaps it is too fanciful to suggest that the German poet Barthold Heinrich Brockes (1680-1747) was the Metastasio of Hamburg? »
17 Apr 2019
I was decidedly not the only one who thought I was witnessing the birth of a new star, as cover artist Janet Todd stepped in to make a triumphant appearance in the title role of Pacific Opera Project’s absorbing Madama Butterfly. »
17 Apr 2019
This past weekend, the Maryland Opera Studio (MOS) presented a double-billed performance of two of Kurt Weill’s less familiar staged works: Zaubernacht (1922) and Mahagonny-Songspiel (1927). »
16 Apr 2019
The Nash Ensemble’s annual contemporary music showcase focused on the work of Sir Harrison Birtwistle, a composer with whom the group has enjoyed a long and close association. Three of the six works by Birtwistle performed here were commissioned by the Nash Ensemble, as was Elliott Carter’s Mosaic which, alongside Oliver Knussen’s Study for ‘Metamorphosis’ for solo bassoon, completed a programme was intimate and intricate, somehow both elusive in spirit and richly communicative. »
14 Apr 2019
To lose one Marguerite may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness. But, with the ROH Gounod’s Faust seemingly heading for ruin, salvation came in the form of an eleventh-hour arrival of a redeeming ‘angel’. »
06 Apr 2019
It’s good to aim high … but be careful what you wish for. Clichéd idioms perhaps, but also wise words which Semele would have been wise to heed. »
06 Apr 2019
In 1726 on 25 August, Jacques-Vincent Languet, Comte de Gergy, the new French ambassador to the Venetian Republic held a celebration for the name day of King Louis XV of France. There was a new piece of music performed in the loggia at the foot of Languet's garden with an audience of diplomats and, watching from gondolas, Venetian nobles. »
06 Apr 2019
An interesting and thoughtfully-composed programme this, presented at Wigmore Hall by bass Matthew Rose and pianist Tom Poster, and one in which music for solo piano ensured that the diverse programme cohered. »
05 Apr 2019
To the Wigmore Hall for an evening of magnificently old-school vocal performance from Ekaterina Semenchuk. It was very much her evening, rather than that of her pianist, Semyon Skigin, though he had his moments, especially earlier on. »
05 Apr 2019
Caravaggio’s depiction (1598-99) of the climactic moment when the young, beautiful, physically weak Judith seizes the head of Holofernes by the enemy general’s hair and, flinching with distaste, cleaves the neck of the occupying Assyrian with his own sword, evokes Holofernes’ terror with visceral precision - eyes and screaming mouth are wide open - and is shockingly theatrical, the starkly lit figures embraced by blackness. »
03 Apr 2019
Say "La Pietà" and you think immediately of Michelangelo’s Rome Pietà. Just now Roman Oscar-winning film composer Nicola Piovani has asked us to contemplate two additional Pietà’s in Rome, a mother whose son is dead by overdose, and a mother whose son starved to death. »
02 Apr 2019
New from Harmonia Mundi, Matthias Goerne and Lief Ove Andsnes: Robert Schumann – Liederkreis, op 24 and Kernerlieder. Goerne and Andsnes have a partnership based on many years of working together, which makes this new release, originally recorded in late 2018, well worth hearing. »
02 Apr 2019
No wrecked motorcycle (director Harry Kupfer’s 1987 Berlin Orfeo), no wrecked Citroen and black hearse (David Alagna’s 2008 Montpellier Orfée [yes! tenorissimo Roberto Alagna was the Orfée]), no famed ballet company (the Joffrey Ballet) starring in L.A. Opera’s 2018 Orpheus and Eurydice). »
01 Apr 2019
Jack the Ripper is as luridly fascinating today as he was over a century ago, so it was no doubt sensationalist of the marketing department of English National Opera to put the Victorian serial killer’s name first and the true subject of Iain Bell’s new opera - his victims, the women of Whitechapel - as something of an after-thought. Font size matters, especially if it’s to sell tickets. »
01 Apr 2019
The 1917 Met Tosca production hung around for 50 years, bested by the 1925 San Francisco Opera production that lived to the ripe old age of 92. The current Met production is just 2 years old but has the feel of something that can live forever. »
31 Mar 2019
A war ‘between love and politics’: so librettist Antonio Salvi summarised the conflict at the heart of Handel’s 1737 opera, Berenice. Well, we’ve had a surfeit of warring politics of late, but there’s been little love lost between opposing factions, and the laughs that director Adele Thomas and her team supply in this satirical and spicy production at the ROH’s stunningly re-designed Linbury Theatre have been in severely short supply. »
28 Mar 2019
A strange concert, this, in that, although chorally conceived, it proved strongest in the performance of Schumann’s Piano Concerto: not so much a comment on the choral singing as on the conducting of Dan Ludford-Thomas. »
27 Mar 2019
It was the final performance of the premiere season of Darko Tresnjak’s production of Camille Saint-Saëns' Samson et Dalila. Four tenors later. »
27 Mar 2019
Dido and Aeneas, Il ritorno d’Ulisse and Tchaikowsky’s L’Enchantresse, the three operas of the Opéra de Lyon’s annual late March festival all tease destiny. But far more striking than the thematic relationship that motivates this 2019 festival is the derivation of these three productions from the world of hyper-refined theater, far flung hyper-refined theater.
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26 Mar 2019
Every man ‘who burns with a thirst for knowledge and life and with curiosity about the nature of good and evil is Faust ... [everyone] who aspires to the Unknown, to the Ideal, is Faust’. »
24 Mar 2019
Prima la music, poi la parole? It’s the perennial operatic conundrum which has exercised composers from Monteverdi, to Salieri, to Strauss. But, on this occasion we were reminded that sometimes the answer is a simple one: Non, prima le voci! »
21 Mar 2019
I first heard Barbara Hannigan in 2008. »
21 Mar 2019
‘Once upon a time …’ So fairy-tales begin, although often they don’t conclude with a ‘happy ever after’. Certainly, both Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta and Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges, paired in this Royal Academy Opera double bill, might be said to present transformations from innocence and ignorance to experience and knowledge, but there is little that is saccharine about their protagonists’ journeys from darkness to enlightenment. »
17 Mar 2019
‘Britannia waives the rules: The EU Brexit in quotes’. Such was the headline of a BBC News feature on 28th June 2016. And, nearly three years later, those who watch the runaway Brexit-train hurtle ever nearer to the edge of Dover’s white cliffs might be tempted by the thought of leaving this sceptred (sceptic?) isle, for a life overseas. »
14 Mar 2019
Opened as recently as 1997, the Opera House of the New National Theatre Tokyo (NNTT) is one of the newest such venues among the world’s great capitals, but, with ten productions of opera a year, ranging from baroque to contemporary, this publicly-owned and run theatre seems determined to make an international impact. »
12 Mar 2019
It is a “a musicstallation-theater with video” that had its world premiere at the Mannheim Opera in 2012, revived just now in a new version by Vienna’s ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wein for one performance at the Vienna Konzerthaus and one performance in Hamburg’s magnificent Elbphilharmonie (above). Olga Neuwirth’s The Outcast and this rich city are imperfect bedfellows! »
11 Mar 2019
Although Birgit Nilsson, one of the great Isolde’s, wrote with evident fondness – and some wit – of Leonard Bernstein in her autobiography – “unfortunately, he burned the candles at both ends” – their paths rarely crossed musically. There’s a live Fidelio from March 1970, done in Italy, but almost nothing else is preserved on disc. »
10 Mar 2019
Promises made to placate a foe in the face of imminent crisis are not always the most well-considered and have a way of coming back to bite one - as our current Prime Minister is finding to her cost. »
09 Mar 2019
To remind you that Wagner’s Dutchman had its premiere in Dresden’s Altes Hoftheater in 1843 and his Tannhauser premiered in this same theater in 1845 (not to forget that Rienzi premiered in this Saxon court theater in 1842). »
08 Mar 2019
A perfect blue sky dotted with perfect white clouds. Identikit men in bowler hats clutching orange umbrellas. Floating cyclists. Ferocious crustaceans. »
07 Mar 2019
This was an oddly fascinating concert - though, I’m afraid, for quite the wrong reasons (though this depends on your point of view). As a vehicle for the sound, and playing, of the London Symphony Orchestra it was a notable triumph - they were not so much luxurious - rather a hedonistic and decadent delight; but as a study into three composers, who wrote so convincingly for opera, and taken somewhat out of their comfort zone, it was not a resounding success. »
07 Mar 2019
David Pountney and his design team - Raimund Bauer (sets), Marie-Jeanne Lecca (costumes), Fabrice Kebour (lighting) - have clearly ‘had a ball’ in mounting this Un ballo in maschera, the second part of WNO’s Verdi trilogy and which forms part of a spring season focusing on what Pountney describes as the “profound and mysterious issue of Monarchy”. »
06 Mar 2019
Pacific Opera Project’s rollicking new take on The Magic Flute is as much endearing fun as a box full of puppies. »
06 Mar 2019
I couldn’t help wondering; would a chamber concert of vocal music by female composers of the 17th century be able sustain our concentration for 90 minutes? Wouldn’t most of us be feeling more dutiful than exhilarated by the end? »
06 Mar 2019
This week, the Wigmore Hall presents two concerts from George Benjamin and Frankfurt’s Ensemble Modern, the first ‘at home’ on Wigmore Street, the second moving north to Camden’s Roundhouse. For the first, we heard Benjamin’s now classic first opera, Into the Little Hill, prefaced by three ensemble works by Cathy Milliken, Christian Mason, and, for the evening’s spot of ‘early music’, Luigi Dallapiccola. »
06 Mar 2019
It was once said of Cathy Berberian, the muse for whom Luciano Berio wrote his Folk Songs, that her voice had such range she could sing the roles of both Tristan and Isolde. Much less flatteringly, was my music teacher’s description of her sound as akin to a “chisel being scraped over sandpaper”. »
05 Mar 2019
What was it with Italian bel canto and the Elizabethan age? The era’s beautiful, doomed queens and swash-buckling courtiers seem to have held a strange fascination for nineteenth-century Italians. »
04 Mar 2019
Micha Hamel’s new opera, Caruso a Cuba, is constantly on the move. The chameleonic score takes on a myriad flavours, all with a strong sense of mood or place. »
03 Mar 2019
Ernst Krenek’s Karl V op 73 at the Bayerisches Staatsoper, with Bo Skovhus, conducted by Erik Nielsen, in a performance that reveals the genius of Krenek’s masterpiece. Contemporary with Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten, Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron, Berg’s Lulu, and Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler, Krenek’s Karl V is a metaphysical drama, exploring psychological territory with the possibilities opened by new musical form. »
03 Mar 2019
A small, formerly great, kingdom, is on the verge of bankruptcy and desperate to prevent its ‘assets’ from slipping into foreign hands. Sexual and political intrigues are bluntly exposed. The princes and patriarchs are under threat from both the ‘paupers’ and the ‘princesses’, and the two dangers merge in the glamorous figure of the irresistibly wealthy Pontevedrin beauty, Hanna Glawari, a working-class girl who’s married up and made good. »
27 Feb 2019
Così fan tutte is, primarily, an ensemble opera and it sinks or swims on the strength of its sextet of singers - and this performance very much swam. In a sense, this is just as well because Jan Phillip Gloger’s staging (revived here by Julia Burbach) is in turns messy, chaotic and often confusing. The tragedy of this Così is that it’s high art clashing with Broadway; a theatre within an opera and a deceit wrapped in a conundrum. »
27 Feb 2019
The Royal Opera House’s choice of work for the first new production in the splendidly redesigned Linbury Theatre - not unreasonably, it seems to have lost ‘Studio’ from its name - is, perhaps, a declaration of intent; it may certainly be received as such. Not only is it a new work; it is billed specifically as ‘our first opera for teenage audiences’. »
26 Feb 2019
From the first moments of the recent revival of Sir David McVicar’s production of Elektra by Richard Strauss at Lyric Opera of Chicago the audience is caught in the grip of a rich music-drama, the intensity of which is not resolved, appropriately, until the final, symmetrical chords. »
23 Feb 2019
This was an engaging concert of madrigals and dramatic pieces from (largely) Claudio Monteverdi’s Venetian years, a time during which his quest to find the ‘natural way of imitation’ - musical embodiment of textual form, meaning and affect - took the form not primarily of solo declamation but of varied vocal ensembles of two or more voices with rich instrumental accompaniments. »
20 Feb 2019
The quick rise to prominence and thin catalog of recordings by Russian conductor Kirill Petrenko, outgoing General Music Director of the Bayerische Staatsoper and incoming chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, renders each of his forays into the classic repertoire significant. Last Sunday morning, the Bayerisches Staatsorchester gave the first of three performances of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis under his direction. »
19 Feb 2019
After D’Oustrac’s striking success as Cassandre in Berlioz Les Troyens, this will reach audiences less familiar with her core repertoire in the baroque and grand opéra. Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été and La mort d’Ophélie, Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder and the Lieder of Franz Liszt are very well known, but the finesse of D’Oustrac’s timbre lends a lucid gloss which makes them feel fresh and pure. »
19 Feb 2019
We sat, bewildered, all of us, watching (enduring) Gounod’s sweet little tear jerker as a nasty drug trip. Except for the Australian Marguerite it was an all French cast and they all gamely played along, the sophisticated verse of Offenbach’s librettists Jules Barbier and Michel Carré clearly sailing out over an abrasive pit. »
18 Feb 2019
Hector Berlioz’s Les Troyens with Philippe Jordan conducting the Opéra National de Paris. Since Les Troyens headlined the inauguration of Opéra Bastille 30 years ago, we might have expected something special of this new production. It should have been a triumph, with such a good conductor and some of the best singers in the business. But it wasn't. »
18 Feb 2019
Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No.3 with François-Xavier Roth and the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, now at last on CD, released by Harmonia Mundi, after the highly acclaimed live performance streamed a few months ago. »
18 Feb 2019
A weekend commemorating the 150th anniversary of the death of Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) entitled Berlioz: The Ultimate Romantic was launched in style from Cardiff’s Hoddinott Hall with a magnificent account of L’enfance du Christ (Childhood of Christ). The emotional impact of this ‘sacred trilogy’ seemed to gain further weight for its performance midway between Christmas and Easter, neatly encapsulating Christ’s journey from birth to death. »
17 Feb 2019
In contrast to the ‘single-shaming’ advertisement - “To the 12,750 people who ordered a single takeaway on Valentine’s Day. You ok, hun?” - for which the financial services company, Revolut, were taken to task, this Temple Music recital programme on 14th February put the emphasis firmly on partnerships: intimate, impassioned and impetuous. »
13 Feb 2019
There is a famous story that when Philip Glass first met Nadia Boulanger she pointed to a single bar of one of his early pieces and said: “There, that was written by a real composer”. Glass recalls that it was the only positive thing she ever said about him »
10 Feb 2019
Cardboard buds flaming into magic orchids. The frenzied whizz of a Catherine Wheel as it pushes forth its fiery petals. A harvest sky threshed and glittering with golden grain. »
06 Feb 2019
This famed murderess worked her magic on Toulouse’s Théâtre du Capitole stage, six dead including her beloved long lost son. It was Victor Hugo’s carefully crafted 1833 thriller recrafted by Italian librettist Felice Romano that became Donizetti’s fragile Lucrezia Borgia.
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05 Feb 2019
How important is ‘context’, in opera? Or, ‘symbol’? How does one balance the realism of a broad social milieu with the expressionistic intensity of an individual’s psychological torment and fracture? »
01 Feb 2019
The Cardinall’s Musick invited us for a second time to join them in ‘the company of heaven’ at Wigmore Hall, in a recital that was framed by musical devotions to St Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary. »
30 Jan 2019
Listening to these two concerts - largely devoted to the music of Richard Strauss, and given by the soprano Diana Damrau, and the superlative Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in the second - I was reminded of Wilhelm Furtwängler’s observation that German music would be unthinkable without him. »
27 Jan 2019
The obsessive Russian Dostoevsky’s novel cruelly objectified into music by Czech composer Leos Janacek brutalized into action by Polish director Krzysztof Warlikowski beatified by Argentine conductor Alejo Pérez. »
26 Jan 2019
The composer Benjamin Godard (1849–95) is today largely unknown to most music lovers. Specialist collectors, though, have been enjoying his songs (described as “imaginative and delightful” by Robert Moore in American Record Guide), his Concerto Romantique for violin (either in its entirety or just the dancelike Canzonetta, which David Oistrakh recorded winningly decades ago), and some substantial chamber and orchestral works that have received first recordings in recent years. »
24 Jan 2019
There was a full house at St John’s Smith Square for La Nuova Musica’s presentation of Handel’s Alcina. »
23 Jan 2019
Perhaps it was the ‘Blue Monday’ effect, but the first Act of this revival of Richard Eyre’s 1994 production of La Traviata seemed strangely ‘consumptive’, its energy dissipating, its ‘breathing’ rather laboured. »
21 Jan 2019
“Why should I spend good money on tables when I have men standing idle?” asks a Regency country squire in the British sitcom Blackadder the Third. The Marquise de Merteuil in OPERA2DAY’s Dangerous Liaisons would agree with him. Her servants support her dinner table, groaning with gateaux, on their backs. »
20 Jan 2019
Max Bruch Die Loreley recorded live in the Prinzregenstheater, Munich, in 2014, broadcast by BR Klassik and now released in a 3-CD set by CPO. Stefan Blunier conducts the Münchner Rundfunkorchester with Michaela Kaune, Magdalena Hinterdobler, Thomas Mohr and Jan-Hendrick Rootering heading the cast, with the Prager Philharmonischer Chor.. »
18 Jan 2019
Thanks to the phenomenon of international co-productions, Dutch National Opera’s first-ever Porgy and Bess is an energizing, heart-stirring show with a wow-factor cast. Last year in London, co-producer English National Opera hosted it to glowing reviews. Its third parent, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, will present it at a later date. In the meantime, in Amsterdam the singers are the crowing glory in George Gershwin’s 1935 masterpiece. »
15 Jan 2019
After a series of productions somehow skewed, perverse, and/or pallid, the first Seattle Opera production of the new year comes like a powerful gust of invigorating fresh air: a show squarely, single-mindedly focused on presenting the work of art at hand as vividly and idiomatically as possible. »
14 Jan 2019
‘I pitied Hermann so much that I suddenly began weeping copiously … [it] turned into a mild fit of hysteria of the most pleasant kind.’ »
12 Jan 2019
‘Playing music is for a woman a vain and frivolous thing. And I would wish you to be the most serious and chaste woman alive. Beyond this, if you do not play well your playing will give you little pleasure and not a little embarrassment. … Therefore, set aside thoughts of this frivolity and work to be humble and good and wise and obedient. Don’t let yourself be carried away by these desires, indeed resist them with a strong will.’ »
11 Jan 2019
Gottfried von Einem was one of the most prominent Austrian composers in the 1950s–70s, actively producing operas, ballets, orchestral, chamber, choral works, and song cycles. »
08 Jan 2019
Benjamin Britten Choral Songs from RIAS Kammerchor, from Harmonia mundi, in their first recording with new Chief Conductor Justin Doyle, featuring the Hymn to St. Cecilia, A Hymn to the Virgin, the Choral Dances from Gloriana, the Five Flower Songs op 47 and Ad majorem Dei gloriam op 17. »
08 Jan 2019
"Si vous vouliez un jour..." Volume 2 of the series Airs Sérieux et à boire, with Sir William Christie and Les Arts Florissants, from Harmonia Mundi, following on from the highly acclaimed "Bien que l'amour" Volume 1. Recorded live at the Philharmonie de Paris in April 2016, this new release is as vivacious and enchanting as the first. »
07 Jan 2019
“Who are you? And what are you doing in my bedroom?” »
07 Jan 2019
This programme of seventeenth-century duets, odes and instrumental works was meticulously and finely delivered by countertenors Iestyn Davies and James Hall, with The King’s Consort, but despite the beauty of the singing and the sensitivity of the playing, somehow it didn’t quite prove as affecting as I had anticipated. »
24 Dec 2018
My last visit of the year to Wigmore Hall also proved to be one of the best of 2018. American soprano Brenda Rae has been lauded for her superb performances in the lyric coloratura repertory, in the US and in Europe, and her interpretation of the title role in ENO’s 2016 production of Berg’s Lulu had the UK critics reaching for their superlatives. »
23 Dec 2018
Pacific Opera Project is in its fourth annual, sold out run of Puccini’s La bohème: AKA 'The Hipsters', and it may seem at first blush that nothing succeeds like success. »
19 Dec 2018
L’Enfance du Christ is not an Advent work, but since most of this country’s musical institutions shut down over Christmas, Advent is probably the only chance we shall have to hear it - and even then, only on occasion. But then Messiah is a Lenten work, and yet … »
18 Dec 2018
The initial appeal of this festive programme by the chamber choir, Sonoro, was the array of unfamiliar names nestled alongside titles of familiar favourites from the carol repertoire. »
17 Dec 2018
Both Venus and the hearth-fire were blazing at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance during this staging of Thea Musgrave’s 1979 opera, A Christmas Carol, an adaptation by the composer of Charles Dickens’ novel of greed, love and redemption. »
16 Dec 2018
This concert of Christmas music at St John’s Smith Square confirmed that not only are the Gesualdo Six and their director Owain Park fine and thoughtful musicians, but that they can skilfully shape a musical narrative. »
14 Dec 2018
Hodie Christus natus est. Today, Christ is born! A miracle: and one which has inspired many a composer to produce their own musical ‘miracle’: choral exultation which seems, like Christ himself, to be a gift to mankind, straight from the divine. »
14 Dec 2018
Fairy-tales work on multiple levels, they tell delightful yet moral stories, but they also enable us to examine deeper issues. With its approachably singable melodies, Engelbert Humperdinck's Märchenoper Hänsel und Gretel functions in a similar way; you can take away the simple delight of the score, but Humperdinck's discreetly Wagnerian treatment of his musical material allows for a variety of more complex interpretations. »
11 Dec 2018
World premiere recording from Supraphon of Bohuslav Martinů What Men Live By (H336,1952-3) with Jiří Bělohlávek and the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra from a live performances in 2014, with Martinů's Symphony no 1 (H289, 1942) recorded in 2016. Bělohlávek did much to increase Martinů's profile, so this recording adds to the legacy, and reveals an extremely fine work. »
11 Dec 2018
Hector Berlioz Harold en Italie with François-Xavier Roth and Les Siècles with Tabea Zimmermann, plus Stéphane Degout in Les Nuits d’été from Hamonia Mundi. This Harold en Italie, op. 16, H 68 (1834) captures the essence of Romantic yearning, expressed in Byron's Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage where the hero rejects convention to seek his destiny in uncharted territory. »
11 Dec 2018
It so rarely happens that the final concert you are due to review of any year ends up being one of the finest of all. Santtu-Matias Rouvali’s all Richard Strauss programme with the Philharmonia Orchestra, however, was often quite remarkable - one might quibble that parts of it were somewhat controversial, and that he even lived a little dangerously, but the impact was never less than imaginative and vivid. This was a distinctly young man’s view of Strauss - and all the better for that. »
09 Dec 2018
Were there any justice in this fallen world, serial Stravinsky – not to mention Webern – would be played on every street corner, or at least in every concert hall. Come the revolution, perhaps. »
09 Dec 2018
Belgian soprano Sophie Karthaüser’s latest song recital is all about the animal kingdom. As in previous recordings of songs by Wolf, Debussy and Poulenc, pianist Eugene Asti is her accompanist in Le Bal des Animaux, a delightful collection of French songs about creatures of all sizes, from flea to elephant and from crayfish to dolphin. »
06 Dec 2018
During the past four years, there have been many musical and artistic centenary commemorations of the terrible human tragedies, inhumanities and utter madness of the First World War, but there can have been few that have evoked the turbulence and trauma of war - both past and present, in the abstract and in the particular - with such terrifying emotional intensity as this recital by Ian Bostridge and Antonio Pappano at the Barbican Hall. »
04 Dec 2018
Charles Gounod famously said that if you took the Spanish airs out of Carmen “there remains nothing to Bizet’s credit but the sauce that masks the fish”. »
02 Dec 2018
The first performance of Charles Villiers Stanford’s ninth and final opera The Travelling Companion was given by an enthusiastic troupe of Liverpudlian amateurs at the David Lewis Theatre - Liverpool’s ‘Old Vic’ - in April 1925, nine years after it was completed, eight after it won a Carnegie Award, and one year after the composer’s death. »
02 Dec 2018
The songs of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov lie at the heart of the Romantic Russian art song repertoire, but in this duo recital at Wigmore Hall it was the songs of Nikolay Medtner - three of which were framed by sequences by the great Russian masters - which proved most compelling and intriguing. »
01 Dec 2018
The world premiere recording of Wolfgang Rihm's Requiem-Strophen (2015/2016) with Mariss Jansons conducting the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and the Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks with Mojca Erdmann, Anna Prohaska and Hanno Müller-Brachmann, from BR Klassik NEOS. »
01 Dec 2018
Manitoba Opera turned the art of seduction into bloodsport with its 2018/19 season-opener of Mozart’s dramma giocoso, Don Giovanni often walking a razor’s edge between hilarious social commentary and chilling battles for the soul. »
29 Nov 2018
And still they come. No year goes by without multiple opportunities to see it; few years now go by without my taking at least one of those opportunities. Indeed, I see that I shall now have gone to Jonathan Miller’s staging on three of its five (!) outings since it was first seen at ENO in 2009. »
29 Nov 2018
The capital’s music conservatoires frequently present not only some of the best opera in London, but also some of the most interesting, and unusual, as the postgraduate students begin to build their careers by venturing across diverse operatic ground. »
25 Nov 2018
In this contribution to Kings Place’s 2018 Time Unwrapped series, ‘co-curators’ composer Nico Muhly and countertenor Iestyn Davies explored the relationship between time past and time present, and between stillness and motion. »
24 Nov 2018
Once upon a time, Rossini’s La Cenerentola was the Cinderella among his operatic oeuvre. »
23 Nov 2018
It was 1946 when George Bailey of Bedford Falls, NY nearly sold himself to the devil for $20,000. It is 2018 in San Francisco where an annual income of ten times that amount raises you slightly above poverty level, and you’ve paid $310 for your orchestra seat to Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s It’s a Wonderful Life.
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23 Nov 2018
A minor miracle occurred as Des Moines Metro Opera converted a large hall on a Reserve Army Base to a wholly successful theatrical venue, and delivered a stunning rendition of Tom Cipullo’s compelling military-themed one act opera, Glory Denied. »
22 Nov 2018
David McVicar’s La traviata for Welsh National Opera - first seen at Scottish Opera in 2008 and adopted by WNO in 2009 - wears its heavy-black mourning garb stylishly. »
22 Nov 2018
SOMM Recordings Hubert Parry Twelve Sets of English Lyrics vol III with Sarah Fox, Roderick Williams and Andrew West, brings to a conclusion what has been a landmark series, demonstrating how Parry established English Song as a distinct art form, different from German Lieder and from French Mélodie, and indeed from other Victorian song. »
22 Nov 2018
This is the fifth CD in a series devoted to Ravel’s orchestral works. »
22 Nov 2018
This recording of Ravel’s second (and last) one-act opera was made during a concert, and -somewhat daringly - with rather close microphone placement. As it turns out, everything went smoothly. »
21 Nov 2018
In this BBC Radio 3 lunchtime concert at the Wigmore Hall, soprano Roberta Invernizzi presented Italian songs from the first half of seventeenth-century, exploring love and loyalty, loss and lies, and demonstrating consummate declamatory mastery. »
19 Nov 2018
“The best music to listen to in a great Gothic church is the polyphony which was written for it, and was calculated for its resonance: this was my approach in the War Requiem - I calculated it for a big, reverberant acoustic and that is where it sounds best.” »
18 Nov 2018
Halévy’s La reine de Chypre (The Queen of Cyprus) is the 17th opera to be released in the impressively prolific “French Opera” series of recordings produced by the Center for French Romantic Music, a scholarly organization located at the Palazzetto Bru Zane in Venice. (Other recent offerings have included Saint-Saëns’s richly characterized Proserpine, Benjamin Godard’s fascinating Dante--which contains scenes set in Heaven and Hell--and Hérold’s Le pré aux clercs, an opéra-comique that had a particularly long life in the international operatic repertoire.) »
17 Nov 2018
Despite the flaming torches of the plebeian plotters which, in the Prologue, etched chiaroscuro omens within the Palladian porticos of Michael Yeargan’s imposing and impressive set, this was a rather slow-burn revival of Elijah Moshinsky’s 1991 production of Simon Boccanegra. »
16 Nov 2018
Self-adoring ‘celebrities’ beware. That smart-phone which feeds your narcissism might just prove your nemesis. »
13 Nov 2018
Although this concert was ostensibly, and in some respects a little tenuously, linked to the centenary of the Armistice, it did create some challenging assumptions about the nature of war. It was certainly the case in Magnus Lindberg’s new work, Triumf att finnas till… (‘Triumph to Exist…’) that he felt able to dislocate from the horror of the trenches and slaughter by using a text by the wartime poet Edith Södergran which gravitates towards a more sympathetic, even revisionist, expectation of this period. »
12 Nov 2018
For the second of my armistice anniversary concerts, I moved across town from the Royal Festival Hall to the Barbican. »
11 Nov 2018
‘Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.’ The words of George Orwell, expressed in a Tribune article, ‘The Sporting Spirit’, published in 1945. »
11 Nov 2018
The Barbican Centre’s For the Fallen commemorations continued with this varied and thought-provoking programme, The Last Letter, which interweaved vocal and instrumental music with poems and prose, and focused on relationships - between husband and wife, fellow soldiers, young men and their homelands - disrupted by war. »
10 Nov 2018
Fiona Shaw’s new production of Massenet’s Cendrillon (1899) for this year’s Glyndebourne Tour makes one feel that the annual Christmas treat at the ballet or the panto has come one month early. »
07 Nov 2018
Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress is not, in many ways, a progressive opera; it doesn’t seek to radicalise, or even transform, opera and yet it is indisputably one of the great twentieth-century operas. »
07 Nov 2018
Gian Carlo Menotti’s much-loved Christmas opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors was commissioned in America by the National Broadcasting Company and was broadcast in 1951 - the first-ever opera composed specifically for television. Menotti said that it “is an opera for children because it tries to recapture my own childhood”. »
07 Nov 2018
Precisely where and when Così fan tutte takes place should be a matter of sublime indifference - or at least of individual taste. It is ‘about’ many things, but eighteenth-century Naples - should that actually be the less exotic yet still ‘othered’ neāpolis of Wiener Neustadt? - is not among them. »
06 Nov 2018
‘He has clothed his attitude in fine words: but he has taken the sentimental attitude.’ So, wrote fellow war poet Charles Hamilton Sorley of the last sonnets of Rupert Brooke. »
05 Nov 2018
‘Can engaging with contemporary social issues save the opera?’ asked M. Sophia Newman last week, on the website, News City, noting that many commentators believe that ‘public interest in stuffy, intimidating, expensive opera is inevitably dwindling’, and that ‘several recent opera productions suggest that interest in a new kind of urban, less formally-staged, socially-engaged opera is emerging and drawing in new audiences to the centuries-old art form’. »
01 Nov 2018
Johann Theile, Crato Bütner, Franz Tunder, Christian Ritter, Giovanni Felice Sances … such names do not loom large in the annals of musical historiography. But, these and other little-known seventeenth-century composers took their place alongside Bach and Biber, Schütz and Monteverdi during L’Arpeggiata’s most recent exploration of musical cross-influences and connections. »
28 Oct 2018
This recording on the Gimell label, the seventh of nine in a series by the Tallis Scholars which will document Josquin des Prés’ settings of the Mass (several of these and other settings are of disputed authorship), might be titled ‘Sacred and Profane’, or ‘Heaven and Earth’. »
28 Oct 2018
Can Piotr Beczała sing the pants off Jonas Kaufmann ? Beczała is a major celebrity who could fill a big house, like Kaufmann does, and at Kaufmann prices. Instead, Beczała and Helmut Deutsch reached out to that truly dedicated core audience that has made the reputation of the Wigmore Hall : an audience which takes music seriously enough to stretch themselves with an eclectic evening of Polish and Italian song. »
28 Oct 2018
“Let us not be ashamed to be carried away by the simple nobility and beauty of a lucid melody of Bellini. Let us not be ashamed to shed a tear of emotion as we hear it!” »
27 Oct 2018
Sadly, and worryingly, there are plenty of modern-day political leaders - both dictators and the democratically elected - whose petulance, stubbornness and egoism threaten the safety of their own subjects as well as the stability and security of other nations. »
26 Oct 2018
Who needs another Tosca? Seasoned opera buffs can be blasé about repertoire mainstays. But the Nederlandse Reisopera’s production currently touring the Netherlands is worth seeing, whether it is your first or your hundred-and-first acquaintance with Puccini’s political drama. The staging is refreshing and pacey. Musically, it has the four crucial ingredients: three accomplished leads and a conductor who swashbuckles through the score in a blaze of color. »
26 Oct 2018
The burden of the past, and the duty to ensure its survival in the present and future, exercise a violent grip on the male protagonists in David Alden’s production of Lucia di Lammermoor for English National Opera, with dangerous and disturbing consequences. »
25 Oct 2018
The full title of Verdi’s Messa da Requiem per l’anniversario della morte di Manzoni 22 maggio 1874 attests to its origins, but it was the death of Giacomo Rossini on 13th November 1868 that was the initial impetus for Verdi’s desire to compose a Requiem Mass which would honour Rossini, one of the figureheads of Italian cultural magnificence, in a national ceremony which - following the example of Cherubini’s C minor Requiem and Berlioz’s Grande messe des morts - was to be as much a public and political occasion as a religious one. »
24 Oct 2018
The 67th Wexford Opera Festival kicked off with three mighty whacks of a drum and rooster’s raucous squawk, heralding the murderous machinations of the drug-dealing degenerate, Cim-Fen, in Franco Leoni’s one-act blood-and-guts verismo melodrama, L’oracolo … alongside an announcement by the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Josepha Madigan, of an award of €1 million in capital funding for the National Opera House to support necessary updating and refurbishment works over the next 3 years. »
23 Oct 2018
Lyric Opera of Chicago opened its 2018-19 season with Giacomo Puccini’s La bohème. This new production, shared with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and with the Teatro Real, Madrid, features an accomplished cast and innovative scenic approaches. »
23 Oct 2018
From Decca, Janáček classics with Jiří Bělohlávek conducting the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. Given that Bělohlávek died in May 2017, all these recordings are relatively recent, not re-issues, and include performances of two new critical editions of the Glagolitic Mass and the Sinfonietta. »
18 Oct 2018
A great big guy in a great big fur coat falls in love with the photo of the worldly daughter of a compulsive gambler. A great big conductor promotes the maelstrom of great big music that shepherds all this to ecstatic conclusion. »
17 Oct 2018
The miasma of doom that pervades the air of the great house of Bly seems to seep slowly into the auditorium, dulling the senses, weighing down the mind. What evil lurks here? Can these people be saved? Do we care? »
17 Oct 2018
Hans Zender's Schuberts Winterreise is now established in the canon, but this recording with Julian Prégardien and the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie conducted by Robert Reimer is one of the most striking. Proof that new work, like good wine, needs to settle and mature to reveal its riches. »
16 Oct 2018
Ten years ago, I saw one of the first performances of Pascal Dusapin’s Passion at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence. Now, Music Theatre Wales and National Dance Company Wales give the opera its first United Kingdom production - in an English translation by Amanda Holden from the original Italian: the first time, I believe, that a Dusapin opera has been performed in translation. (I shall admit to a slight disappointment that it was not in Welsh: maybe next time.) »
13 Oct 2018
The story was bigger than its actors, the Tosca ritual was ignored. It wasn’t a Tosca for the ages though maybe it was (San Francisco’s previous Tosca production hung around for 95 years). P.S. It was an evening of powerful theater, and incidentally it was really good opera. »
12 Oct 2018
At the very least, that vehement, pacifist indictment against militarism, Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, should leave the audience shaking a little. This performance by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra only partially succeeded in doing so. The cast credits raised the highest expectations, but Gianandrea Noseda, stepping in for an ailing Mariss Jansons and conducting the RCO for the first time, did not bring out the full potential at his disposal. »
04 Oct 2018
In their typical non-emphatic way, the Tallis Scholars under Peter Phillips
presented here a selection of English sacred music from the Eton Choirbook
to Tallis. There was little to ruffle anyone’s feathers here, little
in the way of overt ‘interpretation’ – certainly in a
modern sense – but ample opportunity to appreciate the mastery on
offer in this music, its remoteness from many of our present concerns, and
some fine singing. »
04 Oct 2018
“Remember me, but ah! forget my fate.” Well, the spectral Queen of Carthage atop the poppy-strewn sarcophagus wasn’t quite yet “laid in earth”, but the act of remembering, and remembrance, duly began during the first part of this final instalment of the Academy of Ancient Music’s Purcell trilogy at the Barbican Hall. »
03 Oct 2018
Mozart Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) at La Monnaie /De Munt, Brussels, conducted by Antonello Manacorda, directed by Romeo Castellucci. Part allegory, part Singspeile, and very much a morality play, Die Zauberflöte is not conventional opera in the late 19th century style. Naturalist realism is not what it's meant to be. Cryptic is closer to what it might mean. »
02 Oct 2018
How do you begin to assess Covent Garden’s Siegfried? From a purely vocal point of view, this was a magnificent evening; it’s hard not to reach the conclusion that this was as fine a cast as you are likely to hear anywhere today. »
30 Sep 2018
The concept of the monologue in opera has existed since the birth of opera itself, but when we come to monodramas - with the exception of Rousseau’s Pygmalion (1762) - we are looking at something that originated at the beginning of the twentieth century. »
30 Sep 2018
Femme fatale, femme nouvelle, she-devil: the personification of patriarchal castration-anxiety and misogynistic terror of female desire. »
29 Sep 2018
Palestrina led from the front, literally and figuratively, in this performance at Wigmore Hall which placed devotion to the saints at its heart, with Saints Peter, Paul, Catherine of Alexandria, Bartholomew and the Virgin Mary all musically honoured by The Cardinall’s Musick and their director Andrew Carwood. »
28 Sep 2018
Opera’s triple crown, Donizetti’s tragic queens — Anna Bolena who was beheaded by her husband Henry VIII, their daughter Elizabeth I who beheaded her rival Mary, Queen of Scots and who executed her lover Roberto Devereux. »
27 Sep 2018
Opera Philadelphia is lightening up the fare at its annual festival with a three evening cabaret series in the Theatre of Living Arts, Queens of the Night.
»
27 Sep 2018
How to begin to quantify the wonderment stirred in my soul by Opera Philadelphia’s sensational achievement that is Glass Handel? »
26 Sep 2018
“It produces Effects not only very delightful, but to such as know the contrivance, very wonderful; so that Spectators, not well versed in Opticks, that could see the various Apparitions and Disappearances, the Motions, Changes and Actions, that may this way be presented, would readily believe them super-natural and miraculous.” »
26 Sep 2018
The September sunshine that warmed Wigmore Street during Monday’s lunch-hour created the perfect ambience for this thoughtfully compiled programme of seventeenth- and twentieth-century English song presented by soprano Lucy Crowe and pianist Joseph Middleton at Wigmore Hall. »
24 Sep 2018
Opera Philadelphia has mounted as gripping and musically ravishing an account of Lucia di Lammermoor as is imaginable. »
24 Sep 2018
In Opera Philadelphia’s re-imagined La voix humaine, diva Patricia Racette had a tough “act” to follow ... »
23 Sep 2018
Opera Philadelphia’s annual festival set the bar very high even by its own gold standard, with a troubling but mesmerizing world premiere, Sky on Wings. »
21 Sep 2018
From Hyperion, an excellent new Ralph Vaughan Williams A Sea Symphony with Martyn Brabbins conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Symphony Chorus, Elizabeth Llewellyn and Marcus Farnsworth soloists. This follows on from Brabbins’s highly acclaimed Vaughan Williams Symphony no 2 "London" in the rarely heard 1920 version. »
21 Sep 2018
Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra marked the opening of the 2018-2019 season with a blast. Literally, for Sir Harrison Birtwistle's new piece Donum Simoni MMXVIII was an explosion of brass — four trumpets, trombones, horns and tuba, bursting into the Barbican Hall. When Sir Harry makes a statement, he makes it big and bold ! »
20 Sep 2018
Opera San Jose kicked off its 35th anniversary season with a delectably effervescent production of their first-ever mounting of Mozart’s youthful opus, The Abduction from the Seraglio. »
20 Sep 2018
The names of Belfast-born soprano Heather Harper and Kansas-born tenor James King may not resonate for younger music lovers, but they sure do for folks my age. Harper was the glowing, nimble soprano in Colin Davis’s renowned 1966 recording of Handel’s Messiah and in Davis’s top-flight recording (ca. 1978) of Britten’s Peter Grimes, featuring Jon Vickers. »
19 Sep 2018
A good fairy-tale sweeps us away on a magic carpet while never letting us forget that for all the enchanting transformations, beneath the sorcery lie essential truths. »
19 Sep 2018
The Royal Opera House today opens the doors to its transformed new home, following an extensive three-year construction project. »
18 Sep 2018
‘“Will you play your hurdy-gurdy to my songs?” the wanderer asks. If the answer were to be a “yes”, then the crazy but logical procedure would be to go right back to the beginning of the whole cycle and start all over again. This could explore a notion of eternal recurrence: we are trapped in the endless repetition of this existential lament.’ »
18 Sep 2018
Lyric Opera of Chicago’s annual concert, Stars of Lyric Opera at Millennium Park, given during last weekend, was both a tribute to the many facets of opera and a preview of what lies ahead in the upcoming repertoire season. »
16 Sep 2018
Pride and Prejudice, North and South, Antony and Cleopatra, Much Ado About Nothing: literary fiction and drama are strewn with dissembling lovers who display differing degrees of Machiavellian sharpness in matters of amatory strategy. But, there is an artless ingenuousness about Bastien and Bastienne, the eponymous pastoral protagonists of Mozart’s 1768 opera, who pretend not to love in order to seal their shared romantic destiny, but who require a hefty dose of the ‘Magician’ Colas’s conjuring/charlatanry in order to avoid a future of lonely singledom. »
15 Sep 2018
In early October 1822, Gioachino Rossini summoned the librettist Gaetano Rossi to a villa (owned by his wife, the soprano Isabella Colbran) in Castenaso, just outside Bologna. Their project: to work on a new opera, which would be premiered during the Carnival in Venice on 3rd February the following year, based on the legend of Queen Semiramide. »
14 Sep 2018
One should not judge a performance by its audience, but spying Mitsuko Uchida in the audience is unlikely ever to prove a negative sign. It certainly did not here, in a wonderfully involving recital of songs by Schumannn, Wolf, and Brahms from Dorothea Röschmann and Malcolm Martineau. »
13 Sep 2018
Garsington Opera is delighted to announce that on Saturday 6 October, BBC Radio 3’s ‘Opera on 3’, will broadcast the production of its first festival world premiere - The Skating Rink by David Sawer set to a libretto by Rory Mullarkey based on a novel by Chilean author Roberto Bolaño. »
12 Sep 2018
Wigmore Hall’s BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert 2018-19 series opened this week with a journey along The Path of Life as illustrated by the songs of Schubert, and it offered a rare chance to hear the composer’s long, and long-germinating, setting of Johann Baptist Mayrhofer’s philosophical rumination, ‘Einsamkeit’ - an extended eulogy to loneliness which Schubert described, in a letter of 1822, as the best thing he had done, “mein Bestes, was ich gemacht habe”. »
11 Sep 2018
The BBC Proms have now gone into hibernation until July 2019. But, as the hearty patriotic strains rang out over South Kensington on Saturday evening, in Westminster the somewhat gentler, but no less emotive, flame of nineteenth-century lied was re-lit at Wigmore Hall, as baritone Florian Boesch and pianist Malcolm Martineau opened the Hall’s 2018-19 season with a recital comprising song settings of texts by Heinrich Heine. »
10 Sep 2018
Edward Elgar's Sea Pictures are extremely well-known, but many others are also worth hearing. From SOMM recordings, specialists in British repertoire, comes this interesting new collection of other Elgar orchestral songs, sponsored by the Elgar Society. »
10 Sep 2018
“One of the most insufferable prigs in a literature.” Handel scholar Winton Dean’s dismissal of Theodora, the eponymous heroine of Handel’s 1749 oratorio, may well have been shared by many among his contemporary audience. »
10 Sep 2018
The first two instalments of the Academy of Ancient Music’s ‘Purcell trilogy’ at the Barbican Hall have posed plentiful questions - creative, cultural and political. »
09 Sep 2018
Renaissance madrigals and twentieth-century social media don’t at first seem likely bed-fellows. However, Martin - the protagonist of The Second Violinist, a new opera by composer Donnacha Dennehy and librettist Enda Walsh - is, like the late sixteenth-century composer, Carlo Gesualdo, an artist with homicidal tendencies. And, Dennehy and Walsh bring music, madness and murder together in a Nordic noir thriller that has more than a touch of Stringbergian psychological anxiety, analysis and antagonism. »
07 Sep 2018
The cautionary tale which W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman fashioned for Igor Stravinsky’s 1951 opera, The Rake’s Progress - recounting the downward course of an archetypal libertine from the faux fulfilment of matrimonial and monetary dreams to the grim reality of madness and death - was, of course, an elaboration of William Hogarth’s 1733 series of eight engravings. »
06 Sep 2018
Having recently recorded the role of Dido in Berlioz' Les Troyens on Warner Classics, there was genuine excitement at the prospect of hearing Joyce DiDonato performing Dido's death scene live at the BBC Proms. She joined John Eliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Revolutionaire et Romantique for an all-Berlioz Prom at the Royal Albert Hall on Wednesday 5 September 2018. As well as the scene from Les Troyens, DiDonato sang La mort de Cleopatre and the orchestra performed the overture Le Corsaire and The Royal Hunt and Storm from Les Troyens, and were joined by viola player Antoine Tamestit for Harold in Italy. »
06 Sep 2018
“A telegram, a telegram,/ A telegram from Hollywood./ Inkslinger is the name; And I think that the news is good.” The Western Union Boy’s missive, delivered to Johnny Inkslinger in the closing moments of 1941 ‘choral operetta’ Paul Bunyan and directly connecting the American Dream with success in Tinseltown, may have echoed an offer that Benjamin Britten himself received, for the composer had written expectantly to Wulff Scherchen on 7th February 1939, ‘(((Shshshsssh … I may have an offer from Holywood [sic] for a film, but don’t say a word))).’ Ten days later he wrote again: ‘Hollywood seems a bit nearer - I’ve got an interview with the Producer on Monday’. »
05 Sep 2018
The Dutch National Opera season opens officially on the 7th of September with a third run of Simon McBurney’s production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, an unqualified success at its 2012 premiere. Last Tuesday, however, an audience aged between sixteen and thirty-five got to see a preview of this co-production with English National Opera and the Aix-en-Provence Festival. »
05 Sep 2018
Mahler and I, at least in the concert hall, parted company over a decade ago - and with his Third Symphony it has been an even longer abandonment, fifteen years. Reviewing can nurture great love for music; but it can also become so obsessive for a single composer it can make one profoundly unresponsive to their music. This was my tragedy with Mahler. »
04 Sep 2018
I wonder if Cinderella realised that when she found her Prince she would also find international fame, becoming not just a Princess but also a global celebrity and icon. The glass slipper, placed loving on her shapely foot, has graced theatres, variety halls, cinema screens and opera houses - even postage stamps - and the perennial popularity of this rags-to-riches fairy-tale, in which innocence and goodness triumph over injustice and oppression, shows no signs of waning. »
03 Sep 2018
With The Gondoliers of 1889, the main period of Arthur Sullivan's
celebrated collaboration with W. S. Gilbert came to an end, and with it the
golden age of British operetta. Sullivan was accordingly at liberty to
compose more serious and emotional operas, as he had long desired, and
turned first to the moribund tradition of "Grand Opera" with Ivanhoe (1891). »
03 Sep 2018
Famously, controversy is the stuff of Bayreuth, be it artistic, philosophic or political. As well occasionally a Bayreuth production can simply be illuminating, as is the Barrie Kosky production of Wagner’s only comedy, Die Meistersinger. »
02 Sep 2018
On 25th March 1875, Gilbert & Sullivan’s one-act operetta, Trial by Jury, opened at the Royalty Theatre on Dean Street, in Soho. 131 performances and considerable critical acclaim followed, and it out-ran is companion piece, Offenbach’s La Périchole. »
31 Aug 2018
“The power of sound” wrote Joseph Conrad, “has always been greater than the power of sense.” Verdi’s towering Requiem is all about the power of sound, not least because of all the great sacred works this is the one that least obviously seems sacred when you hear it. »
31 Aug 2018
A concert programme that offers a ‘Concerto for coloratura soprano’ and four of Richard Strauss’s orchestral songs promises to tick every box on a lover of the soprano voice’s wish-list. »
27 Aug 2018
At the 2018 International Opera Awards, Irish-Canadian mezzo-soprano Wallis Giunta was named ‘Young Singer of the Year’, having been awarded the same title by The Arts Desk in 2017, a year which also saw her pick up the ‘Breakthrough Artist in UK Opera’ award at the What’s on Stage Opera Awards. At this Cadogan Hall lunchtime chamber recital she was making her Proms debut, and Giunta gave an assured, audience-winning performance which suggested that such accolades are more than deserved and that it won’t be long before she’s invited back. »
26 Aug 2018
When this production debuted last summer at Glimmerglass, my Opera Today colleague James Sohre found it a thoroughly
successful mounting of George Gershwin and DuBose Heyward's noble but
problematic opera. »
26 Aug 2018
The Hollywood Reporter called it the greatest musical ever produced. Leonard Bernstein had expressed concerns about his first Broadway musical, writing to Aaron Copland, ‘Maybe it will be a great hit, and maybe it will lay the great egg of all time. It’s an enormous gamble’, but in the event, On the Town opened at Broadway’s Adelphi Theatre on 28th December 1944 to rave reviews and laid golden foundation stones for the career paths of its prodigious creators - Bernstein, choreographer Jerome Robbins and writers Adolph Green and Betty Comden, whose average age at the time was twenty-seven. »
25 Aug 2018
Oh no, not another Barber! Well, it is the 150th anniversary of the world’s greatest opera composer so what better way to commemorate the occasion than to program his most famous opera! And hope for the best. »
23 Aug 2018
Music reigned supreme at Glyndebourne’s production of Handel’s Saul, with warm lyricism and exquisite delicacy offered by its
soloists alongside an impressive powerhouse of a Chorus. »
23 Aug 2018
2018 may mark the 150th anniversary of Rossini’s death but of more interest is that it marks the 200th anniversary of the two operas he composed in 1818 — the one-act farce Adina, though not performed until 1826 in Lisbon (and rarely since) and the “dramma serio” Ricciardo e Zoraide, “a grotesque mixture of stupidities and improbabilities” according to a 1927 Rossini biographer. »
23 Aug 2018
What defines a ‘diva’? The Italian word, which came to be used in an operatic context at the end of the nineteenth century, derives from the Latin divus, meaning ‘goddess’. »
22 Aug 2018
Eclectic, even visionary, Proms are one of the great hallmarks of this summer music festival - and this concert certainly fell into that category. On paper, little seemed to unify the first and second halves of the programme: Wagner and Richard Strauss with a (very overdue) UK premiere of Per Nørgård’s Third Symphony. »
21 Aug 2018
We are accustomed to seeing Finnish conductor Sakari Oramo at the helm of a large orchestra, baton in hand, guiding the instrumentalists with unassuming but precise authority and expressive, communicative musicianship. »
19 Aug 2018
Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra took us through fairy-tale forests, antique lands and into fantasy worlds in this fabulous Prom, which celebrated Maurice Ravel’s genius as a musical story-teller. »
19 Aug 2018
Hans Werner Henze’s fifth opera, The Bassarids (those who wear fox skins) had its world premiere at Salzburg’s Grosses Festspielhaus in 1966. Now, 52 years later Henze’s massive “opera seria” returns, but to the Felsenreitschule —the old riding school made into a theater that hosts the Salzburg Festival’s difficult operas, the Grosses Festspielhaus now dedicated to the grand repertoire. »
17 Aug 2018
Two French commemorations - ‘anniversaries’ always seems the wrong word - and surely is - here: the centenary of the deaths of Claude Debussy and Lili Boulanger. »
16 Aug 2018
It was emeritus night at the Salzburg Festival with 75 year old maestro Mariss Jansons conducting 77 year old stage director Hans Neuenfels production about Pushkin’s 87 year old countess known as the Pique Dame. »
15 Aug 2018
Three electrifying moments and the world is forever changed. »
15 Aug 2018
A Romeo Castellucci production is always news, it is even bigger news just now in Salzburg where Lithuanian soprano Asmik Grigorian has made her debut as the fifteen year-old Salome. »
14 Aug 2018
Prom 41 at the Royal Albert Hall, London, with Edward Gardner conducting the BBCSO in Vaughan Williams's Dona nobis pacem, Elgar's Cello Concerto (Jean-Guihen Queyras) and Lili Boulanger . Extremely perceptive performances that revealed deep insight, far more profound than the ostensible "1918" theme »
12 Aug 2018
There were two, equal ‘stars’ of this performance of the authorised concert version of Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story at the Royal Albert Hall: ‘Lenny’ himself, whose vibrant score - by turns glossy and edgy - truly shone, and conductor John Wilson, who made it gleam, and who made us listen afresh and intently to every coloristic detail and toe-tapping, twisting rhythm. »
11 Aug 2018
One of the joys of writing regularly – sometimes, just sometimes, I think too regularly – about performance has been the transformation, both conscious and unconscious, of my scholarship. »
09 Aug 2018
I am not sure I could find much of a connection between the two works on offer here. They offered ‘contrast’ of a sort, I suppose, yet not in a meaningful way such as I could discern. »
08 Aug 2018
It’s an all too rare pleasure to see Puccini’s only comedy as a stand alone opera. And more so when it is a careful production that uncovers the all too often overlooked musical and dramatic subtleties that abound in Puccini’s last opera. »
07 Aug 2018
The mood in the city is certainly soporific at the moment, as the blistering summer heat takes its toll and the thermometer shows no signs of falling. Fittingly, mezzo-soprano Dame Sarah Connolly and pianist Joseph Middleton presented a recital of English song settings united by the poetic themes of night, sleep, dreams and nightmares, juxtaposing masterpieces of the early-twentieth-century alongside new works by Mark-Anthony Turnage and Australian composer Lisa Illean, and two ‘long-lost’ songs by Britten. »
07 Aug 2018
“His child! It must not be born!” Keith Warner’s new production of Samuel Barber’s Vanessa for Glyndebourne Festival Opera makes two births, one intimated, the other aborted, the driving force of the tragedy which consumes two women, Vanessa and her niece Erika, rivals for the same young man, Anatol, son of Vanessa’s former lover. »
05 Aug 2018
Santa Fe Opera welcomed home a winningly animated production of L’Italiana in Algeri this season that utterly delighted a vociferously responsive audience. »
05 Aug 2018
Richard Strauss Salomé from the Salzburg Festival, conducted by Franz Welser-Möst, a powerful interpretation of an opera which defies easy answers, performed and produced with such distinction thast it suceeds on every level. The words "Te saxa Loquuntur" (The stones are speaking to you) are projected onto the stage. Salzburg regulars will recognize this as a reference to the rock foundations on which part of the city is built, and the traditions of excellence the Festival represents. In this opera, the characters talk at cross-purposes, hearing without understanding. The phrase suggests that what might not be explicitly spoken might have much to reveal.
»
04 Aug 2018
In this, her Proms debut, Anna Prohaska offered something akin to a cantata of two queens, complementary and contrasted: Dido and Cleopatra. Returning in a sense to her ‘early music’ roots – her career has always been far richer, more varied, but that world has always played an important part – she collaborated with the Italian ‘period’ ensemble, Il Giardino Armonico and Giovanni Antonini. »
04 Aug 2018
And so, this year’s Munich Opera Festival and this year’s Bavarian State Opera season came to a close with everyone’s favourite Bühnenweihfestspiel, Parsifal, in the final outing this time around for Pierre Audi’s new production. »
03 Aug 2018
What more could we want than having Peter Sellars re-imagine his acclaimed staging of John Adams’ Doctor Atomic at the renowned Santa Fe Opera festival? »
03 Aug 2018
Santa Fe Opera has an enduring reputation for its Strauss, and this season’s enjoyable Ariadne auf Naxos surely made John Crosby smile proudly. »
03 Aug 2018
Frank Castorf might have been born to direct From the House of the Dead. In this, his third opera project - or better, his third opera project in the opera house, for his Volksbühne Meistersinger must surely be reckoned with, even by those of us who did not see it - many of his hallmarks and those of his team are present, yet without the slightest hint of staleness, of anything other than being reborn for and in the work. »
02 Aug 2018
Should you not like eighteenth-century opera very much, if at all, and should you have no or little interest in Haydn either, this may have been the production for you. The fundamental premise of Axel Ranisch’s staging of Orlando Paladino seems to have been that this was a work of little fundamental merit, or at least a work in a genre of little such merit, and that it needed the help of a modern medium - perhaps, it might even be claimed, an equivalent medium - to speak to a contemporary audience. »
02 Aug 2018
'The score … is precisely one of those works that neither the composer nor the public takes seriously. The harmony, melody, rhythmic effects, instrumental and vocal combinations; it’s music, if you wish, but not new music. The orchestra consumes itself in useless noises…' »
01 Aug 2018
Santa Fe Opera’s Candide is a nearly indefatigable romp that is currently parading on the Crosby Theatre stage, chockfull of inventive ideas. »
01 Aug 2018
Two new stars moved triumphantly into the ongoing run of Santa Fe Opera’s mesmerizing rendition of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. »
29 Jul 2018
What I am about to write must be taken with the proviso that I have not seen, this year or any other, the rest of Andreas Kriegenburg’s Munich Ring. Friends tell me that would have made little difference, yet I cannot know for certain. »
28 Jul 2018
For Prom 17, Martyn Brabbins, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the BBC National Chorus of Wales brought together English music written either side of the First World War. »
26 Jul 2018
A celebration of European song will be the focus of the 2018 Oxford Lieder Festival (12th - 27th October) and will showcase the familiar masterpieces of the song repertoire while exploring wider cultural influences from Finland to the south... »
25 Jul 2018
In the opera house and on the concert platform, we are accustomed to ‘women being men’, as it were. From heroic knights to adolescent youths, women don the armour and trousers, and no-one bats an eyelid. »
25 Jul 2018
Fascinating programming from the BBC Philharmonic under their Finnish Chief Guest Conductor, John Storgårds. The mix of vocal music, arrangements and multiple pieces per half felt like a flashback to the early days of the Proms, offering eclectic mixes of vocal and instrumental soloists. »
24 Jul 2018
BBC Prom 11 Mahler Symphony no 8 in E flat major at the Royal Albert Hall, London, with Thomas Søndergård conducting the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and a huge cast. The nickname "Symphony of a Thousand" wasn't Mahler's choice but the invention of promoters eager to market it as a showpiece. »
22 Jul 2018
Mention ‘nineteenth-century English opera’ to most people, and
they will immediately think ‘Gilbert and Sullivan’. If they
really know their Gilbert and Sullivan, they’ll probably remember
that Sullivan always wanted to compose more serious operas, but that
Gilbert resisted this, believing they should ‘stick to their
last’: light, comic, tuneful satire. »
19 Jul 2018
There may be sixty or so operas by Donizetti to choose from, but if you’ve put together the remnants of another one, why not give everyone a chance to hear it? And so, Opera Rara brought L’Ange de Nisida to the concert stage last night, 180 years after it was composed for the Théâtre de la Renaissance in Paris, conductor Sir Mark Elder leading a team of bel canto soloists and the Choir and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House in a committed and at times stirring performance. »
18 Jul 2018
Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos is a strange operatic beast. Originally a Molière-Hofmannsthal-Strauss hybrid, the 1916 version presented in Vienna ditched Le bourgeois gentilhomme, which had preceded an operatic telling of the Greek myth of Ariadne and Theseus, and replaced it with a Prologue in which buffa met seria as competing factions prepared to present an entertainment for ‘the richest man in Vienna’. He’s a man who has ordered two entertainments, to follow an epicurean feast, and he wants these dramatic digestifs served simultaneously. »
18 Jul 2018
Stefan Herheim’s production of Debussy’s magnificent 1902 opera for Glyndebourne has not been universally acclaimed. The Royal Albert Hall brought with it, in this semi-staged production, a different set of problems - and even imitated some of the production’s original ones, notably the vast shadow of the organ which somewhat replicates Glyndebourne’s 1920’s Organ Room, and by a huge stretch of the imagination the forest in which so much of the opera’s action is set. »
17 Jul 2018
Sopranos Elise Brancheau and Shannon Jones, along with pianists Martin
Néron and Keith Chambers, presented a thrilling evening of
French-themed music in an evening entitled: “Salut à la
France,” at the South Oxford Space in Brooklyn this past Saturday,
July 14th. »
17 Jul 2018
Polly Graham’s vision of Dido and Aeneas is earthy, vigorous and gritty. The artistic director of Longborough Festival Opera has overseen a production which brings together professional soloists, students from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, and a cast of more than 80 south-east London adults and children for this, the 12th, annual Blackheath Halls Community Opera. »
16 Jul 2018
The operatic extracts which comprised this year’s Jette Parker Young Artists Summer Performance seemed to be joined by a connecting thread - madness: whether that was the mischievousness of Zerbinetta’s comedy troupe, the insanity of Tom Rakewell, the metaphysical distress of Hamlet, or the mayhem prompted by Isabella’s arrival at Mustafà’s Ottoman palace, the ‘insanity’ was equally compelling. »
16 Jul 2018
This is the one where a very personable devil tells God that mankind is so far gone it isn’t worth his time to bother corrupting it further. »
15 Jul 2018
There seemed to me to be something distinctly Chaucerian about Martin Lloyd-Evans’ new production of Mascagni’s Isabeau (the first UK production of the opera) for Investec Opera Holland Park. »
15 Jul 2018
Anniversaries and commemorations will, as usual, feature significantly during the 2018 BBC Proms, with the works of Leonard Bernstein, Claude Debussy and Lili Boulanger all prominently programmed during the season’s myriad orchestral, vocal and chamber concerts. »
13 Jul 2018
Against the Grain Theatre brought its award winning adaptation of Gluck’s opera to the Banff Festival billed as “an electronic baroque burlesque descent into hell.” »
12 Jul 2018
What Seven Stones (the amazing accentus / axe 21), and Dido and Aeneas (the splendid Ensemble Pygmalion) and Orfeo & Majnun (the ensemble [too many to count] of eleven local amateur choruses) share, and virtually nothing else, is spectacular use of chorus. »
11 Jul 2018
From the Bayerisches Staatsoper Munich, Wagner Parsifal with a dream cast - René Pape, Jonas Kaufmann and Nina Stemme, Christian Gerhaher and Wolfgang Koch, conducted by Kirill Petrenko, directed by Pierre Audi. The production is vintage Audi - stylized, austere, but solidly thought-through. »
10 Jul 2018
Jonathan Dove’s innovative opera Flight is being lavished with an absolutely riveting new production at Des Moines Metro Opera’s resoundingly successful 2018 Festival.
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09 Jul 2018
Like a fizzy bottle of champagne, Des Moines Metro Opera uncorked a zesty tasting of Johan Strauss’s vintage Die Fledermaus (The Bat). »
09 Jul 2018
Robert Carson’s 2012 ROH Falstaff is a bit of a hotchpotch, but delightful nevertheless. The panelled oak, exuding Elizabethan ambience, of the first Act’s gravy-stained country club reeks of the Wodehouse-ian 1930s, but has also has to serve as the final Act’s grubby stable and the Forest of Windsor, while the central Act is firmly situated in the domestic perfection of Alice Ford’s 1950s kitchen. »
08 Jul 2018
Ingenious Des Moines Metro Opera continued its string of site-specific hits with an endearing production of Aaron Copland’s The Tender Land on the grounds of the Maytag Dairy farm. »
08 Jul 2018
Let me get right to the point: This is the Rusalka I have been waiting for all my life. »
07 Jul 2018
Prokofiev’s Fiery Angel is rarely performed. This new Aix Festival production to be shared with Warsaw’s Teatr Wielki exemplifies why. »
06 Jul 2018
Yes, of course British stage director Katie Mitchell served up Richard Strauss’ uber tragic Ariadne on Naxos at a dinner table. Over the past few years Mme. Mitchell has staged quite a few household tragedies at the Aix Festival, mostly at dinner tables, though some on doorsteps. »
06 Jul 2018
Having premiered Roxanna Panufnik’s opera Silver Birch in 2017 as part of its work with local community groups, Garsington Opera’s 2018 season included its first commission for the main opera season. David Sawer's The Skating Rink premiered at Garsington Opera this week; the opera is based on the novel by Chilean writer Roberto Bolano with a libretto by playwright Rory Mullarkey. »
05 Jul 2018
The Princeton Festival brings a run of three high-quality opera
performances to town each summer, alternating between a modern opera and a
traditional warhorse. John Adams’ Nixon in China has been
announced for next summer. So this year Princeton got Giacomo
Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, for which the Festival
assembled an impressive cast and delivered a polished performance. »
05 Jul 2018
Many of the ingredients for a memorable concert were there, or so they
initially seemed to be. Alas, ultimately what we learned more clearly than
anything else was that the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s
new Principal Artist, András Schiff, is no conductor. »
05 Jul 2018
It came as quite a surprise throughout much of the first half of this recital of French song, that it was the piano-playing of Susan Manoff that made the greater impression upon me than the singing of Véronique Gens. »
03 Jul 2018
What might have been? Such was a thought that came to my mind more than once during this, the premiere of Glyndebourne’s new Pelléas et Mélisande. What might have been if Stefan Herheim had not changed his Konzept so late in the day? (I had actually forgotten about that until reminded during the interval, yet had already began to wonder whether the production had been, especially for him, unusually rushed.) »
01 Jul 2018
There is something very Danish about this Don Giovanni. It isn’t just that the director, Kasper Holten is a Dane, it’s also that the existential, moral and psychological questions Holten asks point to Kierkegaard who wrote of the fusion of the erotic and demonic in this opera in his work Either/Or (1843). However, I’ve rarely, if ever, encountered a production of Don Giovanni - even Bieito’s notorious one for ENO - where Mozart comes off as second best. »
01 Jul 2018
Schoenberg Gurrelieder at the Royal Festival Hall, with Esa-Pekka Salonen, demonstrating how well the Philharmonia Orchestra has absorbed Schoenberg's idiom. A blazing performance, formidably dramatic, executed with stunning assurance. Salonen has made his mark on the Philharmonia through in-depth explorations of the 20th century repertoire he loves so well. »
30 Jun 2018
London may have been basking in the golden glow of summer sunshine this week, but things have been darkly gothic on the capital’s opera scene. »
29 Jun 2018
There was a palpable anticipatory buzz in the audience well before one note was heard of Pacific Opera Project’s adventurous take on Rossini’s seldom staged La Gazzetta (The Newspaper). »
29 Jun 2018
Dangerous Liasions with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Joined by Les Corps Éloquents (Hubert Hazebrouq, choreographer, Irène Feste and Romain Arreghini), the OAE surpassed even their own high standards, demonstrating the link between music and dance in the French baroque. »
27 Jun 2018
Six years ago composer George Benjamin and playwright Martin Crimp gave the
world Written on Skin. It caused a sensation at its unveiling at
the Aix-en-Provence Festival. Hot on the heels of its world premiere at the
Royal Opera House in London, the composer is now conducting their second
full-length opera, Lessons in Love and Violence, at the Holland
Festival, where he is this year’s Composer in Focus. »
26 Jun 2018
In the second scene, ‘The Welcome’, of Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, the Governess arrives at her employer’s country house, Bly, to take charge of her two new tutees, and sings, “Bly, I begin to love you … For Bly is now my home”. Later, she declares, “I too am home. Alone, tranquil and serene.” It’s difficult to imagine a less homely, tranquil and serene dwelling place than the cracked and crooked glass-house which forms the single set for English National Opera’s new production of The Turn of the Screw, and which marks a new association between the company and Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre. »
25 Jun 2018
Those for whom opera is primarily a matter of fine singing will have had a treat in this Entführung. In that sense, so did I. The Grange Festival had assembled a cast to grace any stage, a cast that more than lived up to expectations on this, the first night. »
24 Jun 2018
Opera seems to travel far from the opera house these days. Alongside numerous productions in community spaces and pub theatres, in the last few years I’ve enjoyed productions staged on the shingle shore of Aldeburgh beach, at the bottom of the shaft of Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Thames Tunnel at Rotherhithe, and in a renovated warehouse in Shoreditch on the roof of which perch four ‘creative studios’ in the form of recycled Jubilee line train carriages and shipping containers. »
23 Jun 2018
The truly tragic moments of this long history rich in humanity behind us we embark on the sordid tale of the Lord of the Gibichungs’s marriage to Brünnhilde and the cowardly murder of Siegfried, to arrive at some sort of conclusion where Brünnhilde sacrifices herself to somehow empower women. Or something. »
23 Jun 2018
We discover the child of incestuous love, we ponder a god’s confusion, we anticipate an awakening. Most of all we marvel at genius of the composer and admire the canny story telling of the Zambello production. »
23 Jun 2018
Yes, just when you thought Wotan was the only big guy in town San Francisco Symphony (just across a small street from San Francisco Opera), offered three staged performances of the Mussorgsky masterpiece Boris Godunov in direct competition with San Francisco Opera’s three Ring des Nibelungen cycles. »
19 Jun 2018
Bruno Ravella’s new production of Verdi's Falstaff for Garsington Opera eschews Elizabethan pomp in favour of Edwardian pompousness, and in so doing places incipient, insurgent feminism and the eternal class consciousness of fin de siècle English polite society centre stage. »
18 Jun 2018
Opera directors are used to thinking their way out of theatrical, dramaturgical and musico-dramatic conundrums, but one of the more unusual challenges must be how to stage the spectacle of a young princess’s naked horseback-ride through the streets of a city. »
18 Jun 2018
The Italian censors forced Giuseppe Verdi and his librettist Antonio Somma to relocate their operatic drama of the murder of the Swedish King Gustav III to Boston, demote the monarch to state governor and rename him Riccardo, and for their production of Un ballo in maschera at Grange Park Opera, director Stephen Medcalf and designer Jamie Vartan have left the ‘ruler’ in his censorial exile. »
17 Jun 2018
When I reviewed Covent Garden’s Tosca back in January, I came very close to suggesting that we might be entering a period of crisis in casting the great Puccini operas. Fast forward six months, and what a world of difference! »
16 Jun 2018
Let me begin, like an undergraduate unsure quite what to say at the beginning of an essay: there were many reasons to admire the first performance of Na’ama Zisser’s opera, Mamzer Bastard, a co-commission from the Royal Opera and the Guildhall. »
14 Jun 2018
At the Barbican, London, Les Arts Florissants conducted by Paul Agnew, with soloists of Le Jardin de Voix in "An English Garden" a semi-staged programme of English baroque. »
14 Jun 2018
The hero Siegfried in utero, Siegmund dead, Wotan humiliated, Brünnhilde asleep, San Francisco’s Ring ripped relentlessly into the shredded emotional lives of its gods and mortals. Conductor Donald Runnicles laid bare Richard Wagner’s score in its most heroic and in its most personal revelations, in their intimacy and in their exploding release.
»
13 Jun 2018
Alberich’s ring forged, the gods moved into Valhalla, Loge’s Bic flicked, Wagner’s cumbersome nineteenth century mythology began unfolding last night here in Bayreuth-by-the-Bay. »
13 Jun 2018
The shepherds and nymphs are at play! It’s end-of-the-year office-party time in Elysium. The bean-bags, balloons and banners - ‘Work Hard, Play Harder’ - invite the weary workers of Mountain Media to let their hair down, and enter the ‘Groves of Delights and Crystal Fountains’. »
12 Jun 2018
Since returning to London in January, I have been heartened by much of what I have seen - and indeed heard - from the Royal Opera. »
10 Jun 2018
Another wonderful Wigmore song recital: this time from Stéphane Degout
– recently shining in George Benjamin's new operatic masterpiece, »
10 Jun 2018
‘How beautiful it is to love! But even more beautiful is freedom!’ The opening lines of the libretto of Mozart’s La finta semplice are as contradictory as the unfolding tale is ridiculous. Either that master of comedy, Carlo Goldoni, was having an off-day when he penned the text - which was performed during the Carnival of 1764 in the Teatro Giustiniani di S. Moisè in Venice with music by Salvatore Perillo - or Marco Coltellini, the poeta cesareo who was entertaining the Viennese aristocracy in 1768, took unfortunate liberties with poetry and plot. »
09 Jun 2018
"Orpheus I am!" - An unusual but very well chosen collection of songs, arias and madrigals from the 17th century, featuring Julian Prégardien and Teatro del mondo. Devised by Andreas Küppers, this collection crosses boundaries demonstrating how Italian, German, French and English contemporaries responded to the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice. »
08 Jun 2018
‘We love singing songs, telling stories …’ profess The Prince Consort on their website, and this carefully curated programme at Wigmore Hall perfectly embodied this passion, as Artistic Director and pianist Alisdair Hogarth was joined by tenor Andrew Staples (the Consort’s Creative Director), Verity Wingate (soprano) and poet Laura Mucha to reflect on ‘whatever love is’. »
07 Jun 2018
It had been a while since Bryn Terfel sang a complete opera role in
Amsterdam. Back in 2002 his larger-than-life Doctor Dulcamara hijacked the
stage of what was then De Nederlandse Opera, now Dutch National Opera. »
05 Jun 2018
We normally think of operas as being serious or comical. But a number of
operas-some familiar, others forgotten-are neither of these. Instead, they
are fantastical, dealing with such things as the fairy world and sorcerers,
or with the world of dreams. »
05 Jun 2018
“There are no gods in heaven!” sings Elektra just before her
brother Orest kills their mother. In the Greek plays about the cursed House
of Atreus the Olympian gods command the banished Orestes to return home and
avenge his father Agamemnon’s murder at the hands of his wife
Clytemnestra. He dispatches both her and her lover Aegisthus. »
05 Jun 2018
What a treat the London Music Conservatoires serve up for opera-goers each season. After the Royal Academy’s Bizet double-bill of Le docteur Miracle and La tragédie de Carmen, and in advance of the Royal College’s forthcoming pairing of Huw Watkins’ new opera, In the Locked Room, based on a short story by Thomas Hardy, and The Lighthouse by Peter Maxwell Davies, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama have delivered a culinary coupling of Paul Hindemith’s The Long Christmas Dinner and Sir Lennox Berkeley’s The Dinner Engagement which the Conservatoire last presented for our delectation in November 2006. »
03 Jun 2018
Absence makes the heart grow fonder; or does it? In Così fan tutte, who knows? Or rather, what could such a question even mean? »
03 Jun 2018
“Wort oder Ton?” asks Richard Strauss’s final opera, Capriccio. The Countess answers with a question of her own, at the close of this self-consciously self-reflective Konversationstück für Musik: “Gibt es einen, der nicht trivail ist?” (“Is there any ending that isn’t trivial?”) »
01 Jun 2018
“These portals, these columns prove/that wisdom, industry and art reside here.” So says Tamino, as he gazes up at the three imposing doors in the centre of Netia Jones’ replica of the 18th-century Wormsley Park House - in the grounds of which Garsington Opera’s ‘floating’ Pavilion makes its home each summer. »
30 May 2018
If there were any doubts that it was soon to be curtains for Verdi’s titular, tubercular heroine then the tortured gasps of laboured, languishing breath which preceded Rodula Gaitanou’s new production of La traviata for Opera Holland Park would have swiftly served to dispel them. »
30 May 2018
Here is a little-known opera that, like an opera by the Swedish composer
Laci Boldemann that I have reviewed here, and like
Ravel’s amazing L’enfant et les sortilèges‡, utterly bypasses the usual categories of comic and grand/tragic by
cultivating instead the rich realm of fantasy and folk tale. »
29 May 2018
‘Music for a while/Shall all your cares beguile’. Standing in shadow, encircled by the five players of the viol consort Fretwork, as the summer storm raged outside Milton Court Concert Hall countertenor Iestyn Davies offered mesmeric reassurance to the capacity audience during this intriguing meeting of the baroque and the modern. »
27 May 2018
A musical challenge to our view of the past »
26 May 2018
As a whole, this concert proved a curious affair. It probably made more
sense in the context of Thomas Adès’s series of Beethoven and
Barry concerts with the Britten Sinfonia. The idea of a night off from the
symphonic Beethoven to turn to chamber works was, in principle, a good one,
but the sole Gerald Barry piece here seemed oddly out of place – and
not in a productive, provocative way. Even the Beethoven pieces did not
really seem to fit together especially well. A lovely performance of the
op.16 Quintet nevertheless made the evening worthwhile. »
24 May 2018
Le Concert Royal de la Nuit with Ensemble Correspondances led by Sébastien Daucé, the glorious culmination of the finest London Festival of the Baroque in years on the theme "Treasures of the Grand Siècle". Le Concert Royal de la Nuit was Louis XIV's announcement that he would be "Roi du Soleil", a ruler whose magnificence would transform France, and the world, in a new age of splendour. »
23 May 2018
Seven, they are Seven , op.30; Violin Concerto no.1 in D minor, op.19; Cantata for the Twentieth Anniverary of the October Revolution, op.74. David Butt Philip (tenor), Pekka Kuusisto (violin), Aidan Oliver (voice of Lenin, chorus director), Philharmonia Voices, Crouch End Festival Chorus, Students of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (military band), Philharmonia Orchestra/Vladimir Ashkenazy (conductor). Royal Festival Hall, London, Sunday 20 May 2018. »
23 May 2018
Marc-Antoine Charpentier Histoires sacrées with Ensemble Correspondances, conducted by Sébastien Daucé, at St John's Smith Square, part of the London Festival of the Baroque 2018. This striking staging, by Vincent Huguet, brought out its austere glory: every bit a treasure of the Grand Siècle, though this grandeur was dedicated not to Sun God but to God. »
22 May 2018
Revolution, repetition, rhetoric. On my way to meet countertenor Iestyn Davies, I ponder if these are the elements that might form connecting threads between the music of Henry Purcell and Michael Nyman, whose works will be brought together later this month when Davies joins the viol consort Fretwork for a thought-provoking recital at Milton Court Concert Hall. »
21 May 2018
When Francesca Zambello presented Aïda at her own Glimmerglass Opera in 2012, her staging was, as they say, “ripped from today’s headlines.” Fighter planes strafed the Egyptian headquarters as the curtain rose, water-boarding was the favored form of interrogation, Radames was executed by lethal injection. »
20 May 2018
As the bells rang with romance from the tower of St George’s Chapel, Windsor, the rolling downs of Sussex - which had just acquired a new Duke - echoed with the strains of a rather more bitter-sweet cross-cultural love affair. Glyndebourne Festival Opera’s 2018 season opened with Annilese Miskimmon’s production of Madama Butterfly, first seen during the 2016 Glyndebourne tour and now making its first visit to the main house. »
16 May 2018
This concert might have been re-titled Remembrance of Musical Times Past: the time, that is, when French song, nurtured in the Proustian Parisian salons, began to gain a foothold in public concert halls. But, the madeleine didn’t quite work its magic on this occasion. »
15 May 2018
‘On August 3, 1941, the day that Capriccio was finished, 682 Jews were killed in Chernovtsy, Romania; 1,500 in Jelgava, Latvia; and several hundred in Stanisławów, Ukraine. On October 28, 1942, the day of the opera’s premiere in Munich, the first convoy of Jews from Theresienstadt arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau, and 90 percent of them went to the gas chamber.’ »
14 May 2018
‘I sought to restrict the music to its true purpose of serving to give expression to the poetry and to strengthen the dramatic situations, without interrupting the action or hampering it with unnecessary and superfluous ornamentations. […] I believed further that I should devote my greatest effort to seeking to achieve a noble simplicity; and I have avoided parading difficulties at the expense of clarity.’ »
12 May 2018
‘What a thrill -/ My thumb instead of an onion. The top quite gone/ Except for a sort of hinge/ Of skin,/ A flap like a hat,/ Dead white. Then that red plush.’ Those who imagined that Sylvia Plath (‘Cut’, 1962) had achieved unassailable aesthetic peaks in fusing pain - mental and physical - with beauty, might think again after seeing and hearing this, the third, collaboration between composer George Benjamin and dramatist/librettist Martin Crimp: Lessons in Love and Violence. »
09 May 2018
Majesté, a new recording by Le Poème Harmonique, led by Vincent Dumestre, of music by Michel-Richard de Lalande (1657-1726) new from Alpha Classics. Le Poème Harmonique are regular visitors to London, appreciated for the variety of their programes. On Friday this week, (11/5) they'll be at St John's Smith Square as part of the London Festival of Baroque, with a programme titled "At the World's Courts". »
09 May 2018
New from Harmonia Mundi, Perpetual Night. a superb recording of ayres and songs from the 17th century, by Ensemble Correspondances with Sébastien Daucé and Lucile Richardot. Ensemble Correspondances are among the foremost exponents of the music of Versailles and the French royalty, so it's good to hear them turn to the music of the Stuart court. »
07 May 2018
Always in demand on French and international stages, the French soprano Sabine Devieihle is, fortunately, becoming an increasingly frequent visitor to these shores. Her first appearance at Wigmore Hall was last month’s performance of works by Handel with Emmanuelle Haïm’s Le Concert d’Astrée. This lunchtime recital, reflecting the meetings of music and minds which took place at Parisian salon of the nineteenth-century mezzo-soprano Pauline Viardot (1821-1910), was her solo debut at the venue. »
03 May 2018
Lyric Opera of Chicago is now featuring as its spring musical Jesus Christ Superstar with music and lyrics by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. The production originated with the Regent’s Park Theatre, London with additional scenery by Bay Productions, U.K. and Commercial Silk International. »
01 May 2018
As a figure in the history of 20th century art, few deserve to be closer to center stage than Ida Rubenbstein. Without her talent, determination, and vast wealth, Ravel’s Boléro, Debussy’s Martyrdom of St. Sebastien, Honegger’s Joan of Arc at the Stake, and Stravinsky’s Perséphone would not exist. »
30 Apr 2018
One trusts the banquet following the world premiere of La concordia de’ pianeti proffered some spicy flavors, because Pietro Pariati’s text is so cloying it causes violent stomach-churning. In contrast, Antonio Caldara’s music sparkles and dances like a blaze of crystal chandeliers. »
30 Apr 2018
The 63rd Competition for the Kathleen Ferrier Awards 2018 was an unusually ‘home-grown’ affair. Last year’s Final had brought together singers from the UK, the Commonwealth, Europe, the US and beyond, but the six young singers assembled at Wigmore Hall on Friday evening all originated from the UK. »
29 Apr 2018
Opera San Jose capped its consistently enjoyable, artistically accomplished 2017-2018 season with a dramatically thoughtful, musically sound rendition of Verdi’s immortal La traviata. »
27 Apr 2018
At his best, Matthias Goerne does serious (ernst) at least as well as anyone else. He may not be everyone’s first choice as Papageno, although what he brings to the role is compelling indeed, quite different from the blithe clowning of some, arguably much closer to its fundamental sadness. (Is that not, after all, what clowns are about?) Yet, individual taste aside, whom would one choose before him to sing Brahms, let alone the Four Serious Songs? »
27 Apr 2018
One of the most beloved operas of all time, Verdi’s “ La Traviata” has never lost its enduring appeal as a tragic tale of love and loss, as potent today as it was during its Venice premiere in 1853. »
25 Apr 2018
Is it possible, I wonder, to have too much of a ‘good thing’? Baritone Matthias Goerne can spin an extended vocal line and float a lyrical pianissimo with an unrivalled beauty that astonishes no matter how many times one hears and admires the evenness of line, the controlled legato, the tenderness of tone. »
25 Apr 2018
When I reviewed Tosca at Covent Garden in January this year for Opera Today, Maria Callas’s 1964 Royal Opera House performance was still fresh in my mind. This is a recording I have grown up with and which, despite its flaws, is one of the greatest operatic statements - a glorious production which Zeffirelli finally agreed to staging, etched in gothic black and white film (albeit just Act II), with Maria Callas and Tito Gobbi, if not always as vocally commanding as they once were, acting out their roles like no one has before, or since. »
25 Apr 2018
Madness - or perhaps, more widely, insanity - in opera goes back centuries. In Handel’s Orlando (1733) it’s the dimension of a character’s jealousy and betrayal that drives him to the state of delusion and madness. Mozart, in Idomeneo, treats Electra’s descent into mania in a more hostile and despairing way. Foucault would probably define these episodic operatic breakdowns as “melancholic”, ones in which the characters are powerless rather than driven by acts of personal violence or suicide. »
25 Apr 2018
British music would not be where it is today without the influence of Charles Hubert Parry. His large choral and orchestral works are well known, and his Jerusalem is almost the national anthem. But in the centenary of his death, we can re-appraise his role in the birth of modern British song. »
19 Apr 2018
Excellent programming: worthy of Boulez, if hardly for the literal minded. (‘I think you’ll find [stroking chin] Beethoven didn’t know Unsuk Chin’s music, or Heinrich Biber’s. So … what are they doing together then? And … AND … why don’t you use period instruments? I rest my case!’) »
18 Apr 2018
On a recent weekend evening the performers in the current roster of the Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center at Lyric Opera of Chicago presented a concert of operatic selections showcasing their musical talents. The Lyric Opera Orchestra accompanied the performers and was conducted by Edwin Outwater. »
18 Apr 2018
On April 6, 2018, Arizona Opera presented an uncut performance of Richard Wagner’s Das Rheingold. It was the first time in two decades that this company had staged a Ring opera. »
16 Apr 2018
The 2018 London Handel Festival drew to a close with this vibrant and youthful performance (the second of two) at St George’s Church, Hanover Square, of Handel’s Teseo - the composer’s third opera for London after Rinaldo (1711) and Il pastor fido (1712), which was performed at least thirteen times between January and May 1713. »
16 Apr 2018
Saint-Saëns Mélodies avec orchestra with Yann Beuron and Tassis Christoyannis with the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana conducted by Markus Poschner. »
15 Apr 2018
The Moderate Soprano and the story of Glyndebourne: love, opera and Nazism in David Hare’s moving play »
15 Apr 2018
Well, it was Friday 13th. I returned home from this moving and inspiring British-themed concert at the Barbican Hall in which the BBC Symphony Orchestra and conductor Sir Andrew Davis had marked the centenary of the end of World War I, to turn on my lap-top and discover that the British Prime Minister had authorised UK armed forces to participate with French and US forces in attacks on Syrian chemical weapon sites. »
13 Apr 2018
This seemed a timely moment for a performance of Stravinsky’s choral ballet, Perséphone. April, Eliot’s ‘cruellest month’, has brought rather too many of Chaucer’s ‘sweet showers [to] pierce the ‘drought of March to the root’, but as the weather finally begins to warms and nature stirs, what better than the classical myth of the eponymous goddess’s rape by Pluto and subsequent rescue from Hades, begetting the eternal rotation of the seasons, to reassure us that winter is indeed over and the spirit of spring is engendering the earth. »
09 Apr 2018
This performance of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas by La Nuova Musica, directed by David Bates, was, characteristically for this ensemble, alert to musical details, vividly etched and imaginatively conceived. »
08 Apr 2018
In 1969, Mrs Aristotle Onassis commissioned a major composition to celebrate the opening of a new arts centre in Washington, DC - the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, named after her late husband, President John F. Kennedy, who had been assassinated six years earlier. »
08 Apr 2018
This is a landmark production of Hans Werner Henze's Das Floß der Medusa (The Raft of the Medusa) conducted by Ingo Metzmacher in Amsterdam earlier this month, with Dale Duesing (Charon), Bo Skovhus and Lenneke Ruiten, with Cappella Amsterdam, the Nieuw Amsterdams Kinderen Jeugdkoor, and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, in a powerfully perceptive staging by Romeo Castellucci. »
02 Apr 2018
This was the first time, I think, since having moved to London that I had attended a Bach Passion performance on Good Friday here. »
02 Apr 2018
It was a little early, perhaps, to be hearing ‘Easter Voices’ in the middle of Holy Week. However, this was not especially an Easter programme – and, in any case, included two pieces from Gesualdo’s Tenebrae responsories for Good Friday. Given the continued vileness of the weather, a little foreshadowing of something warmer was in any case most welcome. (Yes, I know: I should hang my head in Lenten shame.) »
01 Apr 2018
‘In order to preserve the good order in the Churches, so arrange the music that it shall not last too long, and shall be of such nature as not to make an operatic impression, but rather incite the listeners to devotion.’ »
30 Mar 2018
The white walls of designer Peter McKintosh’s Ikea-maze are still spinning, the ox-skulls are still louring, and the servants are still eavesdropping, as Fiona Shaw’s 2011 production of The Marriage of Figaro returns to English National Opera for its second revival. Or, perhaps one should say that the servants are still sleeping - slumped in corridors, snoozing in chairs, snuggled under work-tables - for at times this did seem a rather soporific Figaro under Martyn Brabbins’ baton. »
30 Mar 2018
Time was I could hear the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge almost any evening I chose, at least during term time. (If I remember correctly, Mondays were reserved for the mixed voice King’s Voices.) »
30 Mar 2018
Lyric Opera of Chicago’s innovative, new production of Charles Gounod’s Faust succeeds on multiple levels of musical and dramatic representation. The title role is sung by Benjamin Bernheim, his companion in adventure Méphistophélès is performed by Christian Van Horn. »
26 Mar 2018
Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a play of the night: of dark interiors and shadowy forests. ‘Light thickens, and the crow/Makes wing to th’ rooky wood,’ says Macbeth, welcoming the darkness which, whether literal or figurative, is thrillingly and threateningly palpable. »
25 Mar 2018
Daniel Catán’s widely celebrated opera, Florencia en el Amazonas received a top tier production at the wholly rejuvenated San Diego Opera company. »
25 Mar 2018
Four singers were awarded prizes at the inaugural Glyndebourne Opera Cup, which reached its closing stage at Glyndebourne on 24th March. The Glyndebourne Opera Cup focuses on a different single composer or strand of the repertoire each time it is held. In 2018 the featured composer was Mozart and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment accompanied the ten finalists. »
25 Mar 2018
It’s sometimes suggested that it was the simultaneous decline of the popularity of Italian opera seria among Georgian audiences and, in consequence, of the fortunes of Handel’s Royal Academy King’s Theatre, that led the composer to turn his hand to oratorio in English, the genre which would endear him to the hearts of the nation. »
23 Mar 2018
The Opera Forward Festival (OFF) in Amsterdam is about new things: new compositions, rediscovered works and new faces. This year’s program included a double bill produced by Dutch National Opera’s talent development wing. Leonard Bernstein’s portrait of a miserable marriage in affluent suburbia, Trouble in Tahiti, was the contrasting companion piece to James McMillan’s Clemency, a study of the sinister side of religious belief. »
23 Mar 2018
Metteur en scène Christophe Honoré placed his 2016 Aix Festival Cosi fan tutte in Ethiopia. Unfortunately his current Lyon Don Carlos enjoys no such equivalent poetic intuition. »
21 Mar 2018
A revival of the Opéra de Lyon’s 2012 Occupy Wall St. production of Verdi’s 1865 Macbeth, transforming naive commentary into strange irony, some high art included. »
21 Mar 2018
On March 4, 2018, Arizona Opera presented Gioachino Rossini’s The Barber of Seville in Tucson. Allen Moyer designed the bright and happy scenery for performances at Minnesota Opera, »
21 Mar 2018
Long Beach Opera often takes willing audiences on an unexpected journey and such is undeniably the case with its fascinating traversal of The Invention of Morel. »
21 Mar 2018
Katie Hawks makes quite a claim for Handel’s Acis and Galatea when, in her programme article, she describes it as the composer’s ‘most perfect work’. Surely, one might feel, this is a somewhat hyperbolic evaluation of a 90-minute pastoral masque, or serenade, based on an episode from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which has its origins in a private entertainment? »
20 Mar 2018
Stile Antico’s lunchtime play-list, celebrating the Virgin Queen’s long reign, shuffled between sacred and secular works, from penitential to patriotic, from sensual to celebratory. »
17 Mar 2018
Verdi's La traviata is one of those opera which every opera company needs to have in its repertoire, and productions need to balance intelligent exploration of the issues raised by the work with the need to reach as wide an audience as possible with an opera which is likely to attract audience members who are not regular opera-goers. »
16 Mar 2018
Continuing their MOZART 250 series, The Mozartists/ Classical Opera began dipping into the operatic offerings of 1768 at Wigmore Hall in January, when they presented numbers from Mozart’s La finta semplice, Jommelli’s Fetonte, Hasse’s Pirano e Tisbe and Haydn’s Lo speziale. »
14 Mar 2018
Schwanengesang isn't Schubert's Swan Song any more than it is a cycle like Die schöne Müllerin or Winterreise. The title was given it by his publishers Haslingers, after his death, combining settings of two very different poets, Ludwig Rellstab and Heinrich Heine. Wigmore Hall audiences have heard lots of good Schwanengesangs, including Boesch and Martineau performances in the past, but this was something special. »
14 Mar 2018
“After such cruel events, I don’t know if I am dreaming or awake.” So says Almirena, daughter of the Crusader Goffredo, when she is rescued by her beloved warrior-hero, Rinaldo, from the clutches of the evil sorceress, Armida. »
11 Mar 2018
French grand opera and small opera companies are an unlikely combination. Yet OPERA2DAY, a company of modest means, is currently touring the Netherlands with Hamlet by Ambroise Thomas. »
09 Mar 2018
Krzysztof Warlikowski’s production for the ROH of From the House of the Dead is ‘new’ in several regards. It’s (astonishingly) the first time that Janáček’s last opera has been staged at Covent Garden; it’s Warlikowski’s debut at Covent Garden; and the production uses a new 2017 critical edition prepared by John Tyrrell. »
08 Mar 2018
With artifice, disguise, and questions on fidelity as the basis of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, the composer’s mature opera has returned to the stage at Lyric Opera of Chicago. »
08 Mar 2018
Welsh National Opera’s wheel of destiny has rolled into Birmingham this week, with Verdi’s sprawling tragedy, La forza del destino, opening the company’s ‘Rabble Rousing’ triptych at the Hippodrome. »
07 Mar 2018
The gossamer web of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is sufficiently insubstantial and ambiguous to embrace multiple interpretative readings: the play can be a charming comic caper, a jangling journey through human pettiness and cruelty, a moonlit fairy fantasy or a shadowy erotic nightmare, and much more besides. »
03 Mar 2018
Les Funérailles Royales de Louis XIV, with Ensemble Pygmalion, conducted by Raphaël Pichon now on DVD/Blu -ray from Harmonia Mundi. This captures the historic performance at the Chapelle Royale de Versailles in November 2015, on the 300th anniversary of the King's death. »
02 Mar 2018
Having given us Christopher Alden's strangely dystopic production of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream in 2011, English National Opera (ENO) has opted for Robert Carsen's bed-inspired vision for the latest revival of the opera at the London Coliseum. »
02 Mar 2018
The big musical set pieces in Turandot require voice, voice, and more voice, and San Diego Opera has gifted us with a world-class cast of singing actors. »
27 Feb 2018
Four years have passed since my last Dialogues des Carmélites, and on that occasion - Robert Carsen’s production for the ROH - heightened dramatic intensity, revolutionary insurrection (enhanced by an oppressed populace formed by a 67-strong Community Ensemble) and, under the baton of Simon Rattle, luxuriant musical rapture, were the order of the day. »
27 Feb 2018
Seattle Opera’s new production of Béatrice et Bénédict is best regarded as a noble experiment, performed expressly to see if Berlioz’ delectable 1862 opéra comique can successfully be brought into the living repertory outside its native France. As such, it is quite a success. »
26 Feb 2018
Bampton Classical Opera’s 25th anniversary season opens with a
concert on 7th March at St John’s Smith Square to celebrate the
legendary soprano Nancy Storace.
»
25 Feb 2018
Tomas Luis de Victoria’s Tenebrae Responsories are designed to occupy the final three days of Holy Week, and contemplate the themes of loss, betrayal and death that dominate the Easter week. As such, the Responsories demand a sense of darkness, reflection and depth that this new recording by Stile Antico - at least partially - captures. »
25 Feb 2018
Mahler Symphony no 9 in D major, with Daniel Harding conducting the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, new from Harmonia Mundi. A rewarding performance on many levels, not least because it's thoughtfully sculpted, connecting structure to meaning. »
22 Feb 2018
It is well known that in addition to the fourteen songs by Alma Mahler published in her lifetime, several dozen more - perhaps as many as one hundred - were written and have been lost or destroyed. »
22 Feb 2018
Wigmore Hall was transformed into a musical menagerie earlier this week, when bass-baritone Ashley Riches, a Radio 3 New Generation Artist, and pianist Joseph Middleton took us on a pan-European lunchtime stroll through a gallery of birds and beasts, blooms and bugs. »
18 Feb 2018
Nationality is a complicated thing at the best of times. (At the worst of times: well, none of us needs reminding about that.) What, if anything, might it mean for Hugo Wolf’s Italian Songbook? Almost whatever you want it to mean, or not to mean. »
18 Feb 2018
At my advanced age, I have now experienced ten different productions of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman in my opera-going lifetime, but Opera San Jose’s just might be the finest. »
16 Feb 2018
The relationship between music and money is long-standing, complex and inextricable. In the Baroque era it was symbiotically advantageous. »
16 Feb 2018
The semi-finalists for the first Glyndebourne Opera Cup have been announced. Following a worldwide search that attracted nearly 200 entries, and preliminary rounds in Berlin, London and Philadelphia, 23 singers aged 21-28 have been chosen to compete in the semi-final at Glyndebourne on 22 March. »
16 Feb 2018
English National Opera (ENO) has announced the casts for Acis and Galatea and Paul Bunyan, 2018’s two ENO Studio Live productions. ENO Studio Live forms part of ENO Outside which takes ENO’s work to arts-engaged audiences that may not have considered opera before, presenting the immense power of opera in more intimate studio and theatre environments. »
16 Feb 2018
The 2018 London Handel Festival explores Handel’s relationship with the city. Running from 17 March to 16 April 2018, the Festival offers four weeks of concerts, talks, walks & film screenings explore masterpieces by Handel, from semi-staged operas to grand oratorio and lunchtime recitals. »
16 Feb 2018
Internationally-renowned Dartington Summer School & Festival has released the course programme for its 70th Anniversary Summer School and Festival, curated by the pianist Joanna MacGregor, that will run from 28th July to 25th of August 2018. »
14 Feb 2018
What better evocation of bel canto than an opera which uses the power of song to dispel madness and to reunite the heroine with her banished fiancé? Such is the final premise of Vincenzo Bellini’s I puritani, currently in performance at Lyric Opera of Chicago. »
14 Feb 2018
The current government’s unfathomable handling of the Brexit negotiations might tempt one to conclude that the entire Conservative Party are living in the land of the fairies. In Gilbert & Sullivan’s 1882 operetta Iolanthe, the arcane and Arcadia really do conflate, and Cal McCrystal’s new production for English National Opera relishes this topsy-turvy world where peris consort with peri-wigs. »
12 Feb 2018
Any Laurent Pelly production is news, any role undertaken by soprano Stephanie d’Oustrac is news. Here’s the news from Marseille. »
10 Feb 2018
As part of its continuing, adventurous “Detour” series, San Diego Opera mounted a deliciously moody, proudly pulsating, wholly evocative presentation of Astor Piazzolla’s “nuevo tango” opera, Maria de Buenos Aires. »
09 Feb 2018
The Nicolas Joel 1999 production of Die Walküre seen just now in Toulouse well upholds the Airbus city’s fame as Bayreuth-su-Garonne (the river that passes through this quite beautiful, rich city). »
08 Feb 2018
Carmen is dead. Long live Carmen. In a sense, both Bizet’s opera and his gypsy diva have been ‘done to death’, but in this new production at the ROH (first seen at Frankfurt in 2016) Barrie Kosky attempts to find ways to breathe new life into the show and resurrect, quite literally, the eponymous temptress. »
07 Feb 2018
On Friday February 2, 2018, Arizona Opera presented Leonard Bernstein’s Candide to honor the 100th anniversary of the composer’s birth. Although all the music was Bernstein’s, the text was written and re-written by numerous authors including Lillian Hellman, Richard Wilbur, Stephen Sondheim, John La Touche, and Dorothy Parker, as well as the composer. »
05 Feb 2018
The second of Philip Glass’s so-called 'profile' operas, Satyagraha is magnificent in ENO’s acclaimed staging, with a largely new cast and conductor bringing something very special to this seminal work. »
05 Feb 2018
From the Berwaldhallen, Stockholm, a very interesting Mahler Symphony no 8 with Daniel Harding and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. The title "Symphony of a Thousand" was dreamed up by promoters trying to sell tickets, creating the myth that quantity matters more than quality. For many listeners, Mahler 8 is still a hard nut to crack, for many reasons, and the myth is part of the problem. Mahler 8 is so original that it defies easy categories. »
05 Feb 2018
At the Wigmore Hall, Schubert's birthday is always celebrated in style. This year, Angelika Kirchschlager and Julius Drake, much loved Wigmore Hall audience favourites, did the honours, with a recital marking the climax of the two-year-long Complete Schubert Songs Series. The programme began with a birthday song, Namenstaglied, and ended with a farewell, Abschied von der Erde. Along the way, a traverse through some of Schubert's finest moments, highlighting different aspects of his song output : Schubert's life, in miniature. »
04 Feb 2018
Never heard of Nicola De Giosa (1819-85), a composer who was born in Bari (a town on the Adriatic, near the heel of Italy), but who spent most of his career in Naples? Me, neither! »
04 Feb 2018
Schubert's Winterreise is almost certainly the most performed Lieder cycle in the repertoire. Thousands of performances and hundreds of recordings ! But Mark Padmore and Kristian Bezuidenhout's recording for Harmonia Mundi is proof of concept that the better the music the more it lends itself to re-discovery and endless revelation. »
04 Feb 2018
The first thing that struck me in this Wigmore Hall recital was the palpable sincerity of Ilker Arcayürek’s artistry. Sincerity is not everything, of course; what we think of as such may even be carefully constructed artifice, although not, I think, here. »
04 Feb 2018
On January 30, 2018, Arizona Opera and the Tucson Desert Song Festival presented a recital by lyric soprano Lisette Oropesa in the University of Arizona’s Holsclaw Hall. Looking like a high fashion model in her silver trimmed midnight-blue gown, the singer and pianist Michael Borowitz began their program with Pablo Luna’s Zarzuela aria, “De España Vengo.” (“I come from Spain”). »
01 Feb 2018
Youth met experience for this penultimate instalment of the Wigmore Hall’s Schubert: The Complete Songs series, and the results were harmonious and happy. British soprano Harriet Burns, German tenor Ferdinand Keller and American baritone Harrison Hintzsche were supportively partnered by lieder ‘old-hand’, Graham Johnson, and we heard some well-known and less familiar songs in this warmly appreciated early-afternoon recital. »
29 Jan 2018
Brent Opera’s Nabucco was a triumph in that it worked as a piece of music theatre against some odds, and was a good evening out. »
29 Jan 2018
It is, of course, quite an achievement in itself for a symphony orchestra to perform Das Rheingold or indeed any of the Ring dramas. It does not happen very often, not nearly so often as it should; for given Wagner’s crucial musico-historical position, this is music that should stand at the very centre of their repertoires – just as Beethoven should at the centre of opera orchestras’. »
29 Jan 2018
This was the infamous production that was booed to extinction at Covent Garden. Palermo’s Teatro Massimo now owns the production. »
29 Jan 2018
AKA I masnadieri, rare early Verdi, though not as rare as Alzira. In 1847 London’s Her Majesty’s Theatre commissioned the newly famous Verdi to write this opera for the London debut of Swedish soprano Jenny Lind. »
28 Jan 2018
It is cause for celebration that Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s epic Moby Dick has been realized in a handsome new physical production by Utah Opera. »
24 Jan 2018
Julius Drake must have had had a lot of fun compiling this lieder programme, which was inspired by a visit to the home of Robert and Clara Schumann on Inselstraße in Leipzig. The couple lived in this classical building during the 1840s and the visitors’ book reads like a roll call of the greatest Romantic artists—composers, poets, performers—of the day. »
23 Jan 2018
Not the 14th century Chinese play nor its 1832 French translation, but a 1931 operatic re-creation by Alexander Zemlinsky of a 1925 German translation by “Klabund,” staged just now in Lyon by French stage director Richard Brunel. »
21 Jan 2018
When did “concept” become a dirty word? In the world of opera, the rot set in innocently, gradually. »
21 Jan 2018
The Tucson Desert Song Festival consists of three weekends of vocal music in orchestral, chamber, choral, and solo formats along with related lectures and master classes. »
20 Jan 2018
Following their marriage, on 12th September 1840, Robert and Clara Schumann made their home in a first-floor apartment on the piano nobile of a classical-style residence now known as the Schumann House, on Inselstraße, just a short walk from the centre of Leipzig. »
17 Jan 2018
Two great operas come from the year 1911 - Richard Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier and Bela Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle. Both are masterpieces, but they are very different kinds of operas and experienced quite asymmetric performance histories. »
16 Jan 2018
Now on its ninth revival, Jonathan Kent’s classic Tosca for Covent Garden is a study in art, beauty and passion but also darkness, power and empire. Part of the production’s lasting greatness, and contemporary value, is that it looks inwards towards the malignancy of a great empire (in this case a Napoleonic one), whilst looking outward towards a city-nation in terminal decline (Rome). »
16 Jan 2018
The Royal Opera House has announced the five singers who will join the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme in September, selected from more than 440 applicants from 59 countries. »
16 Jan 2018
New recording of the English version of Bohuslav Martinů's The Epic of Gilgamesh, from Supraphon, the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Manfred Honeck. This is the world premiere recording of the text in English, the original language in which it was written. »
14 Jan 2018
The new recording, from Munich, has features in common with one from Stuttgart that I greatly enjoyed and reviewed here: the singers are all native French-speakers, the orchestra is associated with a German radio channel, we are hearing an actual performance (or in this case an edited version from several performances, in April 2016), and the recording is released by the orchestra itself or its institutional parent. »
14 Jan 2018
The two works on this CD make an apt and welcome pair. First we have Ravel’s sumptuous three-song cycle about the mysteries of love and fantasies of exotic lands. Then we have his one-act opera that takes place in a land that, to French people at the time, was beckoningly exotic, and whose title might be freely translated “The Nutty and Delightful Things That Can Happen in Spain in Just One Hour”. »
12 Jan 2018
Opera transcends time and place. An anonymous letter, printed with the libretto of Monteverdi’s Le nozze d’Enea con Lavinia and written two years before his death, assures the reader that Monteverdi’s music will continue to affect and entrance future generations: »
11 Jan 2018
One recent survey suggested that in 1981, the average age of a classical concertgoer was 36, whereas now it is 60-plus. So, how pleasing it was to see the Barbican Centre foyers, cafes and the Hall itself crowded with young people, as members of the London Schools Symphony Orchestra prepared to perform with soprano Louise Alder and conductor Sir Richard Armstrong, in a well-balanced programme that culminated with an ‘anniversary’ performance of Holst’s The Planets. »
10 Jan 2018
In De Profundis, his long epistle to ‘Dear Bosie’, Oscar Wilde speaks literally ‘from the depths’, incarcerated in his prison cell in Reading Gaol. As he challenges the young lover who has betrayed him and excoriates Society for its wrong and unjust laws, Wilde also subjects his own aesthetic ethos to some hard questioning, re-evaluating a life lived in avowal of the amorality of luxury and beauty. »
08 Jan 2018
Epic, innovative and bold, Haydn’s The Creation epitomises the grandeur and spirit of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. »
06 Jan 2018
I had never heard of Stefano Secco before receiving this CD. But I see that, at age 34, he already has had a substantial career, singing major roles at important houses throughout Europe and, while I was not paying attention, occasionally in the US. »
06 Jan 2018
For its recent production of Georges Bizet’s Les pêcheurs de perles Lyric Opera of Chicago assembled an ideal cast of performers who blend well into an imaginative and colorful production. »
22 Dec 2017
Alma Deutscher’s Cinderella is most remarkable for one reason and one reason alone: It was composed by a 12-year old girl. »
22 Dec 2017
Mirages : visions of the exotic East, a selection of French opera arias and songs from Sabine Devieilhe, with Alexandre Tharaud and Les Siècles conducted by François-Xavier Roth, new from Erato »
22 Dec 2017
Like Stendhal when he first saw Rossini’s Cenerentola in Trieste in 1823, I was left stone cold by Rossini’s Cendrillon last night in Lyon. Stendhal complained that in Trieste nothing had been left to the imagination. As well, in Lyon nothing, absolutely nothing was left to the imagination. »
21 Dec 2017
Christmas isn’t Christmas without a Messiah. And, at the Barbican Hall, the Academy of Ancient Music reminded us why … while never letting us settle into complacency. »
19 Dec 2017
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s fairy tale The Golden Cockerel was this
holiday season’s ZaterdagMatinee operatic treat at the Concertgebouw. There
was real magic to this concert performance, chiefly thanks to Vasily
Petrenko’s dazzling conducting and the enchanting soprano Venera Gimadieva. »
18 Dec 2017
By pairing Mahler Das Lied von der Erde (Simon O'Neill, Christian Gerhaher) with Strauss Metamorphosen, Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra were making a truly powerful statement. The Barbican performance last night was no ordinary concert. This performance was extraordinary because it carried a message. »
17 Dec 2017
This was a rather disconcerting performance of David McVicar’s 2001 production of Rigoletto. Not only because of the portentous murkiness with which Paule Constable’s lighting shrouds designer Michael Vale’s ramshackle scaffolding; nor, the fact that stage and pit frequently seemed to be tugging in different directions. But also, because some of the cast seemed rather out of sorts. »
16 Dec 2017
Verdi Otello livestream from Norway with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Edward Garner with a superb cast, led by Stuart Skelton, Latonia Moore, and Lester Lynch and a good cast, with four choirs, the Bergen Philharmonic Chorus, the Edvard Grieg Kor, Collegiûm Mûsicûm Kor, the Bergen pikekor and Bergen guttekor (Children’s Choruses) with chorus master Håkon Matti Skrede. The Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra was founded in 1765, just a few years after the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra : Scandinavian musical culture has very strong roots, and is thriving still. Tucked away in the far north, Bergen may be a hidden treasure, but, as this performance proved, it's world class. »
15 Dec 2017
‘Gaudete, gaudete!’ - Rejoice, rejoice! - was certainly the underlying spirit of this lunchtime concert at Temple Church, part of the 5th Temple Winter Festival. Whether it was vigorous joy or peaceful contemplation, the Gesualdo Six communicate a reassuring and affirmative celebration of Christ’s birth in a concert which fused medieval and modern concerns, illuminating surprising affinities. »
13 Dec 2017
The journey is always the same, and never the same. As Ian Bostridge remarks, at the end of his prize-winning book Schubert’s Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession, when the wanderer asks Der Leiermann, “Will you play your hurdy-gurdy to my songs?”, in the final song of Winterreise, the ‘crazy but logical procedure would be to go right back to the beginning of the whole cycle and start all over again’. »
12 Dec 2017
San Francisco Opera wrapped up its 95th fall opera season just now with a bang up Turandot. It has been a season of hopeful hints that this venerable company may regain some of its former luster. »
08 Dec 2017
It felt rather decadent to be sitting in an opera house at 12pm. Even more so given the passion-fuelled excesses of Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, which might seem rather too sensual and savage for mid-day consumption. »
05 Dec 2017
Manitoba Opera opened its 45th season with Puccini’s Madama Butterfly proving that the aching heart as expressed through art knows no racial or cultural divide, with the Italian composer’s self-avowed favourite opera still able to spread its poetic wings across time and space since its Milan premiere in 1904. »
01 Dec 2017
In 1992, concert promoter Heinz Liebrecht introduced pianist Julius Drake to tenor Ian Bostridge and an acclaimed, inspiring musical partnership was born. On Wenlock Edge formed part of their first programme, at Holkham Hall in Norfolk; and, so, in this recital at Middle Temple Hall, celebrating their 25 years of music-making, the duo included Vaughan Williams’ Housman settings for tenor, piano and string quartet alongside works with a seventeenth-century origin or flavour. »
30 Nov 2017
Not many (maybe any) of the new operas presented by San Francisco Opera over the past 10 years would lure me to the War Memorial Opera House a second time around. But for Girls of the Golden West just now I would be there again tomorrow night and the next, and I am eagerly awaiting all future productions. »
30 Nov 2017
It’s taken a while for Rossini’s Semiramide to reach the Covent Garden stage. The last of the operas which Rossini composed for Italian theatres between 1810-1823, Semiramide has had only one outing at the Royal Opera House since 1887, and that was a concert version in 1986. »
29 Nov 2017
Hans Werner Henze works for mixed voice and chamber orchestra with SWR Vokalensemble and Ensemble Modern, conducted by Marcus Creed. Welcome new recordings of important pieces like Lieder von einer Insel (1964), Orpheus Behind the Wire (1984) plus Fünf Madrigale (1947). »
28 Nov 2017
‘His master’s masterpiece, the work of heaven’: ‘a common fountain’ from which flow ‘pure silver drops’. At the risk of effulgent hyperbole, I’d suggest that Antonio’s image of the blessed governance and purifying power of the French court - in the opening scene of Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi - is also a perfect metaphor for the voice of French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky, as it slips through Handel’s roulades like a silken ribbon. »
24 Nov 2017
Kudos to San Jose Opera for offering up a wholly winning, consistently captivating new production of Puccini’s seldom performed La Rondine.
»
24 Nov 2017
Here are five complete song sets by two of the greatest masters of French song. The performers are highly competent. I should have known, given the rave reviews that their 2015 recording of modern Norwegian songs received. »
24 Nov 2017
Clonter’s Opera Gala in the breath-taking beautiful ball-room at the Lansdowne Club in Mayfair was a glamorously glittering smattering of opera – which made me want to run out to every opera in town. »
24 Nov 2017
The opera world barely knows how to handle works that have significant amounts of spoken dialogue. Conductors and stage directors will often trim the dialogue to a bare minimum (Magic Flute), have it rendered as sung recitative (Carmen), or have it spoken in the vernacular though the sung numbers may often be performed in the original language (Die Fledermaus). »
24 Nov 2017
Here is the latest CD from a major label promoting a major new soprano. Aida Garifullina is utterly remarkable: a lyric soprano who also can handle coloratura with ease. Her tone has a constant shimmer, with a touch of quick, narrow vibrato even on short notes. »
24 Nov 2017
From the start of Lyric Opera of Chicago’s splendid, new production of Richard Wagner’s Die Walküre conflict and resolution are portrayed throughout with moving intensity. The central character Brünnhilde is sung by Christine Goerke and her father Wotan by Eric Owens. »
22 Nov 2017
San Diego Opera has mined solid gold with its mesmerizing and affecting production of As One, a part of their innovative ‘Detour Series.’ »
22 Nov 2017
Compared to the oft-explored world of German lieder and French chansons, the songs of Russia are unfairly neglected in recordings and in the concert hall. The raw emotion and expansive lyricism present in much of this repertoire was clearly in evidence at the Holywell Music Room for the penultimate day of the celebrated Oxford Lieder Festival. »
22 Nov 2017
This concert was an event on several levels - marking a decade since the death of Stockhausen, the fortieth anniversary (almost to the day) since Singcircle first performed STIMMUNG (at the Round House), and their final public performance of the piece. It was also a rare opportunity to hear (and see) Stockhausen’s last completed purely electronic work, COSMIC PULSES - an overwhelming visual and aural experience that anyone who was at this concert will long remember. »
21 Nov 2017
Bampton Classical Opera is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2017 Young Singers’ Competition is mezzo-soprano Emma Stannard and the runner-up is tenor Wagner Moreira. The winner of the accompanists’ prize, a new category this year, is Keval Shah. »
21 Nov 2017
With this recording of Mozart’s 1771 opera, Il sogno di Scipione (Sicpio’s Dream), Classical Opera continue their progress through the adolescent composer’s precocious achievements and take another step towards the fulfilment of their complete Mozart opera series for Signum Classics. »
20 Nov 2017
Winston Graham’s 1961 novel Marnie was bold for its time. Its themes of sexual repression, psychological suspense and criminality set within the dark social fabric of contemporary Britain are but outlier themes of the anti-heroine’s own narrative of deceit, guilt, multiple identities and blackmail. »
14 Nov 2017
On November 12, 2017, Arizona Opera presented Giacomo Puccini’s verismo opera, Tosca, in a dramatic production directed by Tara Faircloth. Her production utilized realistic scenery from Seattle Opera and detailed costumes from the New York City Opera. Gregory Allen Hirsch’s lighting made the set look like the church of St. Andrea as some of us may have remembered it from time gone by. »
12 Nov 2017
‘Only make the reader’s general vision of evil intense enough … and his own experience, his own imagination, his own sympathy … and horror … will supply him quite sufficiently with all the particulars. Make him think the evil, make him think it for himself, and you are released from weak specifications.’ »
10 Nov 2017
Austrian singer Elisabeth Kulman has had an interesting career trajectory. She began her singing life as a soprano but later shifted to mezzo-soprano/contralto territory. Esteemed on the operatic stage, she relinquished the theatre for the concert platform in 2015, following an accident while rehearsing Tristan. »
09 Nov 2017
The morning sickness, miscarriage and maundering wraiths are still present, but Katie Mitchell’s Lucia di Lammermoor, receiving its first revival at the ROH, seems less ‘hysterical’ this time round - and all the more harrowing for it. »
08 Nov 2017
Nothing but a wall and a floor (and an enormous battery of unseen lighting instruments) and two perfectly matched artists, the Manon of soprano Ellie Dehn and the des Grieux of tenor Michael Fabiano, the centerpiece of Paris’ operatic Belle Époque found vibrant presence on the War Memorial stage.
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08 Nov 2017
Audiences will have the chance to feel part of a new opera inspired by Siegfried Sassoon’s poems with an innovative 360-degree simulated experience of Garsington Opera’s Silver Birch on BBC Arts Digital from midday, Wednesday 8th November. »
07 Nov 2017
The stories surrounding Mozart’s Requiem are well-known.
Dominated by the work in the final days of his life, Mozart claimed that he
composed the Requiem for himself (Landon, 153), rather than for the wealthy
Count Walsegg’s wife, the man who had commissioned it in July 1791. »
05 Nov 2017
I had mixed feelings about Annabel Arden’s production of Il barbiere di Siviglia when it was first seen at Glyndebourne in 2016. Now reprised (revival director, Sinéad O’Neill) for the autumn 2017 tour, the designs remain a vibrant mosaic of rich hues and Moorish motifs, the supernumeraries - commedia stereotypes cum comic interlopers - infiltrate and interact even more piquantly, and the harpsichords are still flying in, unfathomably, from all angles. But, the drama is a little less hyperactive, the characterisation less larger-than-life. And, this Saturday evening performance went down a treat with the Canterbury crowd on the final night of GTO’s brief residency at the Marlowe Theatre. »
05 Nov 2017
‘There is no such thing as Hamlet,’ says Matthew Jocelyn in an interview printed in the 2017 Glyndebourne programme book. The librettist of Australian composer Brett Dean’s opera based on the Bard’s most oft-performed tragedy, which was premiered to acclaim in June this year, was noting the variants between the extant sources for the play - the First, or ‘Bad’, Quarto of 1603, which contains just over half of the text of the Second Quarto which published the following year, and the First Folio of 1623 - no one of which can reliably be guaranteed superiority over the other. »
04 Nov 2017
Schumann and Mahler Lieder with Florian Boesch and Malcolm Martineau, now out from Linn Records, following their recent Schubert Winterreise on Hyperion. From Boesch and Martineau, excellence is the norm. But their Mahler Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen takes excellence to even greater levels
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04 Nov 2017
‘We lived in a heap together in one barrack. The flooring was rotten and an inch deep in filth, so that we slipped and fell. When wood was put into the stove no heat came out, only a terrible smell that lasted through the winter.’ So wrote Dostoevsky, in a letter to his brother, about his experiences in the Siberian prison camp at Omsk where he was incarcerated between 1850-54, because of his association with a group of political dissidents who had tried to assassinate the Tsar. Dostoevsky’s ‘house of the dead’ is harrowingly reproduced by Maria Björsen’s set - a dark, Dantesque pit from which there is no possibility of escape - for David Pountney’s 1982 production of Janáček’s final opera, here revived as part of Welsh National Opera’s Russian Revolution series. »
02 Nov 2017
A Così fan tutte set in the 18th century, in Naples, beside the sea: what, no meddling with Mozart? Whatever next! First seen in 2006, and now on its final run before ‘retirement’, Nicholas Hytner’s straightforward account (revived by Bruno Ravella) of Mozart’s part-playful, part-piquant tale of amorous entanglements was a refreshing opener at the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury where Glyndebourne Festival Opera arrived this week for the first sojourn of the 2017 tour. »
29 Oct 2017
Shameless grabs for power; vicious, self-destructive dynastic in-fighting; a self-righteous and unwavering sense of entitlement; bruised egos and integrity jettisoned. One might be forgiven for thinking that it was the current Tory government that was being described. However, we are not in twenty-first-century Westminster, but rather in seventh-century Lombardy, the setting for Handel’s 1725 opera, Rodelinda, Richard Jones’s 2014 production of which is currently being revived at English National Opera. »
28 Oct 2017
Director Mario Bava’s motion picture, Hercules in the Haunted World, was released in Italy in November 1961, and in the United States in April 1964. In 2010 composer Patrick Morganelli wrote a chamber opera entitled Hercules vs. Vampires for Opera Theater Oregon. »
28 Oct 2017
If a credible portrayal of the title character in Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto is vital to any performance, the success of Lyric Opera of Chicago’s current, exciting production hinges very much on the memorable court jester and father sung by baritone Quinn Kelsey. »
28 Oct 2017
‘What’s the delay? A little wind and rain are nothing to worry about!’ The villagers’ indifference to the inclement weather which occurs mid-way through Jacopo Foroni’s opera Margherita - as the townsfolk set off in pursuit of two mystery assailants seen attacking a man in the forest - acquired an unintentionally ironic slant in Wexford Opera House on the opening night of Michael Sturm’s production, raising a wry chuckle from the audience. »
26 Oct 2017
This celebration of The Genius of Purcell by Carolyn Sampson and The King’s Consort at the Wigmore Hall was music-making of the most absorbing and invigorating kind: unmannered, direct and refreshing. »
18 Oct 2017
"....In lieblicher Bläue". Landmark new recordings of Hans Werner Henze Neue Volkslieder und Hirtengesänge and Kammermusik 1958 from the Scharoun Ensemble Berlin, with Andrew Staples, Markus Weidmann, Jürgen Ruck and Daniel Harding. »
15 Oct 2017
As I approach St Cyprian’s Church in Marylebone, musical sounds which are at once strange and sensuous surf the air. Inside I find seventy or so instrumentalists and singers nestled somewhat crowdedly between the pillars of the nave, rehearsing George Benjamin’s much praised 2012 opera, Written on Skin. »
11 Oct 2017
Classical Opera celebrated 20 years of music-making and story-telling with a characteristically ambitious and eclectic sequence of musical works at the Barbican Hall. Themes of creation and renewal were to the fore, and after a first half comprising a variety of vocal works and short poems, ‘Classical Opera’ were succeeded by their complementary alter ego, ‘The Mozartists’, in the second part of the concert for a rousing performance of Beethoven’s Choral Symphony - a work described by Page as ‘in many ways the most iconic work in the repertoire’. »
11 Oct 2017
Bampton Classical Opera’s third Young Singers’ Competition takes place this autumn, culminating in a public final at Holywell Music Room, Oxford on November 19. This biennial competition was first launched in 2013 to celebrate the company’s 20th birthday, and is aimed at identifying the finest emerging young opera singers currently working in the UK. »
09 Oct 2017
Independent Opera (IO) was very present at the Wigmore Hall last week. On Thursday 5 October, IO announced 26 year old Slovakian bass Peter Kellner as the winner of the 2018 Wigmore Hall/IO Voice Fellowship, a two-year award of £10,000 plus professional mentoring from IO and the Wigmore Hall. A graduate of the Konzervatórium Košice Timonova and the Mozarteum University Salzburg, Peter is currently a member of Oper Graz in Austria where later this season he will sing the title role of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro and Colline in Puccini’s La bohème. »
09 Oct 2017
Romeo and Juliet, Rinaldo and Armida, Ramadès and Aida: love thwarted by warring countries and families is a perennial trope of literature, myth and history. Indeed, ‘Love and war are all one,’ declared Miguel de Cervantes in Don Quixote, a sentiment which seems to be particularly exemplified by the world of baroque opera with its penchant for plundering Classical Greek and Roman myths for their extreme passions and conflicts. English Touring Opera’s 2017 autumn tour takes us back to the Baroque and back to the battle-lines. »
07 Oct 2017
Christoph Willibald von Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice opened the 2017–18 season at Lyric Opera of Chicago. »
05 Oct 2017
The Third Coming ! Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted Mahler Symphony no 3 with the Philharmonia at the Royal Festival Hall with Michelle DeYoung, the Philharmonia Voices and the Tiffin Boys’ Choir. It was live streamed worldwide, an indication of just how important this concert was, for it marks the Philharmonia's 34-year relationship with Salonen. »
05 Oct 2017
Purcell’s and Dryden’s King Arthur: or the British Worthy presents ‘problems’ for directors. It began life as a propaganda piece, Albion and Albanius, in 1683, during the reign of Charles II, but did not appear on stage as King Arthur until 1691 when William of Orange had ascended to the British Throne to rule as William III alongside his wife Mary and the political climate had changed significantly. »
04 Oct 2017
There have been dozens of capable, and more than capable, recordings of Lohengrin. Among the most-often praised are the Sawallisch/Bayreuth (1962), Kempe (1963), Solti (1985), and Abbado (1991). Recording a major Wagner opera involves heavy costs that a record company may be unable to recoup. »
04 Oct 2017
On a day when events in Las Vegas cast a shadow over much of the news this was not the most comfortable recital to sit through for many reasons. The chosen repertoire did, at times, feel unduly heavy - and very Germanic - but it was also unevenly sung. »
04 Oct 2017
It began ‘with a purely obscene fancy of a Missionary in difficulties’. So E.M. Forster wrote to Siegfried Sassoon in August 1923, of his short story ‘The Life to Come’ - the title story of a collection that was not published until 1972, two years after Forster’s death. »
02 Oct 2017
Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier was premiered at the Dresden Semperoper on 26th January 1911. Almost fifteen years to the day, on 10th January 1926, the theatre hosted another Rosenkavalier ‘premiere’, with the screening of a silent film version of the opera, directed by Robert Wiene - best known for his expressionistic masterpiece The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. The two-act scenario had been devised by Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the screening was accompanied by a symphony orchestra which Strauss himself conducted. »
01 Oct 2017
No sooner had I drafted my review of
Simon Mayr’s Medea in Corinto, »
30 Sep 2017
Director Phelim McDermott’s new Aida at ENO seems to have been conceived more in terms of what it will look like rather than what the opera is or might be ‘about’. And, it certainly does look good. Designer Tom Pye - with whom McDermott worked for ENO’s Akhnaten last year (alongside his other Improbable company colleague, costume designer Kevin Pollard) - has again conjured striking tableaux and eye-catching motifs, and a colour scheme which balances sumptuous richness with shadow and mystery. »
28 Sep 2017
A beautifully sung Traviata in British stage director John Copley’s 1987 production, begging the question is this grand old (30 years) production the SFO mise en scène for all times. »
26 Sep 2017
Was Judas a man ‘both vile and justifiably despised: an agent of the Devil, or a man who God-given task was to set in train an event that would be the salvation of Humankind’? This is the question at the heart of Sally Beamish’s The Judas Passion, commissioned jointly by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the Philharmonia Baroque of San Francisco. »
25 Sep 2017
As The Tallis Scholars processed onto the Cadogan Hall platform, for the opening concert of this season’s Choral at Cadogan series, there were some unfamiliar faces among its ten members - or faces familiar but more usually seen in other contexts. »
24 Sep 2017
As a prelude to the 2017-18 season Lyric Opera of Chicago presented its annual concert, Stars of Lyric Opera at Millennium Park, during the last weekend. A number of those who performed in this event will be featured in roles during the coming season. »
24 Sep 2017
Back in the LP days, if a singer wanted to show some sophistication, s/he
sometimes put out an album of songs by famous composers set to the poems of one
poet: for example, Phyllis Curtin’s much-admired 1964 disc of Debussy and Fauré
songs to poems by Verlaine, with pianist Ryan Edwards (available now as a CD
from VAI). »
24 Sep 2017
Watching David McVicar’s 2003 production of Die Zauberflöte at the Royal Opera House - its sixth revival - for the third time, I was struck by how discerningly John MacFarlane’s sumptuous designs, further enhanced by Paule Constable’s superbly evocative lighting, communicate the dense and rich symbolism of Mozart’s Singspiel. »
23 Sep 2017
Composer and librettist David Hertzberg’s magical mystery tour that is The Wake World opened to a cheering sold out audience that was clearly enraptured with its magnificent artistic achievement. »
22 Sep 2017
On September 10, 2017, Pacific Opera Project (POP) presented Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor in a beautiful outdoor setting at Forest Lawn. POP audiences enjoy casual seating with wine, water, and finger foods at each table. General and Artistic Director Josh Shaw greeted patrons in a “blood stained” white wedding suit. Since Lucia is a Scottish opera, it opened with an elegant bagpipe solo calling members of the audience to their seats. »
22 Sep 2017
Blazing Berlioz' The Damnation of Faust at the Barbican with Sir Simon Rattle, Bryan Hymel, Christopher Purves, Karen Cargill, Gabor Bretz, The London Symphony Orchestra and The London Symphony Chorus directed by Simon Halsey, Rattle's chorus master of choice for nearly 35 years. Towards the end, the Tiffin Boys' Choir, the Tiffin Girls' Choir and Tiffin Children's Choir (choirmaster James Day) filed into the darkened auditorium to sing The Apotheosis of Marguerite, their voices pure and angelic, their faces shining. An astonishingly theatrical touch, but absolutely right. »
20 Sep 2017
There‘s a powerful new force in the opera world and its name is O17.
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20 Sep 2017
If you never thought opera could make your eyes cross with visual sensory over load, you never saw Opera Philadelphia’s razzle-dazzle The Magic Flute. »
19 Sep 2017
Enterprising Opera Philadelphia has included a couple of intriguing site-specific events in their O17 Festival line-up. »
19 Sep 2017
Three years into their MOZART 250 project, Classical Opera have launched a new venture, The Mozartists, which is designed to allow the company to broaden its exploration of the concert and symphonic works of Mozart and his contemporaries. »
18 Sep 2017
Composer Kevin Puts and librettist Mark Campbell have gifted Opera Philadelphia (and by extension, the world) with a crackling and melodious new stage piece, Elizabeth Cree.
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18 Sep 2017
In her 200th anniversary year, in the county of her birth and in which she spent much of her life, and two days after she became the first female writer to feature on a banknote - the new polymer £10 note - Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park made a timely appearance, in operatic form, at The Grange in Hampshire. »
15 Sep 2017
Among the myriad of artistic innovation during the Kurt Herbert Adler era at San Francisco Opera was the expansion of the War Memorial Opera House pit. Thus there could be 100 players in the pit for this current edition of Strauss’ beloved opera, Elektra! »
14 Sep 2017
I have to confess, somewhat sheepishly, at the start of my conversation with Mark Padmore, that I had not previously been aware of the annual music festival held in the small Cotswolds town of Tetbury, which was founded in 2002 and to which Padmore will return later this month to perform a recital of lieder by Schubert and Schumann with pianist Till Fellner. »
13 Sep 2017
Mega famous L.A. artist David Hockney is no stranger at San Francisco Opera. Of his six designs for opera only the Met’s Parade and Covent Garden’s Die Frau ohne Schatten have not found their way onto the War Memorial stage. »
13 Sep 2017
In addition to fond memories of previous beguiling productions, I had two specific reasons for eagerly anticipating this annual visit by Bampton Classical Opera to St John’s Smith Square. First, it offered the chance to enjoy again the tunefulness and wit of Salieri’s dramma giocoso, La scuola de’ gelosi (The School of Jealousy), which I’d seen the company perform so stylishly at Bampton in July. »
13 Sep 2017
There was a decided nip in the air as I made my way to the opening night of the Royal Opera House’s 2017/18 season, eagerly anticipating the House’s first new production of La bohème for over forty years. But, inside the theatre in took just a few moments of magic for director Richard Jones and his designer, Stewart Laing, to convince me that I had left autumnal London far behind. »
12 Sep 2017
The Bavarian-born Johann Simon Mayr (1763–1845) trained and made his career
in Italy and thus ended up calling himself Giovanni Simone Mayr, or simply
G. S. Mayr. He is best known for having been composition teacher to
Giuseppe Donizetti. »
10 Sep 2017
It must be a Director’s nightmare. After all the months of planning, co-ordinating and facilitating, you are approaching the opening night of a new concert season, at which one of the world’s leading baritones is due to perform, accompanied by a pianist who is one of the world’s leading chamber musicians. And, then, appendicitis strikes. You have 24 hours to find a replacement vocal soloist or else the expectant patrons will be disappointed. »
10 Sep 2017
The courtly palace may have been opera’s first home but nowadays it gets out and about, popping up in tram-sheds, car-parks, night-clubs, on the beach, even under canal bridges. So, I wasn’t that surprised to find myself following The Opera Box down the shaft of Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Thames Tunnel at Rotherhithe for a double bill which brought together the gothic and the farcical. »
04 Sep 2017
It’s hard to imagine that Peter Maxwell Davies’ dramatic monologue, Eight Songs for a Mad King, can bear, or needs, any further contextualisation or intensification, so traumatic is its depiction - part public history, part private drama - of the descent into madness of King George III. It is a painful exposure of the fracture which separates the Sovereign King from the human mortal. »
04 Sep 2017
Sergei Prokofiev's Cantata for the Twentieth Anniversary of the October Revolution, Op 74, with Valery Gergiev conducting the Mariinsky Orchestra and Chorus. One Day That Shook the World to borrow the subtitle from Sergei Eisenstein's epic film October : Ten Days that Shook the World. »
03 Sep 2017
In this new release for Harmonia Mundi, German baritone Matthias Goerne
presents us with two gems of Bach’s cantata repertoire, with the texts of
both BWV 56 and 82 exploring one’s sense of hope in death. Goerne
adeptly interprets the paradoxical combination of hope and despair that
underpins these works, deploying a graceful lyricism alongside a richer, darker
bass register. »
01 Sep 2017
Winner of the 2017 Gramophone Awards, vocal category - Matthias Goerne and Christoph Eschenbach - Johannes Brahms Vier ernste Gesänge and other Brahms Lieder. Here is why ! An exceptional recording, probably a new benchmark. »
01 Sep 2017
This Prom was all about places: geographical, physical, pictorial, poetic, psychological. And, as we journeyed through these landscapes of the mind, there was plenty of reminiscence and nostalgia too, not least in Samuel Barber’s depiction of early twentieth-century Tennessee - Knoxville: Summer of 1915. »
31 Aug 2017
Billed as the ‘First British Performance’ - though it had had a prior, quasi-private outing at the Roxburgh Theatre, Stowe in July - Opera della Luna’s production of Johann Strauss Jnr’s The Queen’s Lace Handkerchief (Das Spitzentuch der Königin) at Wilton’s Music Hall began to sound pretty familiar half-way through the overture (which was played with spark and elegance by conductor Toby Purser’s twelve-piece orchestra). »
30 Aug 2017
Ravishing : Visions, Véronique Gens in a glorious new recording of French operatic gems, with Hervé Niquet conducting the Münchener Rundfunkorchester. This disc is a companion piece to Néère, where Gens sang familiar Duparc, Hahn, and Chausson mélodies. »
30 Aug 2017
The advantage of Glyndebourne Opera’s performances at the BBC Proms is that they give us a chance to concentrate on the music making. And there was plenty of high-quality music-making on offer at the Royal Albert Hall on Monday 28 August 2017 when Glyndebourne Opera performed Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito. »
29 Aug 2017
The rare and somewhat interesting Rossini! Torvaldo e Dorliska (1815) comes just after Elisabetta, Regina di Ingleterra (the first of his nineteen operas for Naples) — a huge success, and just before Il barbiere di Siviglia in Rome — a failure. »
28 Aug 2017
At Prom 56, Jakub Hrůša conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a programme on the theme of the Hussite Wars and their place in Bohemian culture showing how the Hussite hymn was incorporated into music by Smetana, Martinů, Dvořák, Janáček and Josef Suk.
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28 Aug 2017
South African actor, artist, multimedia artist, film and theater, now opera director William Kentridge has taken the world by storm over the past few years. In my experience The Magic Flute in Brussels, The Return of Ulysses (puppets) in San Francisco, The Nose in Aix, Lulu at the Met, Die Winterreise and his “One Man Show” in Aix. And now Wozzeck at the Salzburg Festival. »
27 Aug 2017
Undaunted by the bloody majesty of this 1606 Shakespeare tragedy, German composer Aribert Reimann embraced the challenge back in the cold-war era (1970’s). Its Munich premiere was in 1978, a Jean-Pierre Ponnelle production that then traveled to San Francisco in 1981. Of the Munich cast only Helga Dernesch as Goneril appeared in San Francisco.
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26 Aug 2017
From time to time felicitous circumstances create impromptu masterpieces, like the Salzburg 2017 Whitsun Festival production of Handel's Ariodante that has continued just now into the 2017 summer festival. »
24 Aug 2017
In the wake of the terrible fire at Grenfell Tower, the soprano Nazan Fikret decided to rally fellow performers and put together a concert to raise funds for those affected, and she has brought together a sensational line-up of both established and up-and-coming artists. »
23 Aug 2017
There was a sense of event about the closing performance of Derrick Wang’s Scalia/Ginsberg for days in advance. »
23 Aug 2017
If anything is more all-American than baseball, it just might be Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, which scored a triumphant home run for the Glimmerglass Festival. »
23 Aug 2017
A funny thing happened on the way to Glimmerglass Festival’s stylish Xerxes.
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23 Aug 2017
It is hard to believe that an opera by Donizetti is receiving its American premiere at the 2017 Glimmerglass Festival, but such is the case with The Siege of Calais.
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23 Aug 2017
The well-to-do merchant life of the opera’s small Russian town of Czarist times translocated to a monumental, socialistically heroic, concrete slum block. »
22 Aug 2017
Glimmerglass Festival continues its string of world premiere youth operas with a wholly enchanting production of Ben Moore and Kelly Rourke’s Robin Hood. »
22 Aug 2017
Director Molly Smith knew just how to best succeed at staging the evergreen classic Oklahoma! for Glimmerglass Festival. »
22 Aug 2017
Impeccable casting — see photos. Three new generation Italian buffos brought startling new life to Pier Luigi Pizzi’s 2002 production of Rossini’s first major comedy (La Scala, 1812).
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22 Aug 2017
German soprano Christiane Karg invited us to accompany her on a journey during this lunchtime chamber music Prom at Cadogan Hall as she followed the voyages of French composers in Europe and beyond, and their return home. »
21 Aug 2017
Prom 46: Schoenberg's Gurrelieder with Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra, Simon O'Neill, Eva-Maria Westbroek, Karen Cargill, Peter Hoare, Christopher Purves and Thomas Quasthoff. And three wonderful choirs - the CBSO Chorus, the London Symphony Chorus and Orfeó Català from Barcelona, with Chorus Master Simon Halsey, Rattle's close associate for 35 years. »
21 Aug 2017
That of Rossini (in French) and that of Lord Byron (in English, Russian, Italian and Spanish), the battles of both Negroponte (1470) and of Missolonghi (1826) re-enacted amidst massive piles of plastic water bottles (thousands of them) that collapsed onto the heroine at Mahomet II's destruction of Corinth. »
21 Aug 2017
John Butt and the Dunedin Consort's 2012 recording of Bach's St John Passion was ground-breaking for it putting the passion into the context of a reconstruction of the original Lutheran Vespers service. »
19 Aug 2017
‘Asteroid flyby in October: A drill for the end of the world?’ So shouted a headline in USA Today earlier this month, as journalist Doyle Rice asked, ‘Are we ready for an asteroid impact?’ in his report that in October NASA will conduct a drill to see how well its planetary defence system would work if an actual asteroid were heading straight for Earth. »
18 Aug 2017
At the start of the 20th century, French composers seemed to be conducting a cultural love affair with Spain, an affair initiated by the Universal Exposition of 1889 where the twenty-five-year old Debussy and the fourteen-year-old Ravel had the opportunity to hear new sounds from East Asia, such as the Javanese gamelan, alongside gypsy flamenco from Granada. »
17 Aug 2017
Librettists have long mined the literature shelves for narratives that are ripe for musico-dramatic embodiment. On the whole, it’s the short stories and poems - The Turn of the Screw, Eugene Onegin or Death in Venice, for example - that best lend themselves to operatic adaptation. »
15 Aug 2017
Hibiki: sound, noise, echo, reverberation, harmony. Commissioned by the Suntory Hall in Tokyo to celebrate the Hall’s 30th anniversary in 2016, Mark-Anthony Turnage’s 50-minute Hibiki, for two female soloists, children’s chorus and large orchestra, purports to reflect on the ‘human reverberations’ of the Tohoku earthquake in 2011 and the devastation caused by the subsequent tsunami and radioactive disaster. »
11 Aug 2017
Soprano Louise Alder has had an eventful few months. Declared ‘Young Singer of the Year’ at the 2017 International Opera Awards in May, the following month she won the Dame Joan Sutherland Audience Prize at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World. »
09 Aug 2017
A great performance of Janáček’s song cycle The Diary of One Who Disappeared can be, allowing for the casting of a superb tenor, an experience on a par with Schoenberg’s Erwartung. That Shadwell Opera’s minimalist, but powerful, staging in the intimate setting of Studio 2 of the Arcola Theatre was a triumph was in no small measure to the magnificent singing of the tenor, Sam Furness. »
07 Aug 2017
Remembering the centenary of the Russian Revolution, this Proms performance of Mussorgsky’s mighty Khovanshchina (all four and a quarter hours of it) exceeded all expectations on a musical level. And, while the trademark doorstop Proms opera programme duly arrived containing full text and translation, one should celebrate the fact that - finally - we had surtitles on several screens. »
06 Aug 2017
You know what I loved best about Santa Fe Opera’s world premiere The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs? »
06 Aug 2017
For the last three years, Longborough Festival Opera’s repertoire of choice for their Young Artist Programme productions has been Baroque opera seria, more specifically Handel, with last year’s Alcina succeeding Rinaldo in 2014 and Xerxes in 2015. »
05 Aug 2017
This is the only disc ever devoted to the art of Sesto Bruscantini (1919–2003). Record collectors value his performance of major baritone roles, especially comic but also serious ones, on many complete opera recordings, such as Il barbiere di Siviglia (with Victoria de los Angeles). He continued to perform at major houses until at least 1985 and even recorded Mozart's Don Alfonso in 1991, when he was 72. »
05 Aug 2017
Since 1952, the ARD—the organization of German radio
stations—has run an annual competition for young musicians. Winners have
included Jessye Norman, Maurice André, Heinz Holliger, and Mitsuko
Uchida. Starting in 2015, the CD firm GENUIN has offered, as a separate award,
the chance for one of the prize winners to make a CD that can serve as a kind
of calling card to the larger musical and music-loving world. In 2016, the
second such CD award was given to the Aris Quartett (second-prize winner in the
“string quartet” category). »
05 Aug 2017
A tale of a lazy, befuddled world leader that ‘has no clothes on’ and his two dimwit sons, hmmmm, what does that remind me of. . .? »
03 Aug 2017
If you don’t like a given moment in Santa Fe Opera’s staging of Alcina, well, just like the volatile mountain weather, wait two minutes and it will surely change. »
02 Aug 2017
With Die Fledermaus’ thrice familiar overture still lingering in our ears, it didn’t take long for the assault of hijinks to reduce the audience into guffaws of delight. »
02 Aug 2017
If there is any practitioner currently singing the punishing title role of Lucia di Lammermoor better than Brenda Rae, I am hard-pressed to name her. »
02 Aug 2017
Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen can be a difficult opera to stage, despite its charm and simplicity. In part it is a good, old-fashioned morality tale about the relationships between humans and animals, and between themselves, but Janáček doesn’t use a sledgehammer to make this point. It is easy for many productions to fall into parody, and many have done, and it is a tribute to The Opera Company’s staging of this work at the Arcola Theatre that they narrowly avoided this pitfall. »
02 Aug 2017
For all its extreme popularity with choirs, Handel’s oratorio Israel in Egypt is a somewhat problematic work; the scarcity of solos makes hiring professional soloists an extravagant expense, and the standard version of the work starts oddly with a tenor recitative. If we return to the work's history then these issues are put into context, and this is what William Christie did for the performance of Handel’s Israel in Egypt at the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall on Tuesday 1 August 2017. »
30 Jul 2017
From Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, to Bruch’s choral-orchestral Odysseus, to Fauré’s Penelope, countless compositions have taken their inspiration from Homer’s Odyssey, perhaps not surprisingly given Homer’s emphasis on the power of music in the Greek world. »
29 Jul 2017
Oper Leipzig usually receives less international attention than its Dresden, Munich or Berlin counterparts; however, with its fabulous Gewandhaus Orchestra, and its penchant for opera rarities (and a new Ring Cycle), this quality hotspot will be attracting more and more opera lovers. Leipzig’s new production of Gounod’s Cinq Mars continues this high quality tradition. »
28 Jul 2017
Detlev Glanert's Requiem for Hieronymus Bosch should be a huge hit. Just as Carl Orff's Carmina Burana appeals to audiences who don't listen to early music (or even to much classical music), Glanert's Requiem for Hieronymus Bosch has all the elements for instant popular success. »
28 Jul 2017
Big birds are looming large at Glyndebourne this year. After Juno’s Peacock, which scooped up the suicidal Hipermestra, Chris Guth’s La clemenza di Tito offers us a huge soaring magpie, symbolic of Tito’s release from the chains of responsibility in Imperial Rome. »
23 Jul 2017
The last time Beethoven’s sole opera, Fidelio, was performed at the Proms, in 2009, Daniel Barenboim was making a somewhat belated London opera debut with his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. »
21 Jul 2017
In Out of Africa, her account of her Kenyan life, Karen Blixen relates an anecdote, ‘Farah and The Merchant of Venice’. When Blixen told Farah Aden, her Somali butler, the story of Shakespeare’s play, he was disappointed and surprised by the denouement: surely, he argued, the Jew Shylock could have succeeded in his bond if he had used a red-hot knife? As an African, Farah expected a different narrative, demonstrating that our reception of art depends so much on our assumptions and preconceptions. »
20 Jul 2017
The make-up is slapped on thickly in this new production of Leoncavallo’s Zazà by director Marie Lambert and designer Alyson Cummings at Investec Opera Holland Park. »
19 Jul 2017
David McVicar’s thrilling take on Verdi’s Rigoletto premiered as the first international production of this Summer’s Savonlinna Opera Festival. The scouts for the festival made the smart decision to let McVicar adapt his 2001 Covent Garden staging to the unique locale of Castle Olavinlinna.
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18 Jul 2017
The end of the ROH’s summer season was marked as usual by the Jette Parker Young Artists Summer Performance but this year’s showcase was a little lacklustre at times. »
17 Jul 2017
Only one Shakespeare play has resulted in three operas that get performed
today (whether internationally or primarily in one language-region). Perhaps
surprisingly, the play in question is a comedy that is sometimes considered a
lesser work by the Bard: The Merry Wives of Windsor. »
17 Jul 2017
For the centenary of Finland’s Independence, the Savonlinna Opera Festival brought back Kari Heiskanen’s spectacular 1992 production of Aulis Salinen’s Kullervo. The excellent Finnish soloists and glorious choir unflinchingly offered this opera of vocal blood and guts. Conductor Hannu Lintu fired up the Savonlinna Opera Festival Orchestra in Sallinen’s thrilling music. »
17 Jul 2017
If there was any doubt of the insignificance of mankind in the face of the forces of Nature, then Yannis Thavoris’ design for Olivia Fuchs production of Janáček’s Kát’a Kabanová - first seen at Investec Opera Holland Park in 2009 - would puncture it in a flash, figuratively and literally. »
16 Jul 2017
The bel canto repertoire requires stylish singing, with beautiful tone and elegant phrasing. Strength must be allied with grace in order to coast the vocal peaks with unflawed legato; flexibility blended with accuracy ensures the most bravura passages are negotiated with apparent ease. »
15 Jul 2017
Director Mariame Clément’s Don Pasquale, first seen during the 2011 tour and staged in the house in 2013, treads a fine line between realism and artifice. »
13 Jul 2017
It is hard to know where to begin to praise the peerless accomplishment that is Des Moines Metro Opera’s staggeringly powerful Billy Budd. »
11 Jul 2017
Romeo Castellucci’s aesthetic — if one may speak in the singular
— is very different from almost anything else on show in the opera house
at the moment. That, I have no doubt, is unquestionably a good thing.
Castellucci is a serious artist and it is all too easy for any of us to become
stuck in an artistic rut, congratulating ourselves not only on our
understanding but also, may God help us, our ‘taste’ —
as if so trivial a notion had something to do with anything other than
ourselves. »
11 Jul 2017
With Turandot, Des Moines Metro Opera operated from the premise of prima la voce, and if the no-holds-barred singing and rhapsodic playing didn’t send shivers down your spine, well, you were at the wrong address. »
11 Jul 2017
With an atmospheric, crackling performance of Astor Piazzolla’s Maria de Buenos Aires, Des Moines Metro Opera once again set off creative sparks with its Second Stage concept. »
11 Jul 2017
Schubert wrote Die schöne Müllerin (1824) for a tenor (or soprano) range - that of his own voice. Wilhelm Müller’s poems depict the youthful unsophistication of a country lad who, wandering with carefree unworldliness besides a burbling stream, comes upon a watermill, espies the miller’s fetching daughter and promptly falls in love - only to be disillusioned when she spurns him for a virile hunter. So, perhaps the tenor voice possesses the requisite combination of lightness and yearning to convey this trajectory from guileless innocence to disenchantment and dejection. »
11 Jul 2017
For my first trip to Finland, I flew from Helsinki to the east, close to the border of Russia near St. Petersburg over many of Suomi’s thousand lakes, where the summer getaway Savonlinna lays. Right after the solstice during July and early August, the town’s opera festival offers high quality productions. In this enchanting locale in the midst of peaceful nature, the sky at dusk after the mesmerising sunset fades away is worth the trip alone! »
11 Jul 2017
Bathed in Mediterranean light, basking in enlightenment Aix found two famous classical works, Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress in its famous festival’s open air Théâtre de l’Archevêche. But were we enlightened? »
10 Jul 2017
Des Moines Metro Opera’s richly detailed production of Sondheim’s A Little Night Music left an appreciative audience to waltz home on air, and has prompted this viewer to search for adequate superlatives. »
10 Jul 2017
Of all the places, I did not expect a sublime Tristan und Isolde in a repurposed barn in the Cotswolds. Don’t be fooled by Longborough’s stage without lavish red curtains to open and close each act. Any opera house would envy the riveting chemistry between Peter Wedd and Lee Bisset in this intimate, 500 seat setting. Conductor Anthony Negus proved himself a master at Wagner’s emotional depth. Epic drama in minimalistic elegance: who needs a big budget when you have talent and drama this passionate? »
09 Jul 2017
For almost thirty years, summer at the Concertgebouw has been synonymous
with Robeco SummerNights. This popular series expands the classical concert
formula with pop, film music, jazz and more, served straight up or mixed
together. Composer Leonard Bernstein’s versatility makes his oeuvre,
ranging from Broadway to opera, prime SummerNight fare. »
09 Jul 2017
It was fascinating to see — and of course, to hear — Krzysztof
Warlikowsi’s productions of Die Gezeichneten and Die Frau
ohne Schatten on consecutive nights of this year’s Munich Opera
Festival. »
09 Jul 2017
There have to be special reasons to release a monophonic live recording of a
much-recorded opera. Often it can give us the opportunity to hear a singer in a
major role that he or she never recorded commercially—or did record on
some later occasion, when the voice was no longer fresh. Often a live recording
catches the dramatic flow better than certain studio recordings that may be
more perfect technically. »
08 Jul 2017
Critic and scholar John Barker has several times complained, in the pages of
American Record Guide, about Baroque vocal recitals that add
instrumental works or movements as supposed relief or (as he nicely calls them)
“spacers.” »
08 Jul 2017
Hans Knappertsbusch was one of the most renowned Wagner conductors who ever
lived. His recordings of Parsifal, especially, are near-legendary
among confirmed Wagnerians. »
08 Jul 2017
Dulwich Opera Company’s Carmen was a convincingly successful show. This was mainly due to succinct musical direction and rigorous dramatic direction. It also meant that the proximity of the action was a fascinating treat, and by the artists being young, and easy on the eye. »
08 Jul 2017
There is a host of fine operas out there languishing more or less
unperformed (in some cases, quite unperformed). A few of them might even
qualify as ‘great’. (Feel free to remove inverted commas, should
that be your thing.) Franz Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten, whatever
its proponents might claim, is certainly not one of those: not even close. »
08 Jul 2017
An incredible feat! The Aix Festival opened five operas, all new productions, on five consecutive evenings. The fifth was Francesco Cavalli’s 1655 drama per musica, Erismena! The compulsive intellectualism of Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea (1643) long since thrown in the canals, Cavalli dissolves Venetian opera into purest, mindless hedonism. »
07 Jul 2017
Andrei Serban’s 1984 production of Turandot has returned to the Royal Opera House, for its sixteenth revival, and it remains a visual feast. The principals’ raw silk costumes, intricately embroidered and patterned, splash vibrant primary hues against the shadowy tiers which house the red-masked Chorus to the rear. »
05 Jul 2017
Fidelio is a great opera, but not an easy one to
perform. Much of the music is stirring, including some among the most
profoundly moving passages in all opera. The revolutionary political idealism
that underlies the opera is inspiring, particularly to those in German-speaking
lands, where it inspires reverence. »
05 Jul 2017
There were four simultaneous Carmen — those of Prosper Merimee, Georges Bizet, Dimitri Tcherniakov and Pablo Heras-Casado. »
04 Jul 2017
Back to the operatic days when the book took top billing and the composer's name was in the fine print. Collodi’s tale is an epic journey wrapped in sophisticated innocence that leaves you probably more disgusted than anything else — Collodi’s Pinocchio is not a charming child. »
04 Jul 2017
Franz Schreker Die Gezeichneten from the Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich, conducted by Ingo Metzmacher, easily the most rewarding full performance ever. Metzmacher gets Schreker - revealing his modernity and originality. There are many kinds of "modern". The idea that 20th-century music can only be atonal/tonal, or dissonant /romantic, is nonsense in itself. Schreker was a highly original composer, very much a man attuned to the creative ferment of his time, fuelled as it was by new ideas and social change. »
03 Jul 2017
There can hardly be a dry eye in the house, at the ‘Theatre in the Woods’ at West Horsley Place - Grange Park Opera’s new home - when, in Act 3 of Janáček's first mature opera, Natalya Romaniw’s Jenůfa realises that the tiny child whose frozen body has been discovered under the ice is her own dead son. »
02 Jul 2017
WNO’s summer tour of Joachim Herz’s 1978 production of Madame Butterfly, revived by Sarah Crisp, arrived at the Birmingham Hippodrome this week. A ‘traditional’ assemblage of raised dwellings and sliding Shoji screens, Reinhart Zimmermann’s sepia set evokes the dulling of oriental grace by Western mundanity. For the dull taupe curtains which frame the sides and room of the set drape their traditional sprinkling of willow and bamboo like a bleached Hokusai wave. The effect is suffocating, blocking out any sense of a world outside Cio-Cio-San’s abode. »
02 Jul 2017
Time, sands, mists: all slip through one’s fingers - intangible and irretrievable. Olivia Fuchs’ production of Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier for WNO communicates the opera’s message in a clear visual narrative of subtlety and dramatic eloquence. »
01 Jul 2017
One might expect a satire on sexual stereotypes penned in 1917 to feel a bit dated in 2017. But, in these days of gender fluidity, with science making biological choice a free-for-all, and with Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale having just hit US and UK television screens, Poulenc’s gender-bending Les mamelles de Tirésias - based on Apollinaire’s surrealist play and first seen at the Opera Comique in 1947 - proved a timely choice for the first half of RCM’s summer double bill. »
27 Jun 2017
Kathleen Ferrier Remembered, from SOMM Recordings, makes available on CD archive broadcasts of British and German song. All come from BBC broadcasts made between 1947 and 1952. Of the 26 tracks in this collection, 19 are "new", not having been commercially released. The remaining seven have been remastered by sound restoration engineer Ted Kendall. Something here even for those who already own the complete recordings. »
27 Jun 2017
Opera Theatre of Saint Louis knew to trust the surefire potential of Madame Butterfly, and pretty much stayed out of its way. »
27 Jun 2017
If opera is to remain a viable, accessible 21st century art form, it will be largely owing to the commitment of visionary companies like Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. »
27 Jun 2017
Mozart’s opera seria, La Clemenza di Tito, performed in English at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis did something I did not think possible. »
27 Jun 2017
Martin Duncan's production of Rossini's Il turco in Italia debuted in 2011, only the second production to be performed in Garsington Opera's then new home at Wormsley. Revived for the first time on 25 June 2017, David Parry was again conducting with Quirijn de Lang as Selim, Geoffrey Dolton as Don Geronio and Mark Stone as Prosdocimo returning to their roles, plus Sarah Tynan as Fiorilla, Katie Bray as Zaide, Luciano Botelho as Narciso and Jack Swanson as Albazar. Designs were by Francis O'Connor, with lighting by Mark Jonathan and movement by Nick Winston. »
27 Jun 2017
It’s country-house opera season, and Glyndebourne have decided it’s time for a return of Katharina Thoma’s country-house-set Ariadne auf Naxos, first seen in 2013. Thoma locates Strauss’s opera-about-opera in a 1940s manor house which has been sequestered as a military hospital, neatly alluding to Glyndebourne’s own history when it transformed itself into a centre for evacuees from east London and the Christie children’s nursery became a sick bay. »
25 Jun 2017
That Opera Theatre of Saint Louis fearlessly embraces the cutting edge is once again evidenced by their compelling American premiere of The Trial. »
25 Jun 2017
On June 9, 2017, Opera Las Vegas presented a traditional production of Verdi’s Rigoletto conducted by Music Director Gregory Buchalter with a cast headed by veteran baritone Michael Chioldi. A most convincing Rigoletto, Chioldi was a man in psychological pain from the begining of the opera. His fear and his vulnerability to the whims of the nobility were evident in every meaty, well-colored phrase he sang. »
25 Jun 2017
Thumbprint is the story of the young, innocent and illiterate Mukhtar Mai who was assaulted by a group of powerful men. Following the attack, Mukhtar, having supposedly been disgraced, was expected to commit suicide. Instead, she amazed everyone who knew her by going to the police and calling for the arrest of her attackers. »
23 Jun 2017
Out of the blackness, Keith Warner’s new production of Verdi’s Otello explodes into being with a violent gesture of fury. Not the tempest raging in the pit - though Antonio Pappano conjures a terrifying maelstrom from the ROH Orchestra and the enlarged ROH Chorus hurls a blood-curdling battering-ram of sound into the auditorium. Rather, Warner offers a spot-lit emblem of frustrated malice and wrath, as a lone soldier fiercely hurls a Venetian mask to the ground. »
22 Jun 2017
First mounted in 2015 at the Opéra National de Bordeaux this splendid Don Carlo production took stage just now at the Opéra de Marseille with a completely different cast and conductor. This Marseille edition achieved an artistic stature rarely found hereabouts, or anywhere. »
21 Jun 2017
Unconventional to the last, Diamanda Galás tore through her Barbican concert on Monday evening with a torrential force that shattered the inertia and passivity of the modern song recital. This was operatic activism, pure and simple. Dressed in metallic, shimmering black she moved rather stately across the stage to her piano - but there was nothing stately about what unfolded during the next 90 minutes. »
21 Jun 2017
A summit reached at the end of a long journey: Florian Boesch and Malcolm Martineau at the Wigmore Hall, as the two-year Complete Schubert Song series draws to a close. Unmistakably a high point in the whole traverse. A well-planned programme of much-loved songs performed exceptionally well, with less well known repertoire presented with intelligent flourish.
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19 Jun 2017
In 2008 it was the electrifying conducting of Nicola Luisotti and the famed Mimì of Angela Gheorghiu, in 2014 it was the riveting portrayals of Michael Fabbiano’s Rodolfo and Alexey Markov’s Marcelo. Now, in 2017, it is the high Italian style of Erika Grimaldi’s Mimì — and just about everything else! »
19 Jun 2017
Katie Mitchell’s 1998 Welsh National Opera production of Janáček’s first mature opera, Jenůfa, is a good choice for Grange Park Opera’s first season at its new home, West Horsley Place. Revived by Robin Tebbutt, Mitchell and designer Vicki Mortimer’s 1930s urban setting emphasises the opera’s lack of sentimentality and subjectivism, and this stark realism is further enhanced by the narrow horseshoe design of architect Wasfi Kani’s ‘Theatre in the Woods’ whose towering walls and narrow width seem to add further to the weight of oppression which constricts the lives of the inhabitants. »
18 Jun 2017
“I am nearer to the greatest secrets of the next world than I am to the smallest secrets of those eyes!” So despairs Golaud, enflamed by jealousy, suspicious of his mysterious wife Mélisande’s love for his half-brother Pelléas. Michael Boyd’s thought-provoking new production of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande at Garsington Opera certainly ponders plentiful secrets: of the conscience, of the subconscious, of the soul. But, with his designer Tom Piper, Boyd brings the opera’s dreams and mysteries into landscapes that are lit, symbolically and figuratively, with precision. »
12 Jun 2017
The Grange Festival, artistic director Michael Chance, has opened at Northington Grange giving everyone a chance to see what changes have arisen from this change of festival at the old location. For our first visit we caught the opening night of Annabel Arden's new production of Bizet's Carmen on Sunday 11 June 2017. Conducted by Jean-Luc Tingaud with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in the pit, the cast included Na'ama Goldman as Carmen, Leonardo Capalbo as Don Jose, Shelley Jackson as Micaela and Phillip Rhodes as Escamillo. There were also two extra characters, Aicha Kossoko and Tonderai Munyevu as Commere and Compere. Designs were by Joanna Parker (costume co-designer Ilona Karas) with video by Dick Straker, lighting by Peter Mumford. Thankfully, the opera comique version of the opera was used, with dialogue by Meredith Oakes. »
11 Jun 2017
San Francisco Opera revved up its 2011 production of Don Giovanni with a new directorial team and a new conductor. And a blue-chip cast.
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10 Jun 2017
A body lies in half-shadow, surrounded by an expectant gathering. Our Father is intoned in Gregorian chant. The solo voices bloom into a chorus with a joyful flourish of brass. »
10 Jun 2017
‘I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where Oxlips and the nodding Violet grows.’ In her new production of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Netia Jones takes us deep into the canopied groves of Oberon’s forest, luring us into the nocturnal embrace of the wood with a heady ‘physick’ of disorientating visual charms. »
07 Jun 2017
Every once in a while a warhorse redefines itself. This happened last night in San Francisco when Rigoletto propelled itself into the ranks of the great masterpieces of opera as theater — the likes of Falstaff and Tristan and Rossini’s Otello.
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05 Jun 2017
In its spring musical production of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s My Fair Lady Lyric Opera of Chicago has put together an ensemble which does ample justice to the wit and lyrical beauty of the well-known score. »
05 Jun 2017
Hans Werner Henze’s compositions include ten fine symphonies, various
large choral and religious works, fourteen ballets (among them
one, Undine, that ranks the greatest of modern times),
numerous prominent film scores, and hundreds of additional works for orchestra,
chamber ensemble, solo instruments or voice. Yet he considered himself, above
all, a composer of opera. »
05 Jun 2017
If opera ultimately is about bel canto, then one need not look any
further than Manitoba Opera’s company premiere of Massenet’s
Werther, its lushly scored portrait of an artist as a young man that
also showcased a particularly strong cast of principal artists. Notably, all
were also marking their own role debuts, as well as this production being the
first Massenet opera staged by organization in its 44-year history. »
05 Jun 2017
Seattle Symphony’s “semi-staged” presentation of
L’enfant et les sortilèges was my third encounter with
Ravel’s 1925 one-act “opera.” It was incomparably the most
theatrical, though the least elaborate by far. »
05 Jun 2017
The Requiem text has brought out the best in many composers. Requiem
settings by Mozart, Verdi, and Fauré are among the most beloved works
among singers and listeners alike, and there are equally wondrous settings by
Berlioz and Duruflé, as well as composers from before 1750, notably Jean
Gilles. »
05 Jun 2017
Olivia Fuchs' new production of Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier is a co-production between Welsh National Opera and Theater Magdeburg. The production debuted in Magdeburg last year and now Welsh National Opera is presenting the production as part of its Summer season, the company's first Der Rosenkavalier since 1990 (when the cast included Rita Cullis as the Marschallin and Amanda Roocroft making her role debut as Sophie). »
05 Jun 2017
There’s no reason why Oliver Platt’s imaginative ‘concept’ for this new production of Don Giovanni at Investec Opera Holland Park shouldn’t work very well. Designer Neil Irish has reconstructed a deck of RMS Queen Mary - the Cunard-White Star Line’s flag-ship cruiser during the 1930s, that golden age of trans-Atlantic cruising. Spanning the entire width of the OHP stage, the deck is lined with port-holed cabin doors - perfect hideaways for one of the Don’s hasty romantic dalliances. »
03 Jun 2017
After the preceding evening’s presentation of Annilese Miskimmon’s sparkling production of Handel’s Semele - an account of marital infidelity in immortal realms - the second opera of Garsington Opera’s 2017 season brought us down to earth for more mundane disloyalties and deceptions amongst the moneyed aristocracy of the eighteenth-century, as presented by John Cox in his 2005 production of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. »
03 Jun 2017
To open the 2017 season at Garsington Opera, director Annilese Miskimmon and designer Nicky Shaw offer a visually beautifully new production of Handel's Semele in which comic ribaldry and celestial feuding converge and are transfigured into star-dust. »
02 Jun 2017
Opera Holland Park's 2017 season opened on 1 June 2017 with Martin Lloyd-Evans's new production of Puccini's La Rondine, designed by takis, with lighting by Mark Howland and choreography by Steve Elias. Elizabeth Llewellyn was Magda with Matteo Lippi as Ruggero, Tereza Gevorgyan as Lisette, Stephen Aviss as Prunier and David Stephenson as Rambaldo, Matthew Kofi Waldren conducted the City of London Sinfonia. »
28 May 2017
Theresa May could do with a Doctor Dulcamara in the Conservative Cabinet: his miracle pills for every illness from asthma to apoplexy would slash the NHS bill - and, if he really could rejuvenate the aged then he’d solve the looming social care funding crisis too. »
24 May 2017
Ravi Shankar’s posthumous opera Sukanya drew a full house to the Royal Festival Hall last Friday but the arrival of the Budapest Festival Orchestra under their founder Iván Fischer seemed to have less appeal to Londoners - which was disappointing as the absolute commitment of Fischer and his musicians to the Hungarian programme that they presented was equalled in intensity by the blazing richness of the BFO’s playing. »
22 May 2017
It’s six or so years ago since soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn appeared as an exciting and highly acclaimed new voice on the UK operatic stage, with critics praising her ‘ravishing account’ (The Stage) of Mozart’s Countess in Investec Opera Holland Park’s 2011 Le nozze di Figaro in which ‘Porgi, amor’ was a ‘highlight of the evening’. »
22 May 2017
What links Franz Xaver Süssmayr, Brian Newbould and Anthony Payne? A hypothetical question for University Challenge contestants elicits the response that they all ‘completed’ composer’s last words: Mozart’s Requiem, Schubert’s Symphony No.8 in B minor (the Unfinished) and Edward Elgar’s Third Symphony, respectively. »
21 May 2017
‘Make war not love’, might be a fitting subtitle for Francesco Cavalli’s opera Hipermestra in which the eponymous princess chooses matrimonial loyalty over filial duty and so triggers a war which brings about the destruction of Argos and the deaths of its inhabitants. »
21 May 2017
One year ago, tens of millions of Britons voted for isolation rather than for cooperation, but Douglas (Dougie) Boyd, Artistic Director of Garsington Opera, is an energetic one-man counterforce with a dynamic conviction that art and culture are strengthened by participation and collaboration; values which, alongside excellence and a spirit of adventure, have seen Garsington Opera acquire increasing renown and esteem on the international stage during his tenure, since 2012. »
20 May 2017
This year’s London Festival of Baroque Music is titled Baroque at the Edge and celebrates Monteverdi’s 450th birthday and the 250th anniversary of Telemann’s death. Monteverdi and Telemann do in some ways represent the ‘edges’ of the Baroque, their music signalling a transition from Renaissance to Baroque and from Baroque to Classical respectively, though as this performance of Monteverdi’s Orfeo by I Fagiolini and The English Cornett & Sackbutt Ensemble confirmed such boundaries are blurred and frequently broken. »
18 May 2017
I’ve been thinking about jealousy a lot of late, as I put the finishing touches to a programme article for Bampton Classical Opera’s summer production of Salieri’s La scuola de' gelosi. In placing the green-eyed monster centre-stage, Handel’s Ariodante surely rivals Shakespeare’s Othello in dramatic clarity and concision, as this terrifically animated and musically intense performance by The English Concert at the Barbican Hall confirmed. »
14 May 2017
With its new production of Harry Somers’ Louis Riel, Canadian Opera Company has covered itself in resplendent glory. »
14 May 2017
On May 4, 2017, Los Angeles Opera presented a concert starring Russian soprano Anna Netrebko and her husband, Azerbaijani tenor Yusif Eyvazev. Led by Italian conductor Jader Bignamini, members of the orchestra showed their abilities, too, with a variety of instrumental selections played between the singers’ arias and duets. »
14 May 2017
Considering the high caliber of the amassed talent, Canadian Opera Company’s Tosca is a curiously muted affair. »
12 May 2017
Matthias Goerne Schumann Lieder, with Markus Hinterhäuser, a new recording from Harmonia Mundi. Singers, especially baritones, often come into their prime as they approach 50, and Goerne, who has been a star since his 20's is now formidably impressive. The colours in his voice have matured, with even greater richness and depth than before. »
11 May 2017
No song in this wonderful performance by Ian Bostridge and Lars Vogt at the Wigmore Hall epitomised more powerfully, and astonishingly, what a remarkable lieder singer Bostridge is, than Schubert’s Rellstab setting, ‘In der Ferne’ (In the distance). »
11 May 2017
The Guildhall School of Music and Drama has announced baritone Josep-Ramon Olivé as the winner of this year’s Gold Medal, the School’s most prestigious prize for outstanding soloists. The prize is awarded to singers and instrumentalists in alternate years and this year was the turn of the singers. »
11 May 2017
For Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen this has been an exciting season, one which has seen her make several role and house debuts in Europe and beyond, including Agathe (Der Freischutz) at Opernhaus Zürich, Santuzza (Cavalleria Rusticana) Norwegian National Opera and, just last month, Isabella (Liebesverbot) at Teatro Colón. This Rosenblatt Recital brought her to the Wigmore Hall for her UK recital debut and if the stunning power, shining colour and absolute ease that she demonstrated in a well-chosen programme of song and opera are anything to judge by, Glyndebourne audiences are in for a tremendous treat this summer, when Davidsen appears in the title role of Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos. »
10 May 2017
La Jacquerie—here recorded for the first time—proves to
be a wonderful opera, bringing delight upon delight. »
06 May 2017
Rossini’s serious operas once dominated opera houses across the
Western world. In their librettos, the great French author Stendahl—then a
diplomat in Italy and the composer’s first biographer—saw a post-Napoleonic
“martial vigor” that could spark a liberal revolution. In their vocal and
instrumental innovations, he discerned a similar revolution in music. »
06 May 2017
Good news for lovers of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro: the
famous Living Stereo recording, a co-production of RCA Victor and English
Decca, is now available again, well remastered, on Urania. »
06 May 2017
On Thursday evening April 27, 2017, Los Angeles Opera presented a revival of Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. In 2013, director John Caird had given Angelinos a production that made Tosca a full-blooded, intense drama as well as a most popular aria-studded opera. His Floria was a dove among hawks. »
03 May 2017
The UK’s first professional production of Samuel Barber’s Pulitzer prize-winning opera Vanessa takes place at Glyndebourne Festival 2018. One of the great American operas, Vanessa was hailed as a triumph at its premiere in 1958 but quickly fell out of the repertoire and has only been staged intermittently since. »
03 May 2017
The Glyndebourne Opera Cup - the international competition for opera singers is designed to discover and spotlight the best young singers from around the world, offering a top prize of £15,000 and a platform for launching an international opera career. »
01 May 2017
The Kathleen Ferrier Memorial Scholarship Fund was founded in 1953 in memory of the much-loved contralto from Lancashire who died at the tragically young age of 41 and whose career as a singer lasted just 12 years. The purpose of the fund was to make an annual award to a young British singer sufficient to cover the cost of a year’s study and general support. The first competition was held in 1956 and it has continued to provide a few outstandingly talented young singers each year since then with the opportunity of making a start in what is a most difficult and demanding career. »
28 Apr 2017
Wigmore Hall has announced the 25 young singer and pianist duos from around the world who have been shortlisted for this prestigious competition, which takes place at Wigmore Hall in September with the generous support of the Kohn Foundation. Details were announced on 27 April during a recital by Milan Siljanov, who won top prize in the 2015 Competition. »
28 Apr 2017
Garsington Opera's thrilling new commission for the 2017 Season, Silver Birch, will feature over 180 participants from the local community aged 8-80, including students from primary and secondary schools, members of the local military community, student Foley artists under the guidance of Pinewood Studios and members of Wycombe Women’s Aid. »
25 Apr 2017
Opera San Jose has capped a wholly winning season with an emotionally engaging, thrillingly sung, enticingly fresh rendition of Puccini’s immortal masterpiece La bohème. »
25 Apr 2017
On Saturday evening April 22, 2017, San Diego Opera presented Giuseppe Verdi’s La traviata at the Civic Theater. Director Marta Domingo updated the production from the constrictions of the nineteenth century to the freedom of the nineteen twenties. Violetta’s fellow courtesans and their dates wore fascinating outfits and, at one point, danced the Charleston to what looked like a jazz combo playing Verdi’s score. »
25 Apr 2017
Thomas Adès’s third opera, The Exterminating Angel, is a dizzying, sometimes frightening, palimpsest of texts (literary and cinematic) and music, in which ceaseless repetitions of the past - inexact, ever varying, but inescapably compulsive - stultify the present and deny progress into the future. Paradoxically, there is endless movement within a constricting stasis. The essential elements collide in a surreal Sartrean dystopia: beasts of the earth (live sheep and a simulacra of a bear) roam, a disembodied hand floats through the air, water spouts from the floor and a burning cello provides the flames upon which to roast the sacrificial lambs. No wonder that when the elderly Doctor tries to restore order through scientific rationalism he is told, “We don't want reason! We want to get out of here!” »
24 Apr 2017
Is A Dog’s Heart even an opera? It is sung by opera singers to live
music. Alexander Raskatov’s score, however, is secondary to the incredible
stage visuals. Whatever it is, actor/director Simon McBurney’s first stab at
opera is fantastic theatre. Its revival at Dutch National Opera, where it
premiered in 2010, is hugely welcome. »
22 Apr 2017
In May 2016, Opera Rara gave Bellini aficionados a treat when they gave a concert performance of Vincenzo Bellini’s first opera, Adelson e Salvini, at the Barbican Hall. The preceding week had been spent in the BBC’s Maida Vale Studios, and this recording, released last month, is a very welcome addition to Opera Rara’s bel canto catalogue. »
20 Apr 2017
Jonas Kaufmann Mahler Das Lied von der Erde is utterly unique but also works surprisingly well as a musical experience. This won't appeal to superficial listeners, but will reward those who take Mahler seriously enough to value the challenge of new perspectives. »
20 Apr 2017
Following Garsington Opera for All’s successful second year of free public screenings on beaches, river banks and parks in isolated coastal and rural communities, Handel’s sparkling masterpiece Semele will be screened in four areas across the UK in 2017. Free events are programmed for Skegness (1 July), Ramsgate (22 July), Bridgwater (29 July) and Grimsby (11 October). »
15 Apr 2017
I kept hearing from knowledgeable opera fanatics that the Israeli Opera (IO) in Tel Aviv was a surprising sure bet. So I made my way to the Homeland to hear how supposedly great the quality of opera was. And man, I was in for treat. »
14 Apr 2017
At Phoenix’s Symphony Hall on Friday evening April 7, Arizona Opera offered its final presentation of the 2016-2017 season, Gioachino Rossini’s Cinderella (La Cenerentola). The stars of the show were Daniela Mack as Cinderella, called Angelina in the opera, and Alek Shrader as Don Ramiro. Actually, Mack and Shrader are married couple who met singing these same roles at San Francisco Opera. »
14 Apr 2017
On Saturday evening April 1, 2017, Placido Domingo and Los Angeles Opera celebrated their tenth year of training young opera artists in the Domingo-Colburn-Stein Program. From the singing I heard, they definitely have something of which to be proud. »
14 Apr 2017
The town’s name itself “Baden-Baden” (named after Count Baden) sounds already enticing. Built against the old railway station, its Festspielhaus programs the biggest stars in opera for Germany’s largest auditorium. A Mecca for music lovers, this festival house doesn’t have its own ensemble, but through its generous sponsoring brings the great productions to the dreamy idylle. »
14 Apr 2017
The Festspielhaus in Baden-Baden pretty much programs only big stars. A prime example was the Fall Festival this season. Grigory Sokolov opened with a piano recital, which I did not attend. I came for Cecilia Bartoli in Bellini’s Norma and Christian Gerhaher with Schubert’s Die Winterreise, and Anne-Sophie Mutter breathtakingly delivering Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto together with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Robin Ticciati, the ballerino conductor, is not my favorite, but together they certainly impressed in Mendelssohn. »
11 Apr 2017
Mahler as dramatist! Mahler Symphony no 8 with Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall. Now we know why Mahler didn't write opera. His music is inherently theatrical, and his dramas lie not in narrative but in internal metaphysics. The Royal Festival Hall itself played a role, literally, since the singers moved round the performance space, making the music feel particularly fluid and dynamic. This was no ordinary concert. »
09 Apr 2017
Imagine a fête galante by Jean-Antoine Watteau brought to life, its colour and movement infusing a bucolic scene with charm and theatricality. Jean-Philippe Rameau’s opéra-ballet Les fêtes d'Hébé, ou Les talens lyriques, is one such amorous pastoral allegory, its three entrées populated by shepherds and sylvans, real characters such as Sapho and mythological gods such as Mercury. »
08 Apr 2017
Details of the Royal Opera House's 2017/18 Season have been announced. Oliver Mears, who will begin his tenure as Director of Opera, comments:
“I am delighted to introduce my first Season as Director of Opera for The Royal Opera House. As I begin this role, and as the world continues to reel from social and political tumult, it is reassuring to contemplate the talent and traditions that underpin this great building’s history. For centuries, a theatre on this site has welcomed all classes - even in times of revolution and war - to enjoy the most extraordinary combination of music and drama ever devised. Since the time of Handel, Covent Garden has been home to the most outstanding performers, composers and artists of every era. And for centuries, the joyous and often tragic art form of opera has offered a means by which we can be transported to another world, in all its wonderful excess and beauty.” »
07 Apr 2017
Whatever one’s own religious or spiritual beliefs, Bach’s St Matthew Passion is one of the most, perhaps the most, affecting depictions of the torturous final episodes of Jesus Christ’s mortal life on earth: simultaneously harrowing and beautiful, juxtaposing tender stillness with tragic urgency. »
05 Apr 2017
Lindy Hume’s sensational La bohème at the Berliner
Staatsoper brings out the moxie in Puccini. Abdellah Lasri emerged as a
stunning discovery. He floored me with his tenor voice through which he
embodied a perfect Rodolfo. »
01 Apr 2017
Listening to Moritz Eggert’s Caliban is the equivalent of
watching a flea-ridden dog chasing its own tail for one-and-half hours. It
scratches, twitches and yelps. Occasionally, it blinks pleadingly, but you
can’t bring yourself to care for such a foolish animal and its
less-than-tragic plight. »
01 Apr 2017
A large audience packed into the Wigmore Hall to hear the two Baroque rarities featured in this melodious performance by Christian Curnyn’s Early Opera Company. One was by the most distinguished ‘home-grown’ eighteenth-century musician, whose music - excepting some of the lively symphonies - remains seldom performed. The other was the work of a Saxon who - despite a few ups and downs in his relationship with the ‘natives’ - made London his home for forty-five years and invented that so English of genres, the dramatic oratorio. »
29 Mar 2017
A new recording, made late last year, Morfydd Owen : Portrait of a Lost Icon, from Tŷ Cerdd, specialists in Welsh music, reveals Owen as one of the more distinctive voices in British music of her era : a grand claim but not without foundation. To this day, Owen's tally of prizes awarded by the Royal Academy of Music remains unrivalled. »
28 Mar 2017
On March 24, 2017, Los Angeles Opera revived its co-production of Jacques Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann which has also been seen at the Mariinsky Opera in Leningrad and the Washington National Opera in the District of Columbia. »
28 Mar 2017
Ermonela Jaho is fast becoming a favourite of Covent Garden audiences, following her acclaimed appearances in the House as Mimì, Manon and Suor Angelica, and on the evidence of this terrific performance as Puccini’s Japanese ingénue, Cio-Cio-San, it’s easy to understand why. Taking the title role in the first of two casts for this fifth revival of Moshe Leiser’s and Patrice Caurier’s 2003 production of Madame Butterfly, Jaho was every inch the love-sick 15-year-old: innocent, fresh, vulnerable, her hope unfaltering, her heart unwavering. »
27 Mar 2017
Calliope Tsoupaki’s latest opera, Fortress Europe, premiered
as spring began taming the winter storms in the Mediterranean. »
27 Mar 2017
To celebrate its 40th anniversary New Sussex Opera has set itself the challenge of bringing together the six scenes - sometimes described as six discrete ‘tone poems’ - which form Delius’s A Village Romeo and Juliet into a coherent musico-dramatic narrative. »
26 Mar 2017
Following highly successful UK premières of Salieri’s Falstaff (in 2003) and Trofonio’s Cave (2015), this summer Bampton Classical Opera will present the first UK performances since the late 18th century of arguably his most popular success: the bitter comedy of marital feuding, The School of Jealousy (La scuola de’ gelosi). The production will be designed and directed by Jeremy Gray and conducted by Anthony Kraus from Opera North. The English translation will be by Gilly French and Jeremy Gray. The cast includes Nathalie Chalkley (soprano), Thomas Herford (tenor) and five singers making their Bampton débuts:, Rhiannon Llewellyn (soprano), Kate Howden (mezzo-soprano), Alessandro Fisher (tenor), Matthew Sprange (baritone) and Samuel Pantcheff (baritone). Alessandro was the joint winner of the Kathleen Ferrier Competition 2016. »
26 Mar 2017
Reflections on former visits to Opera Holland Park usually bring to mind late evening sunshine, peacocks, Japanese gardens, the occasional chilly gust in the pavilion and an overriding summer optimism, not to mention committed performances and strong musical and dramatic values. »
21 Mar 2017
Written at a time when both his theatrical business and physical health were in a bad way, Handel’s Faramondo was premiered at the King’s Theatre in January 1738, fared badly and sank rapidly into obscurity where it languished until the late-twentieth century. »
21 Mar 2017
Fabio Luisi conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in Brahms A German Requiem op 45 and Schubert, Symphony no 8 in B minor D759 ("Unfinished").at the Barbican Hall, London. »
19 Mar 2017
The atmosphere was a bit electric on February 25 for the opening night of
Leoš Janàček’s 1921 domestic tragedy, and not entirely in a
good way. »
18 Mar 2017
Applications are now open for the Bampton Classical Opera Young Singers’ Competition 2017. This biennial competition was first launched in 2013 to celebrate the company’s 20th birthday, and is aimed at identifying the finest emerging young opera singers currently working in the UK. »
18 Mar 2017
Each March France's splendid Opéra de Lyon mounts a cycle of operas that speak to a chosen theme. Just now the theme is Mémoires -- mythic productions of famed, now dead, late 20th century stage directors. These directors are Klaus Michael Grüber (1941-2008), Ruth Berghaus (1927-1996), and Heiner Müller (1929-1995).
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18 Mar 2017
Handel’s Partenope (1730), written for his first season at the King’s Theatre, is a paradox: an anti-heroic opera seria. It recounts a fictional historic episode with a healthy dose of buffa humour as heroism is held up to ridicule. Musicologist Edward Dent suggested that there was something Shakespearean about Partenope - and with its complex (nonsensical?) inter-relationships, cross-dressing disguises and concluding double-wedding it certainly has a touch of Twelfth Night about it. But, while the ‘plot’ may seem inconsequential or superficial, Handel’s music, as ever, probes the profundities of human nature. »
15 Mar 2017
The latest instalment of Wigmore Hall’s ambitious two-year project, ‘Schubert: The Complete Songs’, was presented by German tenor Christoph Prégardien and pianist Julius Drake. »
14 Mar 2017
On March 10, 2017, San Diego Opera presented an unusual version of Georges Bizet’s Carmen called La Tragédie de Carmen (The Tragedy of Carmen). »
14 Mar 2017
For his farewell production as director of opera at the Royal Opera House, Kasper Holten has chosen Wagner’s only ‘comedy’, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg: an opera about the very medium in which it is written. »
13 Mar 2017
The dramatic strength that Stage Director Michael Scarola drew from his Pagliacci cast was absolutely amazing. He gave us a sizzling rendition of the libretto, pointing out every bit of foreshadowing built into the plot. »
12 Mar 2017
A skewering of the preening pretentiousness of the Pre-Raphaelites and Aesthetes of the late-nineteenth century, Gilbert and Sullivan’s 1881 operetta Patience outlives the fashion that fashioned it, and makes mincemeat of mincing dandies and divas, of whatever period, who value style over substance, art over life. »
11 Mar 2017
Irish mezzo-soprano Tara Erraught demonstrated a relaxed, easy manner and obvious enjoyment of both the music itself and its communication to the audience during this varied Rosenblatt Series concert at the Wigmore Hall. Erraught and her musical partners for the evening - clarinettist Ulrich Pluta and pianist James Baillieu - were equally adept at capturing both the fresh lyricism of the exchanges between voice and clarinet in the concert arias of the first half of the programme and clinching precise dramatic moods and moments in the operatic arias that followed the interval. »
08 Mar 2017
This Sunday the Metropolitan Opera will feature as part of the BBC Radio 3 documentary, Opera Across the Waves, in which critic and academic Flora Willson explores how opera is engaging new audiences. The 45-minute programme explores the roots of global opera broadcasting and how in particular, New York’s Metropolitan Opera became one of the most iconic and powerful
producers of opera. »
08 Mar 2017
Before, I arrived in Essen for Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre, I made a pitstop in Dortmund. The night before, the opera took place here, and now a packed Konzerthaus flocked to hear Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. American soprano Camilla Tilling starred in the solo part. Before the intermission, Patricia Kopatchinskaja enthralled the audience with Ligeti’s Violin Concerto. Mahler’s celebration of life proved the perfect antidote to Ligeti’s fearless exploration of the terror in humanity. »
07 Mar 2017
On February 25, 2017, in Tucson and on the following March 3 in Phoenix, Arizona Opera presented its first world premiere, Craig Bohmler and Steven Mark Kohn’s Riders of the Purple Sage. »
05 Mar 2017
During the past few seasons, English Touring Opera has confirmed its triple-value: it takes opera to the parts of the UK that other companies frequently fail to reach; its inventive, often theme-based, programming and willingness to take risks shine a light on unfamiliar repertory which invariably offers unanticipated pleasures; the company provides a platform for young British singers who are easing their way into the ‘industry’, assuming a role that latterly ENO might have been expected to fulfil. »
05 Mar 2017
The first production of Ryan Wigglesworth’s first opera, based upon Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, is clearly a major event in English National Opera’s somewhat trimmed-down season. Wigglesworth, who serves also as conductor and librettist, professes to have been obsessed with the play for more than twenty years, and one can see why The Winter’s Tale, with its theatrical ‘set-pieces’ - the oracle scene, the tempest, the miracle of a moving statue - and its grandiose emotions, dominated as the play is by Leontes’ obsessively articulated, over-intellectualized jealousy, would invite operatic adaptation. »
02 Mar 2017
Today, Wexford Festival Opera announced the programme and principal casting details for the forthcoming 2017 festival. Now in its 66th year, this internationally renowned festival will run over an extended 18-day period, from Thursday, 19 October to Sunday, 5 November. »
28 Feb 2017
A song cycle within a song symphony - Matthias Goerne's intriuging approach to Mahler song, with Marcus Hinterhäuser, at the Wigmore Hall, London. Mahler's entire output can be described as one vast symphony, spanning an arc that stretches from his earliest songs to the sketches for what would have been his tenth symphony. Song was integral to Mahler's compositional process, germinating ideas that could be used even in symphonies which don't employ conventional singing. »
28 Feb 2017
Gustav Mahler and fin-de-siècle Vienna will be the focus of the Oxford Lieder Festival (13-28 October 2017), exploring his influences, contemporaries and legacy. Mahler was a dominant musical personality: composer and preeminent conductor, steeped in tradition but a champion of the new. During this Festival, his complete songs with piano will be heard, inviting a fresh look at this ’symphonic’ composer and the enduring place of song in the musical landscape. »
25 Feb 2017
On February 21, 2017, San Diego Opera presented Giuseppe Verdi’s last composition, Falstaff, at the Civic Theater. Although this was the second performance in the run and the 21st was a Tuesday, there were no empty seats to be seen. General Director David Bennett assembled a stellar international cast that included baritone Roberto de Candia in the title role and mezzo-soprano Marianne Cornetti singing her first Mistress Quickly. »
25 Feb 2017
In Neil Armfield’s new production of Die Zauberflöte at Lyric Opera of Chicago the work is performed as entertainment on a summer’s night staged by neighborhood children in a suburban setting. The action takes place in the backyard of a traditional house, talented performers collaborate with neighborhood denizens, and the concept of an onstage audience watching this play yields a fresh perspective on staging Mozart’s opera. »
25 Feb 2017
Patricia Racette’s Salome is an impetuous teenage princess who interrupts the royal routine on a cloudy night by demanding to see her stepfather’s famous prisoner. Racette’s interpretation makes her Salome younger than the characters portrayed by many of her famous colleagues of the past. This princess plays mental games with Jochanaan and with Herod. Later, she plays a physical game with the gruesome, natural-looking head of the prophet. »
25 Feb 2017
On February 17, 2017 Pacific Opera Project performed Gaetano Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore at the Ebell Club in Los Angeles. After that night, it can be said that neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night can stay this company from putting on a fine show. Earlier in the day the Los Angeles area was deluged with heavy rain that dropped up to an inch of water per hour. That evening, because of a blown transformer, there was no electricity in the Ebell Club area. »
25 Feb 2017
There has been much reconstruction of Marseille’s magnificent Opera Municipal since it opened in 1787. Most recently a huge fire in 1919 provoked a major, five-year renovation of the hall and stage that reopened in 1924.
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25 Feb 2017
For the first time in its history, this summer Garsington Opera will present four productions as well as a large community opera. 2017 also sees the arrival of the Philharmonia Orchestra for one opera production each season for the next five years. »
25 Feb 2017
New work by the English artist Rachel Kneebone will be exhibited at Glyndebourne Festival 2017, which opens for public booking on 5 March.
The London-based artist has created three new sculptures inspired by two of the operas being staged at the Festival this summer - Cavalli’s Hipermestra and a new opera based on Hamlet by composer Brett Dean and librettist Matthew Jocelyn.
»
20 Feb 2017
With her irresistible cocktail of spontaneity and virtuosity, Cecilia
Bartoli is a beloved favourite of Amsterdam audiences. In triple celebratory
mode, the Italian mezzo-soprano chose Rossini’s La Cenerentola,
whose bicentenary is this year, to mark twenty years of performing at the
Concertgebouw, and her twenty-fifth performance at its Main Hall. »
20 Feb 2017
Matthew Rose and Gary Matthewman Winterreise: a Parallel Journey at the Wigmore Hall, a recital with extras. Schubert's winter journey reflects the poetry of Wilhelm Müller, where images act as signposts mapping the protagonist's psychological journey. »
18 Feb 2017
Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, composed in 1830, didn’t make it to Lisbon until 1843 when there were 14 performances at its magnificent Teatro São Carlos (opened 1793), and there were 17 more performances spread over the next two decades. The entire twentieth century saw but three (3) performances in this European capital. »
17 Feb 2017
It is difficult to know where to begin to praise the stunning achievement of Opera San Jose’s West Coast premiere of Silent Night. »
17 Feb 2017
Like Carmen, Billy Budd is an operatic personage of such breadth and depth that he becomes unique to everyone. This signals that there is no Billy Budd (or Carmen) who will satisfy everyone. And like Carmen, Billy Budd may be indestructible because the opera will always mean something to someone. »
15 Feb 2017
American composer John Adams turns 70 this year. By way of celebration no
less than seven concerts in this season’s NTR ZaterdagMatinee series
feature works by Adams, including this concert version of his first opera,
Nixon in China. »
13 Feb 2017
Despite the freshness, passion and directness, and occasional wry quirkiness, of many of the works which formed this lunchtime recital at the Wigmore Hall - given by mezzo-soprano Kathryn Rudge, pianist James Baillieu and viola player Guy Pomeroy - a shadow lingered over the quiet nostalgia and pastoral eloquence of the quintessentially ‘English’ works performed. »
10 Feb 2017
'Nobody does Gilbert and Sullivan anymore.’ This was the comment from many of my friends when I mentioned the revival of Mike Leigh's 2015 production of The Pirates of Penzance at English National Opera (ENO). Whilst not completely true (English Touring Opera is doing Patience next month), this reflects the way performances of G&S have rather dropped out of the mainstream. That Leigh's production takes the opera on its own terms and does not try to send it up, made it doubly welcome. »
08 Feb 2017
On Feb 3, 2017, Arizona Opera presented Giacomo Puccini’s dramatic opera Madama Butterfly. Sandra Lopez was the naive fifteen-year-old who falls hopelessly in love with the American Naval Officer. »
08 Feb 2017
In the last of my three day adventure, I headed to Vienna for the Wiener
Philharmoniker at the Musikverein (my first time!) for Mahler and Brahms. »
08 Feb 2017
In Amsterdam legend Janine Jansen and the seventh Principal Conductor of the
Royal Concertgebouw, Daniele Gatti, came together for their first engagement in
a ravishing performance of Berg’s Violin Concerto. »
08 Feb 2017
I extravagantly scheduled hearing the Berliner, Concertgebouw Orchestra, and
Wiener Philharmoniker, to hear these three top orchestra perform their series
programmes opening the New Year. »
07 Feb 2017
There is no bigger or more prestigious name in avant-garde French theater than Romeo Castellucci (b. 1960), the Italian metteur en scène of this revival of Arthur Honegger’s mystère lyrique, Joan of Arc at the Stake (1938) at the Opéra Nouvel in Lyon. »
04 Feb 2017
On January 28, 2017, Los Angeles Opera premiered James Robinson’s nineteen twenties production of Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio, which places the story on the Orient Express. Since Abduction is a work with spoken dialogue like The Magic Flute, the cast sang their music in German and spoke their lines in English. »
04 Feb 2017
Fecund Jason, father of his wife Isifile’s twins and as well father of his seductress Medea’s twins, does indeed have a problem — he prefers to sleep with and wed Medea. In this resurrection of the most famous opera of the seventeenth century he evidently also sleeps with Hercules. »
30 Jan 2017
A Falstaff that raised-the-bar ever higher, this was a posthumous resurrection of Luca Ronconi’s masterful staging of Verdi’s last opera, the third from last of the 83 operas Ronconi staged during his lifetime (1933-2015). And his third staging of Falstaff following Salzburg in 1993 and Florence in 2006.
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26 Jan 2017
One of Aidan Lang’s first initiatives as artistic director of Seattle
Opera was to encourage his board to formulate a “mission statement”
for the fifty-year old company. The document produced was clear, simple, and
anodyne. Seattle Opera would aim above all to create work appealing both to the
emotions and reason of the audience. »
25 Jan 2017
Contrary to Stolzi’s multidimensional Parsifal,
Holten’s simple setting of Lohengrin felt timeless with its
focus on the drama between characters. Premiering in 2012, nothing too flashy
and with a clever twist, »
25 Jan 2017
Deutsche Oper Berlin (DOB) consistently serves up superlatively sung Wagner
productions. This Fall, its productions of Philipp Stölzl's Parsifal and
Kasper Holten's Lohengrin offered intoxicating musical affairs. Annette Dasch, Klaus Florian Vogt, and Peter Seiffert reached for the stars. Even when it
comes down to last minute replacements, the casting is topnotch. »
24 Jan 2017
Donna abbandonata would have been a good title for the first concert of Temple Music’s 2017 Song Series. Indeed, mezzo-soprano Christine Rice seems to be making a habit of playing abandoned women. »
22 Jan 2017
The Wigmore Hall complete Schubert song series continued with a recital by Georg Nigl and Andreas Staier. Staier's a pioneer, promoting the use of fortepiano in Schubert song. In Schubert's time, modern concert pianos didn't exist. Schubert and his contemporaries would have been familiar with a lighter, brighter sound. Over the last 30 years, we've come to better understand Schubert and his world through the insights Staier has given us. His many performances, frequently with Christoph Prégardien at the Wigmore Hall, have always been highlights. »
22 Jan 2017
On 9 January 2017 the London Festival of Baroque Music (formerly the Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music) announced its programme for 2017. The Festival theme for 2017 is Baroque at the Edge. Inspired by the anniversaries of Monteverdi (450th of birth) and Telemann (250th of death) the Festival explores the ways that composers and performers have pushed at the chronological, stylistic, geographical and expressive boundaries of the Baroque era. »
22 Jan 2017
On Thursday 19th January, opera lovers around the world started bidding online for rare and prized items made available for the first time from Opera Rara’s collection. In addition to the 26 lots auctioned online, 6 more items will be made available on 7 February - when online bidding closes - at Opera Rara’s gala dinner marking the final night of the auction. The gala will be held at London’s Caledonian Club and will feature guest appearances from Michael Spyres and Joyce El-Khoury. »
18 Jan 2017
Classical Opera’s MOZART 250 project has reached the year 1767. Two years ago, the company embarked upon an epic, 27-year exploration of the music written by Mozart and his contemporaries exactly 250 years previously. The series will incorporate 250th anniversary performances of all Mozart’s important compositions and artistic director Ian Page tells us that as 1767 ‘was the year in which Mozart started to write more substantial works - opera, oratorio, concertos … this will be the first year of MOZART 250 in which Mozart’s own music dominates the programme’. »
17 Jan 2017
‘[T]hey moderated or increased their voices, loud or soft, heavy or light according to the demands of the piece they were singing; now slowing, breaking of sometimes with a gentle sigh, now singing long passages legato or detached, now groups, now leaps, now with long trills, now with short, or again, with sweet running passages sung softly, to which one sometimes heard an echo answer unexpectedly. They accompanied the music and the sentiment with appropriate facial expressions, glances and gestures, with no awkward movements of the mouth or hands or body which might not express the feelings of the song. They made the words clear in such a way that one could hear even the last syllable of every word, which was never interrupted or suppressed by passages or other embellishments.’ »
17 Jan 2017
An exceptional Wagner Der fliegende Holländer, so challenging that, at first, it seems shocking. But Kasper Holten's new production, currently at the Finnish National Opera, is also exceptionally intelligent. »
16 Jan 2017
A welcome addition to Lyric Opera of Chicago’s roster was its recent production of Jules Massenet’s Don Quichotte. »
15 Jan 2017
800 years ago, every book was a precious treasure - ‘written on skin’. In George Benjamin’s and Martin Crimp’s 2012 opera, Written on Skin, modern-day archivists search for one such artefact: a legendary 12th-century illustrated vanity project, commissioned by an unnamed Protector to record and celebrate his power. »
03 Jan 2017
It was like a “Date Night” at Staatsoper unter den Linden with
its return of Eike Gramss’ 2012 production of Puccini’s Madama
Butterfly. While I entered the Schiller Theater, the many young couples
venturing to the opera together, and emerging afterwards all lovey-dovey and
moved by Puccini’s melodramatic romance, encouraged me to think more
positively about the future of opera. »
03 Jan 2017
For the Late Night concert after the Saturday series, fifteen Berliners
backed up Barbara Hannigan in yet another adventurous collaboration on a modern
rarity with Simon Rattle. I was completely unfamiliar with the French composer,
but the performance tonight made me fall in love with Gérard
Grisey’s sensually disintegrating soundscape Quatre chants pour
franchir le seuil, or “Fours Songs to cross the
Threshold”. »
02 Jan 2017
One of the things I love about the Philharmonie in Berlin, is the normalcy
of musical excellence week after week. Very few venues can pull off with such
illuminating star wattage. Michael Schade, Anne Schwanewilms, and Barbara
Hannigan performed in two concerts with two larger-than-life conductors
Thielemann and Rattle. We were taken on three thrilling adventures. »
24 Dec 2016
Lyric Opera of Chicago’s original and superbly cast production of Hector Berlioz’s Les Troyens has provided the musical public with a treasured opportunity to appreciate one of the great operatic achievements of the nineteenth century. »
24 Dec 2016
The Little Opera Company opened its 21st season by championing its own, as it presented the world premiere of Winnipeg composer Neil Weisensel’s Merry Christmas, Stephen Leacock. »
23 Dec 2016
In 2015, Bampton Classical Opera’s production of Salieri’s La grotta di Trofonio - a UK premiere - received well-deserved accolades: ‘a revelation ... the music is magnificent’ (Seen and Heard International), ‘giddily exciting, propelled by wit, charm and bags of joy’ (The Spectator), ‘lively, inventive ... a joy from start to finish’ (The Oxford Times), ‘They have done Salieri proud’ (The Arts Desk) and ‘an enthusiastic performance of riotously spirited music’ (Opera Britannia) were just some of the superlative compliments festooned by the critical press. »
23 Dec 2016
How many singers does it take to make an opera? There are single-role operas - Schönberg’s Erwartung (1924) and Eight Songs for a Mad King by Peter Maxwell Davies (1969) spring immediately to mind - and there are operas that just require a pair of performers, such as Rimsky-Korsakov’s Mozart i Salieri (1897) or The Telephone by Menotti (1947). »
22 Dec 2016
Now in its 31st year, the 2016 Christmas Festival at St John’s Smith Square has offered sixteen concerts performed by diverse ensembles, among them: the choirs of King’s College, London and Merton College, Oxford; Christchurch Cathedral Choir, Oxford; The Gesualdo Six; The Cardinall’s Musick; The Tallis Scholars; the choirs of Trinity College and Clare College, Cambridge; Tenebrae; Polyphony and the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightment. »
19 Dec 2016
As 2016 draws to a close, we stand on the cusp of a post-Europe, pre-Trump world. Perhaps we will look back on current times with the nostalgic romanticism of Richard Strauss’s 1911 paean to past glories, comforts and certainties: Der Rosenkavalier. »
14 Dec 2016
Ah, Loft Opera. It’s part of the experience to wander down many dark
streets, confused and lost, in a part of Brooklyn you’ve never been. It
is that exclusive—you can’t even find the
performance! »
12 Dec 2016
Let’s start by getting a couple of gripes out of the way. First, the
final act of Die Walküre does not constitute a full-length
concert, even with a distinguished cast and orchestra, and with animated
drawings fluttering on a giant screen. »
12 Dec 2016
When you combine two charismatic New York stage divas with the artistry of Los Angeles Opera, you have a mix that explodes into singing, dancing and an evening of superb entertainment. »
07 Dec 2016
Roderick Williams’ and Julius Drake’s English Winter Journey seems such a perfect concept that one wonders why no one had previously thought of compiling a sequence of 24 songs by English composers to mirror, complement and discourse with Schubert’s song-cycle of love and loss. »
06 Dec 2016
A historical afternoon at the NTR Saturday Matinee occurred with an epic
concert version of Prokofiev’s Soviet Opera Semyon Kotko. »
06 Dec 2016
Opening night at the Metropolitan is a gleeful occasion even when the
composer is long gone, but December 1st was an opening for a living composer who
has been making waves around the world and is, gasp, a woman — the second woman
composer ever to have an opera presented at the Met. »
05 Dec 2016
The Feast at Solhaug : Henrik Ibsen's play Gildet paa Solhaug (1856) inspired Wilhelm Stenhammer's opera Gillet på Solhaug. The world premiere recording is now available via Sterling CD, in a 3 disc set which includes full libretto and background history. »
05 Dec 2016
For an opera that has never quite made it over the threshold into the ‘canonical’, the adolescent Mozart’s La finta giardiniera has not done badly of late for productions in the UK. In 2014, Glyndebourne presented Frederic Wake-Walker’s take on the eighteen-year-old’s dramma giocoso. Wake-Walker turned the romantic shenanigans and skirmishes into a debate on the nature of reality, in which the director tore off layers of theatrical artifice in order to answer Auden’s rhetorical question, ‘O tell me the truth about love’. »
03 Dec 2016
As the German language describes so beautifully, a “Schrei aus
tiefstem Herzen” was felt as Evelyn Herlitzius channelled an Elektra
from the depths of her soul. »
03 Dec 2016
Heading to N.Y.C and D.C. for its annual performances, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra invited Semyon Bychkov to return for his Mahler debut with the Fifth Symphony. Having recently returned from Vienna with praise for their rendition, the orchestra now presented it at their homebase. »
03 Dec 2016
Igor Stravinsky's lost Funeral Song, (Chante funèbre) op 5 conducted by Valery Gergiev at the Mariinsky in St Petersburg This extraordinary performance was infinitely more than an ordinary concert, even for a world premiere of an unknown work. »
02 Dec 2016
On Tuesday evening this week, I found myself at The Actors Centre in London’s Covent Garden watching a performance of Unknowing, a dramatization of Schumann’s Frauenliebe und Leben and Dichterliebe (in a translation by David Parry, in which Matthew Monaghan directed a baritone and a soprano as they enacted a narrative of love, life and loss. Two days later at the Wigmore Hall I enjoyed a wonderful performance, reviewed here, by countertenor Philippe Jaroussky with Julien Chauvin’s Le Concert de la Loge, of cantatas by Telemann and J.S. Bach. »
01 Dec 2016
Here is one of the next new great conductors. That’s a bold statement,
but even the L.A. Times agrees: Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla’s appointment
“is the biggest news in the conducting world.” But Ms. Mirga
Gražinytė-Tyla will be getting a lot of weight on her shoulders. »
01 Dec 2016
Manitoba Opera chose to open its 44th season by going for the belly laughs — literally — as it notably presented its inaugural production of Verdi’s Falstaff. »
28 Nov 2016
Macabre and moonstruck, Schubert as Goth, with Stuart Jackson, Marcus Farnsworth and James Baillieu at the Wigmore Hall. An exceptionally well-planned programme devised with erudition and wit, executed to equally high standards. »
26 Nov 2016
On November 20, 2016, Arizona Opera completed its run of Antonín Dvořák’s fairy Tale opera, Rusalka. Loosely based on Hand Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, Joshua Borths staged it with common objects such as dining room chairs that could be found in the home of a child watching the story unfold. »
25 Nov 2016
Consistently overshadowed by the neighboring Bayreuth, the far less stuffy Oper Leipzig (Wagner’s birthplace) programmed after forty years their first complete Ring Cycle. »
25 Nov 2016
You didn’t have to know the Bugs Bunny oeuvre to appreciate Opera San Jose’s enchanting Il barbiere di Sivigila, but it sure enhanced your experience if you did. »
24 Nov 2016
If there was ever any doubt that Puccini’s Manon is on a road to nowhere, then the closing image of Jonathan Kent’s 2014 production of Manon Lescaut (revived here for the first time, by Paul Higgins) leaves no uncertainty. »
21 Nov 2016
Many opera singers are careful to maintain an air of political neutrality. Not so mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, who is outspoken about causes she holds dear. Her latest project, a very personal response to the 2015 terror attacks in Paris, puts her audience through the emotional wringer, but also showers them with musical rewards. »
21 Nov 2016
Honours yet again to Oehms Classics who understand the importance of excellence. A composer as good, and as individual, as Walter Braunfels deserves nothing less.
»
19 Nov 2016
I wonder if Karl Amadeus Hartmann saw something of himself in the young Simplicius Simplicissimus, the eponymous protagonist of his three-scene chamber opera of 1936. Simplicius is in a sort of ‘Holy Fool’ who manages to survive the violence and civil strife of the Thirty Years War (1618-48), largely through dumb chance, and whose truthful pronouncements fall upon the ears of the deluded and oppressive. »
17 Nov 2016
For its second opera of the 2016-17 season Lyric Opera of Chicago has staged Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor in a production seen at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the Grand Théâtre de Genève. »
17 Nov 2016
Akhnaten is the third in composer Philip Glass’s trilogy of operas about people who have made important contributions to society: Albert Einstein in science, Mahatma Gandhi in politics, and Akhnaten in religion. Glass’s three operas are: Einstein on the Beach, Satyagraha, and Akhnaten. »
17 Nov 2016
Shakespeare re-imagined for the very Late Baroque, with Bampton Classical Opera at St John's Smith Square. "Shakespeare, Shakespeare, Shakespeare....the God of Our Idolatory". So wrote David Garrick in his Ode to Shakespeare (1759) through which the actor and showman marketed Shakespeare to new audiences, fanning the flames of "Bardolatory". All Europe was soon caught up in the frenzy. »
16 Nov 2016
David Little composed his one-man opera, Soldier Songs, ten years ago and the International Festival of Arts & Ideas of New Haven, Connecticut, premiered it in 2011. At San Diego Opera, the fifty-five minute musical presentation and the “Talk Back” that followed it were part of the Shiley dētour Series which is held in the company’s smaller venue, the historic Balboa Theatre. »
16 Nov 2016
On Saturday evening November 12, 2016, Pacific Opera Project presented Gioachino Rossini’s comic opera The Barber of Seville in an updated version that placed the action in Hollywood. It was sung in the original Italian but the translation seen as supertitles was specially written to match the characters’ Hollywood identities. »
15 Nov 2016
A Butterfly for the ages in a Butterfly marred by casting ineptness and lugubrious conducting. »
13 Nov 2016
In 1964, 400 years after the birth of the Bard, the writer Anthony Burgess saw Cole Porter’s musical comedy Kiss Me, Kate, a romping variation on The Taming of the Shrew. Shakespeare’s comedy, Burgess said, had a ‘good playhouse reek about it’, adding ‘the Bard might be regarded as closer to Cole Porter and Broadway razzmatazz’ than to the scholars who were ‘picking him raw’. »
13 Nov 2016
Beat Furrer's FAMA came to London at last, with the London Sinfonietta. The piece was hailed as "a miracle" at its premiere at Donaueschingen in 2005 by Die Zeit: State of the Art New Music, recognized by mainstream media, which proves that there is a market for contemporary music lies with lively audiences »
13 Nov 2016
Franz Schreker Die Gezeichneten from the Opéra de Lyon last year, now on arte.tv and Opera Platform. The translation, "The stigmatized", doesn't convey the impact of the original title, which is closer to"The Cursed". »
12 Nov 2016
Semper Dowland, semper dolens (Always Dowland, always doleful) was the title chosen by John Dowland’s for one of his consort pieces and the motto that he took for himself. Twice rejected for the position of musician at the court of Queen Elizabeth, he is reputed to have been a difficult, embittered man. Melancholy songs were the fashion of the day, but Dowland clearly knew dark days of depression first hand. »
11 Nov 2016
An exquisite pit, a Busby Berkeley stage, ingenue performers. Populist opera in San Francisco — in November eleven performances of Aida (alternating with ten of Madama Butterfly). »
10 Nov 2016
Handel’s pasticcio, Oreste, with its mythological core and Roman source libretto, is a Classical beast: it pits barbarous human cruelty versus man’s potential for grace and gentility. Director Gerard Jones’ production at Wilton’s Music Hall, for the Royal Opera house, dispenses with ethical dilemmas - and questions of love and loyalty - and gives us a comic-strip bloodbath which is less a blend of mythological dysfunctionality and moral consolation, and more a mal-functional cross-breed of Tarantino, Hammer House of Horror and the Rocky Horror Show. »
08 Nov 2016
Travellers to Rome may have noticed that in the middle of the vegetable market, the Campo Dei Fiori, there is a statue in memory of the Dominican friar, philosopher, scientist and poet, Giordano Bruno, who was tried as a heretic in 1593 and burned at the stake in 1600. »
08 Nov 2016
With the premiere of Das Rheingold on opening night of the 2016-17 season Lyric Opera of Chicago has initiated a new Ring Cycle to be staged over multiple seasons. Both cast and vision for this production of the first of the four Ring operas make a strong, individual impression. The scenic division of Das Rheingold into four parts is realized with inventive, seamless coherence, a signal for the totality of this unfolding Cycle. »
08 Nov 2016
“Opera is so old-fashioned!” Thus was the mantra adopted by the Bare Opera cast following a funny, awkward pre-show announcement by Executive Producer Kirsten Scott. »
06 Nov 2016
This year’s Wexford Festival was all about the women. Deluded, dangerous, depressed, deranged, they stood centre-stage and commanded the emotional territory. »
03 Nov 2016
On Saturday evening October 29, 2016, Opera Las Vegas held a concert in a most elegant private home. After a glass of wine and some delicious hors d’oeuvres, members of the audience, most of whom were in costume, retreated to a salon that held some seventy chairs. With a grand piano in front and an “off stage” area to the side, the salon was as close to a concert hall as could be found in a private home. »
03 Nov 2016
The always stimulating Iván Fischer consistently validates himself as an innovative conductor with his fresh approaches. Last May, his soul-crushing performance of Mozart’s Requiem with his Budapest Festival Orchestra at the Concertgebouw left me a sobbing mess at the end, so hearing him lead the Berliner Philharmoniker in Mozart was a must. »
03 Nov 2016
As Bernard Haitink’s bout with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra has finally been resolved, we in Amsterdam still have to wait for his return to his former homebase till this coming February. So I was thrilled to hear him in Berlin conduct Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with the Berliner Philharmoniker. It turned out to be historical evening. Not just because of attendance by the Swedish King and Queen, but also because baritone Christian Gerhaher performed the by Mahler preferred alto role, in an extraordinarily deep “Der Abschied”. Haitink did not disappoint in this spectacular affair. »
01 Nov 2016
The Guildhall School of Music and Drama have taken on quite a challenge in selecting two rarely performed Russian operas for their autumn double bill. Stravinsky’s Mavra (1922) blends satire with suburban inconsequentialities while Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta (1892) mixes fantasy and myth; but both operas are characterised by an emotional directness which the young singers and musicians of the GSMD, under conductor and Head of Opera Studies Dominic Wheeler, successfully communicated. »
31 Oct 2016
‘Can great music be inspired by the throw of the dice?’ asks Peter Phillips, director of The Tallis Scholars, in his liner notes to the ensemble’s new recording of Josquin’s Missa Di dadi (The Dice Mass). The fifteenth-century artist certainly had an abundant supply of devotional imagery. As one scholar has put it, during this age there was neither ‘an object nor an action, however trivial, that [was] not constantly correlated with Christ or salvation’. »
27 Oct 2016
On Saturday, October 22, San Diego Opera opened its main stage season with Rossini’s comic opera, Cinderella (La Cenerentola). Lindy Hume’s production had already worked it intrinsic magic in Australia, New Zealand, and Leipzig, Germany but this was its first run of performances in the United States. »
26 Oct 2016
On Thursday evening October 13, Los Angeles Opera transmitted Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth live from the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, in the center of the city, to a pier in Santa Monica and to South Gate Park in Southeastern Los Angeles County. My companion and I saw the opera in High Definition on a twenty-five foot high screen at the park. »
26 Oct 2016
Director Richard Jones never met an opera he couldn’t ‘change,’ and Canadian Opera Company’s sumptuously sung Ariodante was a case in point. »
24 Oct 2016
“Hi! … I’m at the Wigmore Hall!” American mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton’s exuberant excitement at finding herself performing in the world’s premier lieder venue was delightful and infectious. With accompanist James Baillieu, Barton presented what she termed a “love-fest” of some of the duo’s favourite art songs. The programme - Turina, Brahms, Dvořák, Ives, Sibelius - was also surely designed to show-case Barton’s sumptuous and balmy tone, stamina, range and sheer charisma; that is, the qualities which won her the First and Song Prizes at the 2013 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition. »
24 Oct 2016
Canadian Opera Company has assembled a commendable Norma that is long on ritual imagery and war machinery. »
23 Oct 2016
On Saturday evening October 15, 2016, Arizona Opera celebrated forty-five unbroken years of presenting opera. The company first presented Rossini’s The Barber of Seville in Tucson and a few years later it was performing five operas per year in both Tucson and Phoenix. »
23 Oct 2016
“If I lacked ears, it would be bad, but still more bearable; but lacking a nose, a man is devil knows what: not a bird, not a citizen—just take and chuck him out the window!” »
22 Oct 2016
On October 20, 2016, Los Angeles Opera’s Off Grand Series presented librettist Mark Doten and composer Ted Hearne’s The Source at the Roy and Edna Disney Cal Arts Theater. “REDCAT” is a one-hundred seat auditorium in the Disney Hall complex. »
21 Oct 2016
A fixation on death at San Francisco Opera. A 337 year-old woman gave it all up just now after only six years since she last gave it all up on the War Memorial stage.
»
20 Oct 2016
Penny Woolcock's 2010 production of Bizet's The Pearl Fishers returned to English National Opera (ENO) for its second revival on 19 October 2018. Designed by Dick Bird (sets) and Kevin Pollard (costumes) the production remains as spectacular as ever, and ENO fielded a promising young cast with Claudia Boyle as Leila, Robert McPherson as Nadir and Jacques Imbrailo as Zurga, plus James Creswell as Nourabad, conducted by Roland Böer. »
18 Oct 2016
Francesco Cavalli’s La Calisto was the composer’s fifteenth opera, and the ninth to a libretto by Giovanni Faustini (1615-1651). First performed at the Teatro Sant’Apollinaire in Venice on 28th November 1651, the opera by might have been sub-titled ‘Gods Behaving Badly’, so debauched are the deities’ dalliances and deviations, so egotistical their deceptions. »
14 Oct 2016
At the end of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Theseus delivers a speech which returns to the play’s central themes: illusion, art and the creative imagination. The sceptical king dismisses ‘The poet’s vision - his ‘eye, in a fine frenzy rolling’ - which ‘gives to airy nothing/ A local habitation and a name’; such art, and theatre, is a psychological deception brought about by an excessive, uncontrolled imagination. »
13 Oct 2016
Following the success of previous ‘mini-festivals’ at St John’s Smith Square devoted to Schubert and Schumann, last weekend pianist Anna Tilbrook curated a three-day exploration of the work of Ralph Vaughan Williams and his contemporaries. The music performed in these six concerts was chosen to reflect the changing contexts in which it was composed and to reveal the vast changes in society, politics and culture which occurred during Vaughan Williams’ long life-time (1872-1958) and which shaped his life and creative output. »
12 Oct 2016
Trying to work around Manon Lescaut’s episodic structure,
this new production presents the plot as the dying protagonist’s feverish
hallucinations. The result is a frosty retelling of what is arguably
Puccini’s most hot-blooded opera. Musically, the performance also left
much to be desired. »
11 Oct 2016
It is Herodotus who tells us that when Xerxes was marching through Asia to invade Greece, he passed through the town of Kallatebos and saw by the roadside a magnificent plane-tree which, struck by its great beauty, he adorned with golden ornaments, and ordered that a man should remain beside the tree as its eternal guardian. »
07 Oct 2016
Poor Puccini. He is far too often treated as a ‘box-office hit’ by our ‘major’ opera houses, at least in Anglophone countries. For so consummate a musical dramatist, that is something beyond a pity. Here in London, one is far better advised to go to Holland Park for interesting, intelligent productions, although ENO’s offerings have often had something to be said for them. »
05 Oct 2016
With only four singers and a short-story-like plot Don Pasquale is an ideal chamber opera. That chamber just now was the 3200 seat War Memorial Opera House where this not always charming opera buffa is an infrequent visitor (post WWII twice in the 1980’s after twice in the 40’s). »
04 Oct 2016
“Yang sementara tak akan menahan bintang hilang di bimasakti; Yang
bergetar akan terhapus.” (“The transient cannot hold on to stars
lost in the Milky Way; that which quivers will be erased.”) As soprano
Tony Arnold sang these words of Tony Prabowo’s chamber opera
Pastoral, with astonishingly crisp Indonesian diction, the first night
of the second annual Momenta Festival approached its end. »
03 Oct 2016
Some operas seemed designed and destined to raise questions and debates - sometimes unanswerable and irresolvable, and often contentious. Termed a dramma giocoso, Mozart’s Don Giovanni has, historically, trodden a movable line between seria and buffa. »
03 Oct 2016
Péter Eötvös’ The Sirens Cycle received its world premiere at the Wigmore Hall, London, on Saturday night with Piia Komsi and the Calder Quartet. An exceptionally interesting new work, which even on first hearing intrigues: imagine studying the score! For The Sirens Cycle is elegantly structured, so intricate and so complex that it will no doubt reveal even greater riches the more familiar it becomes. It works so well because it combines the breadth of vision of an opera, yet is as concise as a chamber miniature. It's exquisite, and could take its place as one of Eötvös's finest works. »
03 Oct 2016
New from Oehms Classics, Walter Braunfels Orchestral Songs Vol 1. Luxury singers - Valentina Farcas, Klaus Florian Vogt and Michael Volle, with the Staatskapelle Weimar, conducted by Hansjörg Albrecht. »
02 Oct 2016
Manitoba Underground Opera took audiences on a journey — literally and
figuratively — as it presented its latest installment of repertory opera
between August 19–26. »
02 Oct 2016
On a recent weekend Lyric Opera of Chicago gave its annual concert at Millennium Park during which the coming season and its performers are variously showcased. Several of the performers, who were featured at this “Stars of Lyric Opera” event, are scheduled to make their debuts in Lyric Opera’s new production of Wagner’s Das Rheingold beginning on 1 October. »
25 Sep 2016
Desire and deception; Amor and artifice. In Jan Philipp Gloger’s new production of Così van tutte at the Royal Opera House, the artifice is of the theatrical, rather than the human, kind. And, an opera whose charm surely lies in its characters’ amiable artfulness seems more concerned to underline the depressing reality of our own deluded faith in human fidelity and integrity. »
24 Sep 2016
On September 22, 2016, Los Angeles Opera presented Darko Tresnjak’s production of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Macbeth. Verdi and Francesco Maria Piave based their opera on Shakespeare’s play of the same name. »
22 Sep 2016
On September 18th, at a casual Sunday matinee, Pacific Opera Project presented a surprising choice for a small company. It was Igor Stravinsky’s 1951 three act opera, The Rake’s Progress. It’s a piece made for today's supertitles with its exquisitely worded libretto by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman. »
22 Sep 2016
We are nearing the end of Classical Opera’s MOZART 250 sojourn through 1766, a year that the company’s artistic director Ian Page admits was ‘on face value … a relatively fallow year’. I’m not so sure: Jommelli’s Il Vogoleso, performed at the Cadogan Hall in April, was a gem. But, then, I did find the repertoire that Classical Opera offered at the Wigmore Hall in January, ‘worthy rather than truly engaging’ (review). And, this programme of Haydn and his Czech contemporary Josef Mysliveček was stylishly executed but did not absolutely convince. »
21 Sep 2016
Globalization finds its way ever more to San Francisco Opera where Italian composer Marco Tutino’s La Ciociara saw the light of day in 2015 and now, 2016, Chinese composer Bright Sheng’s Dream of the Red Chamber has been created. »
21 Sep 2016
Renowned Polish tenor Piotr Beczala and well-known collaborative pianist Martin Katz opened the San Diego Opera 2016–2017 season with a recital at the Balboa Theater on Saturday, September 17th. »
20 Sep 2016
San Francisco Opera makes occasional excursions into the operatic big-time, such just now was Giordano’s blockbuster Andrea Chénier, last seen at the War Memorial 23 years ago (1992) and even then after a hiatus of 17 years (1975).
»
19 Sep 2016
There is no reason why, given the right performers, second-tier Verdi can’t be a top-tier operatic experience, as was the case with this concert version of I Due Foscari. »
17 Sep 2016
Since their first appearance in Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s literary master-piece, during the Spanish Golden Age, the ingenuous and imaginative knight-errant, Don Quixote, and his loyal subordinate and squire, Sancho Panza, have touched the creative imagination of composers from Salieri to Strauss, Boismortier to Rodrigo. »
15 Sep 2016
Bampton Classical Opera’s 2016 double-bill ‘touched down’ at St John’s Smith Square last night, following performances in The Deanery Garden at Bampton and The Orangery of Westonbirt School earlier this summer. »
14 Sep 2016
Daniele Gatti opened the first series of Royal Concertgebouw
Orchestra’s season with a slightly uneven performance of Mahler’s
Resurrection Symphony. With four planned, this staple repertoire for
the RCO meant to introduce Gatti to the RCO subscribers. »
14 Sep 2016
Opera San Jose opened a commendably impassioned Lucia di Lammermoor that sets the company’s bar very high indeed as it begins its new season. »
13 Sep 2016
The approach of the 2016-17 opera season has brought rising anticipation and expectation for the ROH’s new production - the first at Covent Garden for almost 30 years - of Bellini’s bel canto master-piece, Norma. »
12 Sep 2016
Last June, Riccardo Chailly led the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion for his last concert as Principal Conductor. »
12 Sep 2016
After its world premiere at Royal Opera House in London last year, the German première of Georg Friedrich Haas’s Morgen und Abend took
place at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. »
12 Sep 2016
Rarely have I experienced such fabulous singing in such a dreadful
production. With magnificent voices, Andreas Schager and Dorothea
Röschmann rescued Michael Thalheimer’s grotesque staging of von
Weber’s Der Freischütz. At Staatsoper Unter den Linden,
Alexander Soddy led a richly detailed, transparent and brilliantly glowing
Berliner Staatskapelle. »
10 Sep 2016
For the penultimate BBC Prom at the Royal Albert Hall on Friday 9 September 2016, Marin Alsop conducted the BBC Youth Choir and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in Verdi's Requiem with soloists Tamara Wilson, Alisa Kolosova, Dimitri Pittas, and Morris Robinson. »
10 Sep 2016
“Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd.” »
08 Sep 2016
When I look back on the 2016 Proms season, this Opera Rara performance of Semiramide - the last opera that Rossini wrote for Italy - will be, alongside Pekka Kuusisto’s thrillingly free and refreshing rendition of Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto - one of the stand-out moments. »
03 Sep 2016
Of all the places in Germany, Oper am Rhein at Theater Duisburg staged an
intriguing American double bill of rarities. An experience that was well worth
the trip to this desolate ghost town, remnant of industrial West Germany. »
31 Aug 2016
Bruckner, Bruckner, wherever one goes; From Salzburg to London, he is with us, he is with us indeed, and will be next week too. (I shall even be given the Third Symphony another try, on my birthday: the things I do for Daniel Barenboim…) Still, at least it seems to mean that fewer unnecessary Mahler-as-showpiece performances are being foisted upon us. Moreover, in this case, it was good, indeed great Bruckner, rather than one of the interminable number of ‘versions’ of interminable earlier works. »
30 Aug 2016
Thomas Larcher’s Second Symphony (written 2015-16) here received its United Kingdom premiere, its first performance having been given by the Vienna Philharmonic and Semyon Bychkov in June this year. A commission from the Austrian National Bank for its bicentenary, it is nevertheless not a celebratory work, instead commemorating those refugees who have met their deaths in the Mediterranean Sea, ‘expressing grief over those who have died and outrage at the misanthropy at home in Austria and elsewhere’. »
29 Aug 2016
One of the initiatives for the community at the Lucerne Festival is the
‘40 min’ series. A free concert given before the evening’s main event that ranges from chamber
music to orchestral rehearsals. »
27 Aug 2016
The mysteries and myths surrounding Mozart’s Requiem Mass - left unfinished at his death and completed by his pupil, Franz Xaver Süssmayr - abide, reinvigorated and prolonged by Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus as directed on film by Miloš Forman. The origins of the work’s commission and composition remain unknown but in our collective cultural and musical consciousness the Requiem has come to assume an autobiographical role: as if Mozart was composing a mass for his own presaged death. »
26 Aug 2016
I saw two operas consecutively at Oper Koln. First, the utterly
bewildering Lucia di Lammermoor; then Thilo Reinhardt’s
thrilling Tosca. His staging was pure operatic joy with some
Hitchcockian provocations. »
22 Aug 2016
Bernard Haitink’s monumental Bruckner and Mahler performances with
the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (RCO) got me hooked on classical music.
His legendary performance of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 8 in
C-minor, where in the Finale loosened plaster fell from the
Concertgebouw ceiling, is still recounted in Amsterdam. »
22 Aug 2016
Karita Mattila was born to sing Emilia Marty, the diva around whom revolves Leoš Janáček's The Makropulos Affair (Věc Makropulos). At Prom 45, she shone all the more because she was conducted by Jirí Belohlávek and performed alongside a superb cast from the National Theatre, Prague, probably the finest and most idiomatic exponents of this repertoire. »
21 Aug 2016
‘Two outrageous operas in one crazy evening,’ reads the bill. Hyperbole? Certainly not when the operas are two of Jacques Offenbach’s more off-the-wall bouffoneries and when the company is Opera della Luna whose artistic director, Jeff Clarke, is blessed with the comic imagination and theatrical nous to turn even the most vacuous trivia into a sharp and sassy riotous romp. »
19 Aug 2016
This performance of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream at Glyndebourne was so good that it was the highlight of the whole season, making the term ‘revival’ utterly irrelevant. Jakub Hrůša is always stimulating, but on this occasion, his conducting was so inspired that I found myself closing my eyes in order to concentrate on what he revealed in Britten's quirky but brilliant score. Eyes closed in this famous production by Peter Hall, first seen in 1981? »
18 Aug 2016
A staged piano recital and an opera as a concert. Pianist András Schiff accompanied the Salzburg Marionette Theater at the Mozarteum Grosser Saal and Anna Netrebko sang Manon Lescaut at the Grosses Festspielhaus. »
17 Aug 2016
On August 4, 2016, soprano Leah Crocetto and accompanist Tamara Sanikidze gave a recital at the Scottish Rite Center in Santa Fe New Mexico. A winner of the Metropolitan Opera Auditions and the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Contest, this year Crocetto was singing Donna Anna in Santa Fe Opera’s excellent Don Giovanni. »
17 Aug 2016
On July 31, 2016, against the ethereal beauty of the main hall in the Scottish Rite Center, soprano Angela Meade and pianist Joe Illick gave a recital offering both opera and art songs ranging in origin from early nineteenth century Europe to mid twentieth century America. Many in the audience probably remembered Meade’s recent excellent portrayal of Norma at Los Angeles Opera. »
16 Aug 2016
When more is definitely more, and less would indeed be less. Two of the biggest names in Italian theater art collide in an eponymous theater. »
15 Aug 2016
It was the fifth Proms Chamber Music concert at Cadogan Hall this season, and we were celebrating Shakespeare’s 400th. And, given the extent and range of the composers and artists, and the diversity and profundity of the musical achievement inspired by the Bard, we could probably keep celebrating in this fashion ad infinitum. »
15 Aug 2016
Each August the bleak and leaky, 12,000 seat Arena Adriatica (home of the famed Pesaro basketball team) magically transforms itself into an improvised opera house that boasts the ultimate in opera chic — exemplary Rossini production standards for its now twelve hundred seats. »
15 Aug 2016
This highly enjoyable Prom, part of 2016’s ‘Proms at …’ mini-series, took as its guiding concept the reopening of London’s theatres following the Restoration, focusing in particular upon musical and dramatic responses to Shakespeare. Purcell, rightly, loomed large, with John Blow and Matthew Locke joining him. Receiving their Proms premieres were the excerpts from Timon of Athens and those from Locke’s The Tempest. »
12 Aug 2016
With all the bombast of the presidential campaigns rattling in our heads, with invectives being exchanged and measured discussion all but absent, how utterly lovely to retreat and relax into the harmonious soundscape and well-reasoned debate posed in Strauss’ Capriccio, on magnificent display at Santa Fe Opera. »
11 Aug 2016
When we entered the Crosby Theatre for Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette the stage was surprisingly dominated by a somber, semi-circular black mausoleum, many chambers inscribed with scrambled names of US Civil War era dead. »
09 Aug 2016
Molten passions were seething just below the icy Nordic exterior of Santa Fe
Opera’s wholly masterful production of Barber’s Vanessa. »
09 Aug 2016
Farce is probably the most difficult of dramatic comedy sub-genres to put across. A farce got up in the stately robes of opera sets its presenters an even higher bar. Presenting an operatic farce on a notoriously chilly and cavernous auditorium is to risk catastrophe. »
09 Aug 2016
Fan interest began raging when Santa Fe Opera engaged venerable artist Patricia Racette to make her role debut as Minnie in Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West. »
09 Aug 2016
A funny thing happened on the way to Andalusia. »
09 Aug 2016
The tale of a Syrian donkey driver. And, yes, the donkey stole the show! The competition was intense — the Vienna Philharmonic and the Grosses Festspielhaus in full production regalia for starters. »
08 Aug 2016
Two men, one woman. Both men worshipped and enshrined her in their music. The younger man was both devotee of and rival to the elder. »
05 Aug 2016
This Cosi fan tutte concludes the Salzburg Festival's current Mozart / DaPonte cycle staged by Sven-Eric Bechtolf, the festival's head of artistic planning. »
05 Aug 2016
Zeitgeist or what? What Luis Bunuel's 1962 Franco era film El àngel exterminador may mean to composer Thomas Adès' 2016 opera The Exterminating Angel.
»
04 Aug 2016
The Queen of Spades has been doing rather well in and around London of late. I have only seen two stagings recently before this, but know of quite a few others. Of those: Opera North offered a rare lapse at the Barbican, about which the less said, the better; ENO, last year, offered strong vocal performances but a truly catastrophic production. All in all, then, Holland Park, as so often, came off best. »
04 Aug 2016
Dvořák’s cello concerto is certainly one of the best known works for the instrument, and probably one of the best loved. Its Bohemian sensibility is by turns heroic, ebullient, poetic and wistful. Its soulfulness can inspire bravura impulsiveness from a soloist, as well as warm lyricism. »
31 Jul 2016
Saturday night seems to be Berlioz-Shakespeare night. After last week’s new production of Béatrice and Bénédict at Glyndebourne, yesterday evening it was the turn of the Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and Monteverdi Choir, with the National Youth Choir of Scotland, to tell us a Shakespearean tale à la française. Not a ‘merry war’ this time, but the star-crossed strife and fatal misunderstandings of Romeo and Juliet. »
31 Jul 2016
Bernard Haitink has what is absolutely necessary, yet more often than not lacking, to conduct a Mahler symphony, indeed to conduct any symphony worthy of the name: the ability to hear it in a single span and to communicate in performance that ability. That is not, of course, in itself enough to ensure a successful, let alone a great, performance, but its absence will be fatal. »
31 Jul 2016
In many respects, this second ‘Festspiel-Barockkonzert’ made for an intriguing pendant to the previous night’s premiere of Les Indes galantes. All of the music was earlier than Rameau’s opéra-ballet, some of that in the first half - the programme was broadly but not pedantically chronological - considerably earlier. »
29 Jul 2016
Baroque opera has long been an important part of the Bavarian State Opera’s programming. And beyond the company itself, Munich’s tradition stretches back many years indeed: Kubelík’s Handel with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, for instance. »
28 Jul 2016
All told, this was probably the best Don Giovanni I have seen and heard. Judging opera performances - perhaps we should not be ‘judging’ at all, but let us leave that on one side - is a difficult task: there are so many variables, at least as many as in a play and a concert combined, but then there is the issue of that ‘combination’ too. »
28 Jul 2016
Can one justly “review” a streamed performance? Probably not.
But however different or diminished such a performance, one can—and
must—bear witness to such an event when it represents a landmark in the
evolution of an art form. »
26 Jul 2016
For its annual visit to the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, Glyndebourne brought its new production of Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia, an opera which premiered 200 years ago. »
25 Jul 2016
‘A caprice written with the point of a needle’: so Berlioz described his opera Béatrice and Bénédict, which pares down Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing to its comic quintessence, shorn of the sub-plots, destroyed reputations and near-bloodshed of Shakespeare’s original. »
24 Jul 2016
‘This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.’ It is, perhaps, a line quoted too often; yet, even though it may not have been entirely accurate on this occasion, it came to my mind. Its accuracy might be questioned in several respects. »
21 Jul 2016
Central City Opera celebrated the 60th anniversary of The Ballad of Baby Doe with a hip, canny, multi-faceted new production. »
20 Jul 2016
Someone forgot to tell Central City Opera that it would be difficult to fit Puccini’s (usually) architecturally large Tosca on their small stage.
»
20 Jul 2016
A cast worthy of Bayreuth made for an unforgettable Wagnerian experience at
the Sommer Festspiele in Baden-Baden. »
20 Jul 2016
Loving attention to the highest quality was everywhere evident in Des Moines Metro Opera’s Manon. »
20 Jul 2016
Des Moines Metro Opera had (almost) all the laughs in the right places, and certainly had all the right singers in these meaty roles to make for an enjoyable outing with Verdi’s masterpiece »
20 Jul 2016
With the thermometers reaching boiling point, there’s no doubt that summer has finally arrived in London. But, the sun seems to have been shining over the large marquee in Holland Park all summer. »
20 Jul 2016
J.S. Bach’s cerebral Art of the Fugue in Aix, Verdi’s massive Requiem in Orange, Ibn al-Muqaffa’ ‘s fable of the camel, jackal, wolf and crow, Sophocles’ blind Oedipus Rex and the Bible’s triumphant Psalm No. 150 in Aix. »
19 Jul 2016
The champagne corks popped at the close of this year’s Jette Parker Young Artists Summer Performance at the Royal Opera House, with Prince Orlofsky’s celebratory toast forming a fitting conclusion to some superb singing. »
18 Jul 2016
Bryn Terfel is making a habit of performing Russian patriarchs at the Proms. »
16 Jul 2016
What happens when just everything about an operatic performance goes joyously right?
»
16 Jul 2016
Two years ago, the well-established Des Moines Metro Opera experimented with a 2nd Stages program, with performances programmed outside of their home stage at Simpson College. »
16 Jul 2016
What to make of the unannounced decision to open this concert with the Marseillaise? I am sure it was well intended, and perhaps should leave it at that. »
15 Jul 2016
In a fairy-tale, it can sometimes feel as if one is living a dream but on the verge of being awoken to a shock. Such is life in these dark and uncertain days. »
09 Jul 2016
The tense, three hour knock-down-drag-out seduction of Beauty by Pleasure consumed our souls in this triumphal evening. Forget Time and Disillusion as destructors, they were the very constructors of the beauty and pleasure found in this miniature oratorio.
»
05 Jul 2016
Three parallel universes (before losing count) — the ephemeral Debussy/Maeterlinck masterpiece, the Debussy symphonic tone poem, and the twisted intricacies of a moldy, parochially English country estate. »
05 Jul 2016
This, alas, was where I had to sign off. A weekend conference on Parsifal (including, on the Saturday, a showing of Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s Parsifal film) mean that I missed Götterdämmerung, skipping straight to the sequel. »
04 Jul 2016
The culmination of Opera North’s “Ring for Everyone”, this Götterdämmerung showed the power of the condensed movement so necessary in a staged performance - each gesture of each character was perfectly judged - as well as the visceral power of having Wagner’s huge orchestra on stage as opposed to the pit. »
04 Jul 2016
Michael Grandage's production of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, which was new in 2012, returned to Glyndebourne on 3 July 2016 revived by Ian Rutherford. »
02 Jul 2016
Said and done the audience roared its enjoyment of the performance, reserving even greater enthusiasm to greet stage director Christophe Honoré with applauding boos and whistles that bespoke enormous pleasure, complicity and befuddlement. »
01 Jul 2016
‘A century after the Somme, who still stands with Britain?’ So read a headline in yesterday’s Evening Standard on the eve of the centenary of the first day of that battle which, 141 days later, would grind to a halt with 1,200,000 British, French, German and Allied soldiers dead or injured. »
30 Jun 2016
A day is now a very long time indeed in politics; would that it were otherwise. It certainly is in the Ring, as we move forward a generation to Die Walküre. »
30 Jun 2016
If composers had to be categorised as either conservatives or radicals, Christoph Willibald Gluck would undoubtedly be in the revolutionary camp, lauded for banishing display, artifice and incoherence from opera and restoring simplicity and dramatic naturalness in his ‘reform’ operas. »
29 Jun 2016
Das Rheingold is, of course, the reddest in tooth and claw of all Wagner’s dramas - which is saying something. »
27 Jun 2016
The Princeton Festival presents one opera annually, amidst other events. Its offerings usually alternate annually between 20th century and earlier operas. This year the Festival presented Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes, now a classic work, in a very effective and moving production. »
27 Jun 2016
If you like your Ariadne on Naxos productions as playful as a box of puppies, then Opera Theatre of Saint Louis is the address for you. »
27 Jun 2016
Opera Theatre of Saint Louis took forty years before attempting Verdi’s Macbeth but judging by the excellence of the current production, it was well worth the wait. »
27 Jun 2016
On June 16, 2016, Los Angeles Opera with Beth Morrison Projects presented the world premiere of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang's Anatomy Theater at the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT). »
27 Jun 2016
In its compact forty-year history, the ambitious Opera Theatre of Saint Louis has just triumphantly presented its twenty-fifth world premiere with Shalimar the Clown.
»
27 Jun 2016
The sharp angles and oddly tilting perspectives of Charles Edwards’ set for David Alden’s production of Jenůfa at ENO suggest a community resting precariously on the security and certainty of its customs, soon to slide from this precipice into social and moral anarchy. »
26 Jun 2016
Last week an audience of 50 assembled in the kitchen of a luxurious West Village townhouse for a performance of Marriage of Figaro. »
24 Jun 2016
In a recent article in BBC Music Magazine tenor James Gilchrist reflected on the reason why early-nineteenth-century England produced no corpus of art song to match the German lieder of Schumann, Schubert and others, despite the great flowering of English Romantic poetry during this period. »
23 Jun 2016
With the New York Premiere of Florencia en el Amazonas, the New York City Opera Steps Out of the Shadows of the Past »
22 Jun 2016
Opportunities to see Idomeneo are not so frequent as they might be, certainly not so frequent as they should be. »
21 Jun 2016
Not merely Don Carlo, but the five-act Don Carlo in the 1886 Modena version! The welcomed esotericism of San Francisco Opera’s extraordinary spring season. »
21 Jun 2016
The early summer San Francisco Opera season has the feel of a classy festival. There is an introduction of Spanish director Calixto Bieito to American audiences, a five-act Don Carlo and two awaited, inevitable role debuts, Karita Mattila as Kostelnička and Malin Bystrom as Janacek's Jenůfa. »
18 Jun 2016
Now that the curtain has long fallen on the third and last performance of
the Ring cycle at the Washington National Opera (WNO), it is safe to
say that the long-anticipated production has been an unqualified success for
the company, director Francesca Zambello, and conductor Philippe Auguin. »
18 Jun 2016
Most of the attention during this revival of Daniele Abbado’s 2013 production of Nabucco has been directed at Plácido Domingo’s reprise of the title role, with the critical reception somewhat mixed. »
17 Jun 2016
My first Tristan, indeed my first Wagner, in the theatre was ENO’s previous staging of the work, twenty years ago, in 1996. The experience, as it
should, as it must, although this is alas far from a given, quite overwhelmed me. »
17 Jun 2016
Four years ago, almost to the day (13th to 12th), I saw Melly Still’s production of The Cunning Little Vixen during its first Glyndebourne run. I found
myself surprised how much more warmly I responded to it this time. »
17 Jun 2016
This recital celebrated both the work of the Park Lane Group, which has been
supporting the careers of outstanding young artists for 60 years, and the 90th
birthday of Joseph Horovitz, who was born in Vienna in 1926 and emigrated to
England aged 12. »
16 Jun 2016
Headed by General Director Luana DeVol, a world-renowned dramatic soprano, Opera Las Vegas is a relatively new company that presents opera with first-rate casts at the University of Las Vegas’s Judy Bayley Theater. In 2014 they presented Rossini’s The Barber of Seville and in 2015, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. This year they offered a blazing rendition of Georges Bizet’s Carmen. »
16 Jun 2016
Ever since a friend was reported as having said he would like something in
return for modern-dress Shakespeare (how quaint that term seems now, as if
anyone would bat an eyelid!), namely an Elizabethan-dress staging of Look
Back in Anger, I have been curious about the possibilities of
‘down-dating’, as I suppose we might call it. Rarely, if ever, do
we see it, though. »
16 Jun 2016
Leading a very muscular Dutch Radio Philharmonic, Principal Conductor Markus
Stenz brilliantly delivered Alban Berg’s Wozzeck with a superb
Florian Boesch in the lead and a mesmerising Asmik Grigorian as Marie his
wife. »
13 Jun 2016
Edouard Lalo (1823-92) is best known today for his instrumental works: the
Symphonie espagnole (which is, despite the title, a five-movement
violin concerto), the Symphony in G Minor, and perhaps some movements from his
ballet Namouna, a scintillating work that the young Debussy adored. »
08 Jun 2016
There can’t be that many operas that start with an extended solo for
double bass. At Holland Park, the eerie, angular melody for lone bass player
which opens Pietro Mascagni’s Iris immediately unsettled the
relaxed mood of the summer evening. »
06 Jun 2016
George Souglides’ set for Will Tuckett’s new production of
Rossini’s L’italiana in Algeri at Garsington would surely
have delighted Liberace. »
04 Jun 2016
Calixto Bieito is always news, Carmen with a good cast is always news. So here is the news. »
04 Jun 2016
Distinguished theatre director Michael
Boyd’s first operatic outing was his brilliant re-invention of
Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo for the Royal Opera at the Roundhouse
in 2015, so what he did next was always going to rouse interest. »
02 Jun 2016
Although Bohuslav Martinů’s short operas Ariane and Alexandre bis date from 1958 and 1937 respectively, there was a distinct tint of 1920s Parisian surrealism about director Rodula Gaitanou’s double bill, as presented by the postgraduate students of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. »
02 Jun 2016
The eyes of the opera world turned recently to Dresden—the city where Wagner premiered his Rienzi, Fliegende Holländer, and Tannhäuser—for an important performance of
Lohengrin. For once in Germany it was not about the staging. »
01 Jun 2016
Having been privileged already to see in little over two months two great productions of Die Meistersinger, one in Paris (Stefan Herheim) and one in Munich (David Bösch), I was unable to resist the prospect of a third staging, at Glyndebourne. »
31 May 2016
‘Mack does bad things.’ The tabloid headline that convinces Rory
Kinnear’s surly, sharp-suited Macheath that it might be time to take a
short holiday epitomizes the cold, understated menace of Rufus Norris’s
production of Simon Stephens’ new adaptation of The Threepenny
Opera at the Olivier Theatre. »
30 May 2016
On May 25, 2016, Los Angeles Opera presented a revival of the Herbert Ross production of Giacomo Puccini’s opera, La bohème. Stage director, Peter Kazaras, made use of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion’s wide stage by setting some scenes usually seen inside the garret on the surrounding roof instead. »
30 May 2016
On May 21, 2016, Ars Minerva presented The Amazons in the Fortunate Isles (Le Amazzoni nelle Isole Fortunate), an opera consisting of a prologue and three acts by seventeenth century Venetian composer Carlo Pallavicino. »
30 May 2016
While Pegida anti-refugee demonstrations have been taking place for a while
now in Dresden, there was something noble about the Semperoper with its banners
declaring all are welcome, listing Othello, the Turk, and the hedon Papageno as
examples. »
30 May 2016
Opera houses’ neglect of Leoš Janáček remains one
of the most baffling of the many baffling aspects of the
‘repertoire’. At least three of the composer’s operas
would be perfect introductions to the art form: Jenůfa,
Katya Kabanova, or The Cunning Little Vixen would surely
hook most for life. »
30 May 2016
It’s not easy for critics to hit the right note when they write about musical collaborations between students and professionals. We have to allow for inevitable lack of polish and inexperience while maintaining an overall high standard of judgment. »
28 May 2016
Die Meistersinger at the theatre in which it was premiered, on
Wagner’s birthday: an inviting prospect by any standards, still more so
given the director, conductor, and cast, still more so given the opportunity to
see three different productions within little more than a couple of
months). »
25 May 2016
Director Annabel Arden believes that Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia is ‘all about playfulness, theatricality, light and movement’. It’s certainly ‘about’ those things and they are, as Arden suggests, ‘based in the music’. »
25 May 2016
George Enescu’s Oedipe was premiered in Paris 1936 but it has taken 80 years for the opera to reach the stage of Covent Garden. This production by Àlex Ollé (a member of the Catalan theatrical group, La Fura Dels Baus) and Valentina Carrasco, which arrives in London via La Monnaie where it was presented in 2011, was eagerly awaited and did not disappoint. »
22 May 2016
Lyric Opera of Chicago staged Charles Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette as the last opera in its current subscription season. »
22 May 2016
‘The plot is perhaps the least moral in all opera; wrong triumphs in the name of love and we are not expected to mind.’ »
21 May 2016
Anthony Minghella’s production of Madame Butterfly for ENO is
wearing well. First seen in 2005, it is now being aired for the sixth time and is still, as I observed in 2013, ‘a breath-taking visual banquet’. »
17 May 2016
This concert version of La straniera felt like a compulsory musicology field trip, but it had enough vocal flashes to lobby for more frequent performances of this midway Bellini. »
17 May 2016
As poetry is the harmony of words, so music is that of notes; and as poetry is a rise above prose and oratory, so is music the exaltation of poetry. »
14 May 2016
From experiments with musique concrète in the 1940s, to the
Minimalists’ explorations into tape-loop effects in the 1960s, via the
appearance of hip-hop in the 1970s and its subsequent influence on electronic
dance music in the 1980s, to digital production methods today,
‘sampling’ techniques have been employed by musicians working in
genres as diverse as jazz fusion, psychedelic rock and classical music. »
14 May 2016
On May 7, 2016, San Diego Opera presented the West Coast premiere of Great Scott, an opera by Terrence McNally and Jake Heggie. McNally’s original libretto pokes fun at everything from football to bel canto period opera. It includes snippets of nineteenth century tunes as well as Heggie's own bel canto writing. »
13 May 2016
A foiled abduction, a castle-threatening inferno, romantic infatuation, guilt-laden near-suicide, gun-shots and knife-blows: Andrea Leone Tottola’s libretto for Vincenzo Bellini’s first opera, Adelson e Salvini, certainly does not lack dramatic incident. »
11 May 2016
Opera as an art form has never shied away from the grittier shadows of life. Nor has Manitoba Opera, with its recent past productions dealing with torture, incest, murder and desperate political prisoners still so tragically relevant today. »
05 May 2016
Published in 1855 as an entertainment for his two daughters, William Makepeace Thackeray’s The Rose and the Ring is a burlesque fairy-tale whose plot — to the author’s wilful delight, perhaps — defies summation and elucidation. »
04 May 2016
What more fitting memorial for composer Peter Maxwell Davies (d. 03/14/2016) than a splendid performance of The Lighthouse, the third of his eight works for the stage. »
04 May 2016
I suspect that many of those at the Wigmore Hall for The King’s
Consort’s performance of the La Senna festeggiante (The
Rejoicing Seine) were lured by the cachet of ‘Antonio Vivaldi’ and
further enticed by the notion of a lover’s serenade at which the generic
term ‘serenata’ seems to hint. »
02 May 2016
Having enjoyed superb singing by a young cast of soloists in Classical
Opera’s UK premiere of Jommelli’s Il Vogoleso the
previous evening, I was delighted that the 2016 Kathleen Ferrier Awards Final
at the Wigmore Hall confirmed the strength and depth of talent possessed by the
young singers studying in and emerging from our academies and conservatoires. »
29 Apr 2016
On February 7, 1786, Emperor Joseph II of Austria had brand new one-act operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri performed in the Schönbrunn Palace’s Orangery. »
29 Apr 2016
Those poor opera lovers in Cologne have a never ending problem with the city’s opera house. Together with the rest of city, the construction of the new opera house is mired in political incompetence. »
28 Apr 2016
London remains starved of Wagner. This season, its major companies offer but two works, Tannhäuser from the Royal Opera and Tristan from ENO. »
25 Apr 2016
Dmitry Bertman’s hilarious staging of Rimsky-Korsakov’s political sex-comedy The Golden Cockerel in Düsseldorf. »
23 Apr 2016
On April 16, 2016, San Diego Opera presented Giacomo Puccini’s sixth opera, Madama Butterfly, in an intriguing production by Garnett Bruce. Roberto Oswald’s scenery included the usual Japanese styled house with many sliding doors and walls. On either side, however, were blooming cherry trees with rough trunks and gnarled branches that looked as though they had been growing on the property for a hundred years. »
23 Apr 2016
New Co-Production Tristan und Isolde with Metropolitan: Simon
Rattle and Westbroek electrify Treliński’s Opera-Noir. »
20 Apr 2016
In an operatic world crowded with sure-fire bread and butter repertoire, Opera San Jose has boldly chosen to lavish a new production on a dark horse, Andre Previn’s A Streetcar Named Desire. »
18 Apr 2016
Choral symphony, oratorio, symphonic poem — Berlioz’s Roméo et Juliette does not fit into any mould. It has the potential to work as an opera-ballet, but incoherent storytelling and uninspired conducting undermined this production. »
14 Apr 2016
When Kasper Holten took the precaution of pre-warning ticket-holders that the Royal Opera House’s new production of Lucia di Lammermoor featured scene portraying ‘sexual acts’ and ‘violence’, one assumed that he was aiming to avert a re-run of the jeering and hectoring that accompanied last season’s Guillaume Tell. He even went so far as to offer concerned patrons a refund.
»
12 Apr 2016
These are five very different reviews by students at the University of Maryland on its Opera Studio production of Regina — an interesting, informative and entertaining read . . . »
10 Apr 2016
‘Remember me, the one who is Pia;/ Siena made me, Maremma undid me.’ The speaker is Pia de’ Tolomei. She appears in a brief episode of Dante’s Divine Comedy (Purgatorio V, 130-136) which was the source for Gaetano Donizetti’s Pia de’ Tolomei - by way of Bartolomeo Sestini’s verse-novella of 1825.
»
10 Apr 2016
"The large measure of formalism which forms the basis of De Materie does not in itself offer any guarantee that the work will be beautiful," says Dutch composer Louis Andriessen of his four-movement opera. »
07 Apr 2016
On April 1, 2016, Arizona Opera presented Falstaff by Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) and Arrigo Boito (1842-1918) in Phoenix. Although Boito based most of his libretto on Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, he used material from Henry IV as well. Verdi wrote the music when he was close to the age of eighty. He was concerned about his ability at that advanced age, but he was immensely pleased with Boito’s text and decided to compose his second comedy, despite the fact that his first, Un giorno di regno, had not been successful. »
06 Apr 2016
The brand new SF Opera Lab opened last month with artist William Kentridge’s staged Schubert Winterreise. Its second production just now, Svadba-Wedding — an a cappella opera for six female voices — unabashedly exposes the space in a different, non-theatrical configuration. »
05 Apr 2016
One may think of Tosca as the most Roman of all operas, after all it has been performed at the Teatro Costanzi (Rome’s opera house) well over a thousand times since 1900. Though equally, maybe even more Roman is Hector Berlioz’ Benvenuto Cellini that has had only a dozen or so performances in Rome since 1838. »
02 Apr 2016
Two new recordings from highly acclaimed specialists Opera Rara -
Gounod La Colombe and Donizetti Le Duc d'Albe. »
02 Apr 2016
Roll up! A new opera by Handel is to be performed, L’Elpidia overo li rivali generosi. It is based upon a libretto by Apostolo Zeno with music by Leonardo Vinci - excepting a couple of arias by Giuseppe Orlandini and, additionally, two from Antonio Lotti’s Teofane (which the star bass, Giuseppe Maria Boschi , on bringing with him from the Dresden production of 1719). »
02 Apr 2016
Radvanovsky in New York, Devia in Genoa — Donizetti queens are indeed in the news! Just now in Genoa Mariella Devia was the Elizabeth I for her beloved Roberto Devereux in a new trilogy of Donizetti queens (Maria Stuarda and Anne Bolena) directed by baritone Alfonso Antoniozzi. »
31 Mar 2016
‘All men become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man
does. That is his.’ ‘Is that clever?’ ‘It is perfectly
phrased!’ »
26 Mar 2016
Evolving in Mahler’s Third: Dudamel and L.A. Philharmonic’s impressive adaption to the Concertgebouw »
22 Mar 2016
Though all big opera is called grand opera, French grand opera itself is a very specific genre. It is an ephemeral style not at all easy to bring to life. For example . . . »
21 Mar 2016
That’s Walter Benjamin of the Frankfort School [philosophers in the interwar period (WW’s I and II) who were at home neither with capitalism, fascism or communism]. »
21 Mar 2016
1737 was Handel’s annus horribilis. His finances were in
disarray and his opera company was struggling in the face of the challenge
presented by the rival Opera of the Nobility. The strain and over-work led
to a stroke, as the Earl of Shaftesbury reported: »
20 Mar 2016
Nocturnal visions and reveries dominated this concert by the BBC
Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Hall, part of a two-day celebration of
the music of George Benjamin which also includes a concert performance of
the composer’s opera Written on Skin. »
18 Mar 2016
On March 5, 2016, San Diego Opera presented it’s star bass, Ferruccio Furlanetto, in a concert of arias with the San Diego Symphony Orchestra at the orchestra’s home, Copley Symphony Hall. »
18 Mar 2016
On March 12, 2016, Los Angeles Opera presented the local premiere of Lee Blakeley’s staging of Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly which had been seen in 2010 at Santa Fe Opera. When Blakeley’s Geisha, played magnificently by Ana Maria Martinez, forsakes her traditional religion and breaks the rules of her culture, she eventually faces a choice between total loss of honor and suicide. Everything that happened on the stage Saturday night pointed toward the tragedy. Puccini’s unforgettable music and exquisite singing by Los Angeles Opera’s top-notch cast kept audience members on the edges of their seats all evening. »
16 Mar 2016
‘And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’ John Donne’s metaphysical meditation might have made a
fitting sub-title for Richard Jones’s new production of Musorgky’s Boris Godunov at the Royal Opera House — the first
performance in the house of the original 1869 score. »
14 Mar 2016
By the time that he composed Ariodante, which was first performed
in January 1735, Handel had more than three decades of opera-composing
experience behind him. It’s surely one of his greatest music dramas not
least because, adapted from Ludovico Ariosto’s epic poem Orlando
Furioso, it is a very ‘human’ drama, telling of love and lust,
betrayal and healing. »
14 Mar 2016
Don Giovanni is Mozart at his mature zenith. He makes his musical statements directly with optimum economy and, even after more than two centuries, the dramatic scope of his work remains a source of wonder to operagoers. Charles Gounod called Don Giovanni “an unequalled and immortal masterpiece, the pinnacle of lyrical drama.” »
10 Mar 2016
Descending into the concrete cavern that is Ambika P3, at the University of
Westminster, I reflected that the bunker-like milieu was a fitting venue for
Royal Academy Opera’s production of Rimsky-Korsakov’s May
Night, which updated the original early-19th century locale to
the beginning of the Soviet era. »
10 Mar 2016
The English Concert’s travelling Orlando has been collecting
rave reviews. Here’s another one from Amsterdam, the last stop on their
tour before Carnegie Hall. »
03 Mar 2016
In 1728 Handel was down on his luck, following the demise of his ‘Royal
Academy’. Ever the entrepreneur, the following year he made a scouting tour of
Italy in search of the best singing talent and, returning with seven new virtuosos
— including the castrato Senesino. »
02 Mar 2016
Bryan Hymel, Irene Roberts & Julius Drake at Rosenblatt Recitals »
02 Mar 2016
Strong revival for Richard Jones 2011 production with cast mixing returnees and débutantes »
02 Mar 2016
Last year for his 60th anniversary as conductor, Bernard Haitink celebrated with one of his first orchestra’s the Dutch Radio Philharmonic. That performance of Mahler’s Fourth turned out such a success, he returned for another round at the NTR Saturday Matinee at the Concertgebouw. »
02 Mar 2016
It is not often that a major work by a forgotten composer gets rediscovered
and makes an enormously favorable impression on today’s listeners. That has
happened, unexpectedly, with Herculanum, a four-act grand opera by
Félicien David, which in 2014 was recorded for the first time. »
01 Mar 2016
In Musical Exoticism (Cambridge 2011) Ralph P. Locke undertook an
extensive appraisal of the portrayal of the ‘Other’ in works dating
from 1700 to the present day, an enquiry that embraced a wide range of genres
from Baroque opera to Algerian rap, and which was at once musical, cultural,
historical, political and ethical. »
29 Feb 2016
Dutch National Opera’s Khovanshchina’s finest asset was
Anita Rachvelishvili’s vocally ravishing Marfa. The darkly opalescent
Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra came in a close second. »
29 Feb 2016
The meaning of the term cantata (literally, ‘sung’
from the Italian verb, cantare) may have changed over time, but
whether sacred or secular, the form — with its combination of
declamatory narration and emotive arias — is undoubtedly a dramatic
one, as this performance by Dunedin at the Wigmore Hall of cantatas by J.S.
Bach and Handel confirmed. »
29 Feb 2016
With its City of Light presentations, honoring Paris and French inspired music, the Los Angeles Philharmonic offered its public an extraordinary concert performance of a unique opera — Pelléas et Mélisande by Claude Debussy. »
29 Feb 2016
Barrie Kosky, intendant of the Komische Oper in Berlin, initially thought of combining live performance with animation when he saw British theater company 1927’s production of Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. For that presentation, Suzanne Andrade and Paul Barritt mixed the worlds of silent film and music hall theater, a combination that Kosky wanted for his production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. »
24 Feb 2016
In the 17th century, sacred vocal music was not just for public worship in
church but also for private devotion within a secular setting, and this concert
at the Wigmore Hall by Theatre of the Ayre under its director
Elizabeth Kenny transported us from Chapel Royal to domestic chamber. »
22 Feb 2016
In a world opera schedule packed with safe bread-and-butter warhorses, Hawaii Opera Theatre gambled on a Britten rarity and came up smelling as sweet as a tuberose lei. »
19 Feb 2016
Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based their libretto for Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen on a novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée. On March 3, 1875, Carmen was premiered at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. »
19 Feb 2016
Napoleon I (Bonaparte) was known as the Aigle (eagle), his son by Marie Louise (of the Hapsburgs) later became called the Aiglon (eaglet). At birth he was dubbed the King of Rome by his father. Unofficially and very briefly he was Napoleon II. Exiled in Austria he was officially titled the Duke of Reichstadt and the Prince of Parma. »
18 Feb 2016
Notable first performance of Bellini's opera by ENO, with a striking assumption of the title role from the young American soprano »
18 Feb 2016
The Wigmore Hall’s chronological journey through the complete
lieder of Franz Schubert continued with this recital by tenor Ian Bostridge
and pianist Graham Johnson. The duo gave a thought-provoking performance
which was notable for the searching dialectic between simplicity and
complexity which it illuminated. »
17 Feb 2016
Peter Greenaway’s short film M is for Man, Music and Mozart, for which the Dutch composer Louis Andriessen composed the score, was commissioned to mark the bicentenary anniversary of Mozart’s death in 1791. »
17 Feb 2016
Together with fellow playwrights Émile Augier and Alexandre Dumas fils, Victorien Sardou dominated the French stage in the late nineteenth century. Although Sardou was an excellent craftsman who was elected to the Académie Francaise in 1877, his reliance on theatrical devices caused his plays to go out of style after the turn of the twentieth century. »
15 Feb 2016
The background of Giuseppe Verdi’s Nabucco, currently being presented at Lyric Opera of Chicago, draws on the struggle between Babylonian and Hebrew forces, emphasized in this production graphically by alternating scripts in cuneiform and Hebrew projections. »
15 Feb 2016
Whilst the Arts Council has been doing its best to destroy the English National Opera, ENO has fought back in the best way possible: in the theatre. »
15 Feb 2016
On Saturday, January 23, 2016, at the University of Arizona’s Crowder Hall, mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton and soprano Amber Wagner gave a delightful recital entitled From Baroque to Broadway. The Baroque was Benjamin Britten’s realization of three Henry Purcell songs: Music for a While, Lost is my Quiet, and What Can We Poor Females Do? »
15 Feb 2016
The route that Stuart MacRae and Louse Welsh have taken for their first full-length opera is reassuringly traditional in terms of getting experience of the genre, whilst the resulting work shows itself to be admirably anything but. »
08 Feb 2016
Opera Philadelphia deserves congratulations on yet another coup. The company
co-commissioned Cold Mountain, an opera by Jennifer Higdon based on
Gene Scheer’s adaptation of Charles Frazier’s celebrated Civil War
epic. »
08 Feb 2016
For their first of two recitals at the Wigmore Hall, Christian Gerhaher and Gerold Huber devised an interesting programme - popular Schubert mixed with songs by Wolfgang Rihm and by Huber himself. »
08 Feb 2016
There are not many opera productions that you would cross oceans to see. Graham
Vick’s Götterdämmerung in Sicily however compelled such a voyage. »
05 Feb 2016
Premièred in 1877 at Offenbach’s own Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens, Emmanuel Chabrier’s L’Étoile has a libretto, by Eugène Leterrier and Albert Vanloo, which stirs the blackly comic, the farcical and the bizarre into a surreal melange, blending contemporary satire with the frankly outlandish.
»
02 Feb 2016
Robert Ashley’s opera-novel Quicksand makes for a novel
experience »
01 Feb 2016
One of the leading Russian composers of his generation, Alexander
Raskatov’s reputation in the UK and western Europe derives from several,
recent large-scale compositions, such as his reconstruction of Alfred
Schnittke’s Ninth Symphony from a barely legible manuscript (the work was
first performed in 2007 in the Dresden Frauenkirche by the Dresden Philharmonic
under Dennis Russell Davies), and his 2010 opera A Dog’s Heart,
based on Mikhail Bulgakov’s satire (which was directed by Simon McBurney
at English National Opera in 2010, following the opera’s premiere at
Netherlands Opera earlier that year). »
01 Feb 2016
I’m not sure that St John’s Smith Square was the most
appropriate venue for Opera Danube’s latest production: Jacques
Offenbach’s satirical frolic, Orpheus in the Underworld. »
31 Jan 2016
This nasty little opera evening in Lyon lived up to the opera’s initial reputation as pure pornophony. This is the erotic Shostakovich of the D minor cello sonata, it is the sarcastic and complicated Shostakovich of The Nose . . . »
26 Jan 2016
During December 2015 and presently in January Lyric Opera of Chicago has featured the world premiere of the opera Bel Canto, with music by Jimmy López and libretto by Nilo Cruz, based on the novel by Ann Patchett. »
22 Jan 2016
Christmas at the Royal Opera House is all about magic, mystery and miracles: as represented by the conjuror’s exploits in The Nutcracker — with its Kingdom of Sweets and Sugar Plum Fairy — or, as in the Linbury Theatre this year, the fantastical adventures of the Firework-Maker’s Daughter, Lila, and her companions — a lovesick elephant, swashbuckling pirates, tropical beasts and Fire-Fiends. »
21 Jan 2016
The title role is a deciding factor in Madama Butterfly. Despite a
last-minute conductor cancellation, last Saturday’s concert performance
at the Concertgebouw was a resounding success, thanks to Lianna
Haroutounian’s opulent, heart-stealing Cio-Cio-San. »
21 Jan 2016
With this performance of vocal and instrumental works composed by the
10-year-old Mozart and his contemporaries during 1766, Classical Opera entered
the second year of their 27-year project, MOZART 250, which is
designed to ‘contextualise the development and influences of [sic] the
composer’s artistic personality’ and, more audaciously, to
‘follow the path that subsequently led to some of the greatest
cornerstones of our civilisation’. »
14 Jan 2016
Luca Pisaroni and Wolfram Rieger were due to give the latest installment in the Wigmore Hall's complete Schubert songs series, but both had to cancel at short notice. Fortunately, the Wigmore Hall rises to such contingencies, and gave us Benjamin Appl and Jonathan Ware. Since there's a huge buzz about Appl, this was an opportunity to hear more of what he can do. »
13 Jan 2016
The phrase ‘Sunday afternoon concert’ may suggest light, post-prandial entertainment, but soprano Gemma Lois Summerfield and her accompanist, Simon Lepper, swept away any such conceptions in this demanding programme at St. John’s Smith Square. »
13 Jan 2016
When, o when, will someone put Peter Sellars and his compendium of clichés
out of our misery? »
24 Dec 2015
This recording, made in the Adrian Boult Hall at the Birmingham Conservatoire of Music in June 2014, is the fourth disc in SOMM’s series of recordings with Paul Spicer and the Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir. »
22 Dec 2015
Having recently followed some by-ways through the music of Purcell, Monteverdi and Cavalli, L’Arpeggiata turned the spotlight on traditional folk music in this characteristically vibrant and high-spirited performance at the Wigmore Hall. »
22 Dec 2015
Edward Gardner brought all his experience as a choral and opera conductor to bear in this stirring performance of Michael Tippett’s A Child of Our Time at the Barbican Hall, with a fine cast of soloists, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Symphony Chorus. »
22 Dec 2015
‘Apt for voices or viols’: eager to maximise sales among the domestic market in Elizabethan England, publishers emphasised that the music contained in collections such as Thomas Morley’s First Book of Madrigals to Four Voices of 1594 was suitable for performance by any combination of singers and players. »
18 Dec 2015
It was a single title but a double bill and there was far more happening than Gordon Getty and Claude Debussy. Starting with Edgar Allen Poe. »
16 Dec 2015
For its latest production of the current season Lyric Opera of Chicago is presenting Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow (Die lustige Witwe) featuring Renée Fleming /Nicole Cabell as the widow Hanna Glawari and Thomas Hampson as Count Danilo Danilovich. »
16 Dec 2015
Mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli has been a regular favourite at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam since 1996. Her verastile concerts are always carefully constructed and delivered with irrepressible energy and artistic
commitment. »
10 Dec 2015
When Italian director Damiano Michieletto visited Covent Garden in June this year, he spiced Rossini’s Guillaume Tell with a graphic and, many felt, gratuitous rape scene that caused outrage and protest. »
09 Dec 2015
Verdi Giovanna d'Arco at Teatro alla Scala, Milan, starting the new season. Primas at La Scala are a state occasion, attended by the President of Italy and other dignitaries. »
06 Dec 2015
This performance by countertenor Iestyn Davies and tenor Allan Clayton was a
stirring celebration of the diversity and continuity that characterises vocal
settings of English texts by English and American composers, past and present.
Imaginatively and intelligently devised by pianist James Baillieu, the
programme demonstrated the affective power of music ranging from the simplest
to the most sophisticated forms of vocal expression, and encompassed art-song,
folk-song, realisations, quasi-operatic mini-drama and spiritual
meditation. »
06 Dec 2015
At the Wigmore Hall, the London premiere of a major new work by Howard Skempton, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, with Roderick Williams and BCMG, the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group.
»
05 Dec 2015
A fairy tale that looks like clay animation come to life, terrifies and
enchants, and rakes up heaps of middle class guilt—this is Dutch National
Opera’s new production of Hänsel und Gretel, set on the
most attractive rubbish tip you will ever come across. »
03 Dec 2015
The American countertenor Bejun Mehta exhibited a considerable range of
vocal colours, refined phrasing and spectacular virtuosity in this programme of
Baroque cantatas and arias, with La Nuova Musica, under the direction of the
ensemble’s founder, David Bates. »
02 Dec 2015
There was a pre-curtain excited buzz, unusual these days, in the War Memorial Opera House. Word of mouth (and the major press) had spread the word — it’s a good show! »
01 Dec 2015
The New York Festival of Song, founded in 1988 by Michael Barrett and Steven Blier, offers unique evenings of songs rarely heard, or songs rarely heard in conjunction with one another. »
30 Nov 2015
Falstaff and Die Meistersinger are among the pinnacles if not the pinnacles of nineteenth century opera. Both operas are atypical of the composer and both operas are based on a Shakespeare play.
»
30 Nov 2015
To borrow from the great Bard himself: “the course of true love never did run smooth.” »
30 Nov 2015
Florencia in el Amazonas was the first Spanish-language opera to be commissioned by major United States opera houses. »
30 Nov 2015
Gaetano Donizetti wrote a comedy or dramma giocoso called Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali (The Conventions and Inconveniences of the Theater), which is also known by the shorter title, Viva La Mamma!. »
30 Nov 2015
Vincenzo Bellini composed Norma to a libretto that Felice Romani had fashioned after Alexandre Soumet’s French play, Norma, ossia L'infanticidio (Norma, or The Infanticide). »
30 Nov 2015
In order to mount a successful production of Alban Berg’s opera Wozzeck, first performed in 1925, the dramatic intensity and lyrical beauty of the score must become the focal point for participants. »
30 Nov 2015
Félicien David’s intriguing Le désert, for vocal and orchestral forces plus narrator, was widely performed in its own day, then disappeared from the performing repertory for nearly a century. »
29 Nov 2015
During this exploration of music from the Austro-German Baroque, Florilegium
were joined by the baritone Roderick Williams in a programme of music which
placed the music and career of J.S. Bach in the context of three older
contemporaries: Franz Tunder (1614-67), Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1701) and
Heinrich Biber (1644-1704). »
29 Nov 2015
Charismatic charm, vivacious insouciance, fervent passion, dejected
self-pity, blazing anger and stoic selflessness: Zazà — a chanteuse
raised from the backstreets to the bright lights — is a walking compendium of
emotions. »
27 Nov 2015
‘Stay away from doctors; they are bad for your health.’ This seems to be the central message of L’Ospedale - a one-hour opera by an unknown seventeenth-century composer, with a libretto by Antonio Abati which presents a satirical critique of the medical profession of the day and those who had the misfortune to need curative treatment for their physical and mental ills.
»
27 Nov 2015
‘In these times of heightened security … we are listening, watching …’
»
16 Nov 2015
Arrigo Boito Mefistofele was broadcast livestream from the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich last night. What a spectacle ! »
14 Nov 2015
The monochrome palette of Picasso’s Guernica and the mural’s anti-war images of suffering dominate Calixto Bieito’s new production of Verdi’s The Force of Destiny for English National Opera. »
14 Nov 2015
The world premiere of Morgen und Abend by Georg Friedrich Haas at the Royal Opera House, London — so conceptually unique and so unusual that its originality will confound many. »
12 Nov 2015
Company XIV’s production of Cinderella is New York City theater
at its finest. With a nod to the court of Louis the XIV and the grandiosity of
Lully’s opera theater, Company XIV manages to preserve elements of the French
Baroque while remaining totally innovative, and never—in fact, not once for
the entire two and a half hour show—falls prey to the predictable. Not one
detail is left to chance in this finely manicured yet earthily raw production
of Cinderella. »
12 Nov 2015
This was a concert where immense satisfaction was derived equally from the
quality of musicianship displayed and the coherence and resourcefulness of the
programme presented. In 1610, Claudio Monteverdi published his Vespro della
Beata Vergine for soloists, chorus, and orchestra. »
12 Nov 2015
This well-packed disc is a delight and a revelation. Until now, even the
most assiduous record collector had access to only a few of the nearly 100
songs published by Félicien David (1810-76), in recordings by such notable
artists as Huguette Tourangeau, Ursula Mayer-Reinach, Udo Reinemann, and Joan
Sutherland (the last-mentioned singing the duet “Les Hirondelles”
with herself!). »
09 Nov 2015
If not timeless, Robert Carsen’s production of Francis Poulenc’s
Dialogues des Carmélites is highly age-resistant. »
05 Nov 2015
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari was one of the Italian composers of the post-Puccini generation (which included Licinio Refice, Riccardo Zandonai, Umberto Giordano and Franco Leoni) who struggled to prolong the verismo tradition in the early years of the twentieth century. »
05 Nov 2015
On Saturday evening October 31, 2015, the Nantucket whaling ship Pequod journeyed to Los Angeles Opera and began its sixth voyage in the attempt to kill the elusive whale called Moby-Dick. »
05 Nov 2015
Great Scott is a combination of a parody of bel canto opera and an
operatic version of All About Eve. Beloved American diva Arden Scott
(Joyce DiDonato), has discovered the score to a long-lost opera “Rosa
Dolorosa, Figlia di Pompeii” and has become committed to getting the work
revived as a vehicle for her. “Rosa Dolorosa” has grand musical
moments and a hilariously absurd plot. »
05 Nov 2015
The most recent instalment of the Wigmore Hall’s ambitious series, ‘Schubert: The Complete Songs’, was presented by soprano Lucy Crowe,
pianist Malcolm Martineau and harpist Lucy Wakeford. »
04 Nov 2015
This new release of John Taverner’s virtuosic and florid Missa
Corona spinea (produced by Gimell Records) comes two years after The
Tallis Scholars’ critically esteemed recording of the composer’s
Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas, which topped the UK Specialist Classical
Album Chart for 6 weeks, and with which the ensemble celebrated their
40th anniversary. The recording also includes Taverner’s two
settings of Dum transisset Sabbatum. »
01 Nov 2015
Gioachino Rossini’s La Cenerentola has returned to Lyric Opera of Chicago in a production new to this venue and one notable for several significant debuts along with roles taken by accomplished, familiar performers. »
01 Nov 2015
Back in 2000, Glyndebourne Touring Opera dragged Puccini’s sentimental
tale of suffering bohemian artists into the ‘modern urban age’, when
director David McVicar ditched the Parisian garrets and nineteenth-century
frock coats in favour of a squalid bedsit in which Rodolfo and painter Marcello
shared a line of cocaine under the grim glare of naked light bulbs and the
clientele at Café Momus included a couple of gaudily attired
transvestites. »
01 Nov 2015
Just as Orpheus embarks on a quest for his beloved Eurydice, so the Royal Opera House seems to be in pursuit of the mythical music-maker himself: this year the house has presented Monteverdi’s Orfeo at the Camden Roundhouse (with the Early Opera Company in January), Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice on the main stage (September), and, in the Linbury Studio Theatre, both Birtwistle’s The Corridor (June) and the Paris-music-hall style Little Lightbulb Theatre/Battersea Arts Centre co-production, Orpheus (September). »
31 Oct 2015
Wexford Festival Opera has served up another thought-provoking and musically rewarding trio of opera rarities — neglected, forgotten or seldom performed — in 2015. »
31 Oct 2015
Another highlight of the Wigmore Hall complete Schubert Song series - Christoph Prégardien and Christoph Schnackertz. The core Wigmore Hall Lieder audience were out in force. These days, though, there are young people among the regulars : a sign that appreciation of Lieder excellence is most certainly alive and well at the Wigmore Hall. . »
30 Oct 2015
How did it go? Reactions of my neighbors varied. Some left at the intermission, others remarked that they thought the singing was good. »
25 Oct 2015
In the first half of the 19th century, Spontini’s La Vestale was a hit. Empress Josephine sponsored its premiere, Parisians heard it hundreds of times, Berlioz raved about it and Wagner conducted it. »
22 Oct 2015
An intelligent updating and outstanding performance of the title role lead to a shattering climax in Puccini's Japanese opera
»
21 Oct 2015
Handel’s genius is central focus to the new staging of Handel’s oratorio Theodora at Paris' Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. »
21 Oct 2015
1985 must have been a good year for founding a musical ensemble, or festival or organisation, which would have longevity. »
20 Oct 2015
Ossia Tannhauser and James Levine with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. »
20 Oct 2015
The past few years have marked a renaissance in Brooklyn's cultural life, from food to fashion, and quite notably, opera. From BAM to Bushwick, audiences have crowded in for a taste of something different. »
19 Oct 2015
Arizona Lady is the last operetta that Hungarian Jewish composer Emmerich Kálmán (1882-1953) wrote. A student at the Budapest Academy of Music, he learned from the same teachers as Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály. After successfully staging an operetta in Budapest, Kálmán moved to Vienna. »
17 Oct 2015
The only thing that is at all radical or even noteworthy about the current Metropolitan Opera season is its imbalance: five Donizetti operas to one Wagner. »
16 Oct 2015
On October 8, 2015, Los Angeles Opera presented Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek’s Song from the Uproar: The Lives and Deaths of Isabelle Eberhardt at REDCAT, the Roy and Edna Disney Cal Arts Theater in Walt Disney Concert Hall. The opera was part of L A O’s “Off Grand Program” which features chamber works in spaces smaller than the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. »
15 Oct 2015
Loft Opera has been hailed as the future of opera by multiple newspapers, magazines, and blogs across the nation, and even said to be “in the process of reinventing opera for the 21st Century” according to James Jorden from The New York Observer. »
15 Oct 2015
Jacques Offenbach’s opéra fantastique, The Tales of Hoffmann, is a notoriously Protean beast: the composer’s death during rehearsals, four months before the premiere left the opera in an ‘non-definitive’ state which has since led to the acts being shuffled like cards, music being added, spoken dialogue and recitative vying for supremacy, the number of singers performing the principal roles varying, and even changes to the story itself — the latter being an amalgam of three tales by E.T.A. Hoffmann.
»
13 Oct 2015
First it was Bulgarian soprano Sonya Yoncheva who cancelled in Zurich (no longer in her voice), then it was . . . »
11 Oct 2015
Vividly gripping drama is perhaps not phrase which you might expect to be used to refer to Bellini's I Puritani, but that was the phrase which came into my mind after seen Annilese
»
11 Oct 2015
As part of their Madness season, presenting three very contrasting music theatre treatments of madness (Handel's Orlando, Bellini's I Puritani and Sondheim's Sweeney Todd) Welsh National Opera (WNO) presented Handel's Orlando at the Wales Millennium Centre on Saturday 3 October 2015. »
11 Oct 2015
Benjamin Britten met Mstislav Rostropovich in 1960, in London, where the cellist was performing Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto. They were introduced by Shostakovich who had invited Britten to share his box at the Royal Festival Hall, for this concert given by the Leningrad Symphony Orchestra. Britten’s biographer, Humphrey Carpenter reports that a few days before Britten had listened to Rostropovich on the radio and remarked that he ‘“thought this the most extraordinary ‘cello playing I’d ever heard”’. »
10 Oct 2015
Sir John Falstaff appears in three plays by William Shakespeare: the two Henry IV plays and The Merry Wives of Windsor. »
10 Oct 2015
The opening performance of the 2015-2016 season at Lyric Opera of Chicago was the premiere of a new production of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro under the direction of Barbara Gaines and featuring the American debut of conductor Henrik Nánási. »
10 Oct 2015
Opera Philadelphia mixes boutique performances of avant-garde opera in a small house with more traditional productions of warhorse operas performed in the Academy of Music, America’s oldest working opera house. »
09 Oct 2015
Four lonely people, bound by love and fate, with inexpressible feelings that boil over in the pressure cooker of war. Àlex Ollé’s conception of Il Trovatore for Dutch National Opera hits the bull’s eye. »
05 Oct 2015
This may be the twelfth revival of Jonathan Miller’s 1987 production of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville for English National Opera, but the ready laughter from the auditorium and the fresh musical and dramatic responses from the stage suggest that it will continue to amuse audiences and serve the house well for some time to come.
»
05 Oct 2015
The third and final instalment of the Academy of Ancient Music’s survey of Monteverdi’s operas at the Barbican began and ended in darkness; the red glow of the single candle was an apt visual frame for a performance which was dedicated to the memory of the late Andrew Porter, the music critic and writer whose learned, pertinent and eloquent words did so much to restore Monteverdi, Cavalli and other neglected music-dramatists to the operatic stage.
»
05 Oct 2015
English Touring Opera’s recent programming has been ambitious and inventive, and the results have been rewarding. We had two little-known Donizetti operas, The Siege of Calais and The Wild Man of the West Indies, in spring 2015, while autumn 2014 saw the company stage comedy by Haydn (Il mondo della luna) and romantic history by Handel (Ottone). »
03 Oct 2015
Sounds swirl with an urgent emotionality and meandering virtuosity on Jonas Kaufmann’s new Puccini album—the “real one”, according
to Kaufmann, whose works were also released earlier this year on Decca records, allegedly without his approval. »
29 Sep 2015
LA Opera got its season off to an auspicious beginning with starry revivals
of Gianni Schicchi and Pagliacci. »
24 Sep 2015
On September 9, 2015, Opera Las Vegas presented James Sohre’s production of Viva Verdi at the Smith Center’s Cabaret Jazz. It was a delightful evening of arias, duets and ensembles by Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901). The program included many of the composer’s blockbuster arias and scenes from famous operas such as Aida, La traviata, and Macbeth. »
24 Sep 2015
On Saturday, September 19, San Diego Opera opened its 2015-2016 season with a recital by tenor René Barbera. This was the first Polly Puterbaugh Emerging Artist Award Recital and no artist could have been more deserving than the immensely talented Barbera. »
24 Sep 2015
Did the iconic “off-beat” and “serious” American musical hold the stage of the War Memorial Opera House? The excited audience (standees three deep) thought so and roared their appreciation. »
24 Sep 2015
The Wigmore Hall, London, has launched Schubert : The Complete Songs, a 40-concert series to run through the 2015 and 2016 seasons. There have been Schubert marathons before, like BBC Radio 3's all-Schubert week and The Oxford Lieder Festival's Schubert series last year, but the Wigmore Hall series will be a major landmark because the Wigmore Hall is the Wigmore Hall, the epitome of excellence.
»
21 Sep 2015
Marion Cotillard and Marc Soustrot bring the drama to the sweeping score of Arthur Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au
bûcher, an adaptation of the Trial of Joan of Arc »
19 Sep 2015
Luisa Miller sits on the fringes of the repertory, and since its introduction into the modern repertory in the 1970’s it comes around every 15 or so years. Unfortunately this 2015 San Francisco occasion has not bothered to rethink this remarkable opera. »
19 Sep 2015
Demonised by Pushkin and Peter Shaffer, Antonio Salieri lives in the public
imagination as the embittered rival of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — whose genius
he lamented and revered in equal measure, and against whom he schemed and
plotted at the Emperor Joseph II’s Viennese court. »
18 Sep 2015
The annual concert given by Lyric Opera of Chicago as an outdoor event previewing the forthcoming season took place on 11 September 2015 at Millennium Park. »
18 Sep 2015
Stephen Paulus provided the musical world, and particularly the choral world, with music both provocative and pleasing through a combination of lyricism and a modern-Romantic tonal palette. »
16 Sep 2015
Orpheus — that Greek hero whose songs could enchant both deities and beasts, whose lyre has become a metaphor for the power of music itself, and whose journey to the Underworld to rescue his wife, Eurydice, kick-started the art of opera in Mantua in 1607 — has been travelling far and wide around the UK in 2015. »
14 Sep 2015
One is a quasi-verbatim rendering of J.M. Synge’s bleak tale of a Donegal
family’s fateful dependency on and submission to the deathly power of the
sea. »
14 Sep 2015
Is there anything that countertenor Iestyn Davies cannot do with his voice? »
12 Sep 2015
BBC Proms Youth Choir shines in a performance notable for its magical transparency »
08 Sep 2015
The John Wilson Orchestra have been annual summer visitors to the Royal Albert Hall since their Proms debut in 2009 and, with their seductive blend of technical precision, buoyant glitziness and relaxed insouciance, their concerts have become a hugely anticipated fixture and a sure highlight of the Promenade season. »
04 Sep 2015
Disappointing staging mars Alice Coote’s vibrant if wayward musical performance »
30 Aug 2015
Impresario Boris Goldovsky famously referred to La finta giardiniera as The Phony Farmerette. »
30 Aug 2015
At Santa Fe Opera, Donizetti’s effervescent The Daughter of the Regiment can’t quite decide what it wants to be when it grows up.
»
30 Aug 2015
Santa Fe Opera noted a landmark two-thousandth performance in their distinguished history with a stylish new production of Rigoletto. »
30 Aug 2015
Why did Jean Sibelius suppress Kullervo (Op7, 1892)? There are many theories why he didn't allow it to be heard after its initial performance, though he referred to it fondly in private. »
28 Aug 2015
Most opera professionals, including the individuals who do the casting for
major houses, despair of finding performers who can match historical standards
of singing in operas such as Aïda. Yet a concert performance in Aspen
gives a glimmer of hope. It was led by four younger singers who may be part of
the future of Verdi singing in America and the world. »
28 Aug 2015
One might have been forgiven for thinking that both biology and chronology had gone askew at the Royal Albert Hall yesterday evening. »
28 Aug 2015
Three years ago I made what may have been my single worst decision in a half
century of attending opera. I wasn’t paying close attention when some
conference organizers in Aix-en-Provence offered me two tickets to the premiere
of a new opera. I opted instead for what seemed like a sure thing:
William Christie conducting some Charpentier. »
28 Aug 2015
Advertised in the program as the first opera written in the New World,
La Púrpura de la Rosa (PR) was premiered in 1701 in Lima
(Peru), but more than the historical feat, true or not, accounts for the
piece’s interest. »
23 Aug 2015
The 36th Rossini Opera Festival in Rossini’s Pesaro! La gazza ladra (1817), La gazzetta (1816) and L'inganno felice (1812) — the little opera that made Rossini famous.
»
19 Aug 2015
Unlike the brush fire in a distant neighborhood of the John Crosby Theatre, Santa Fe Opera’s Salome stubbornly failed to ignite. »
12 Aug 2015
As part of a concerted effort to incorporate local color and resonance into its annual festival, Glimmerglass has re-imagined The Magic Flute in a transformative woodland setting. »
12 Aug 2015
Bravura singing and vibrant instrumental playing were on ample display in Glimmerglass Festival’s riveting Cato in Utica.
»
12 Aug 2015
Bernstein’s Candide seems to have more performance versions than Tales of Hoffmann.
»
08 Aug 2015
That’s The Conquest of Mexico, an historical music drama composed in 1991 by German composer Wolfgang Rihm (b. 1952). But wait. Wolfgang Rihm construed a few sentences of Artaud’s La Conquête du Mexique (1932) mixed up with bits of Aztec chant and bits of poem(s) by Mexico’s Octavio Paz (d. 1998) to make a libretto. »
07 Aug 2015
Glimmerglass is celebrating its 40th Festival season with a stylish new production of Verdi’s Macbeth. »
07 Aug 2015
This Salzburg Norma is not new news. This superb production was first seen at the Salzburg Festival’s springtime Whitsun Festival in 2013 with this same cast. It will now travel to a few major European cities. »
05 Aug 2015
John Eliot Gardiner conducted a much anticipated performance of Monteverdi’s first opera L’Orfeo at the BBC Proms on 4 August 2015, with his own Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists. »
03 Aug 2015
On August 1, 2015, Santa Fe Opera presented the world premiere of Cold Mountain, a brand new opera composed by Pulizer Prize and Grammy winner Jennifer Higdon. »
01 Aug 2015
Richard Taruskin entitled his 1988 polemical critique of the notion of ‘authenticity’ in the context of historically informed performance, ‘The Pastness of the Present and the Presence of the Past’. »
01 Aug 2015
Puccini’s Manon Lescaut at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich. Some will scream in rage but in its austerity it reaches to the heart of the opera. »
27 Jul 2015
It might seem churlish to complain about the BBC Proms coverage of Pierre
Boulez’s 90th anniversary. After all, there are a few performances
dotted around — although some seem rather oddly programmed, as if embarrassed
at the presence of new or newish music. (That could certainly not be claimed in
the present case.) »
27 Jul 2015
I recently spent four days in St. Petersburg, timed to coincide with the
annual Stars of the White Nights Festival. Yet the most memorable singing I
heard was neither at the Mariinsky Theater nor any other performance hall. It
was in the small, nearly empty church built for the last Tsar, Nicholas II, at
Tsarskoye Selo. »
27 Jul 2015
As I walked up Exhibition Road on my way to the Royal Albert Hall, I passed a busking tuba player whose fairground ditties were enlivened by bursts of flame which shot skyward from the bell of his instrument, to the amusement and bemusement of a rapidly gathering pavement audience. »
24 Jul 2015
A brilliant theatrical event, bringing Handel’s theatre of the mind to
life on stage »
24 Jul 2015
‘Here, thanks be to God, my opera is praised to the skies and there is nothing in it which does not please greatly.’ So wrote Antonio Vivaldi to Marchese Guido Bentivoglio d’Aragona in Ferrara in 1737. »
23 Jul 2015
Asphyxiations, atrophy by poison, assassination: in Italo Montemezzi’s
L’amore dei tre Re (The Love of the Three Kings, 1913) foul deed
follows foul deed until the corpses are piled high. »
23 Jul 2015
The precision of attack in the opening to Beethoven’s Creatures of Prometheus Overture signalled thoroughgoing excellence in the contribution
of the CBSO to this concert. »
23 Jul 2015
When he was skilfully negotiating the not inconsiderable complexities,
upheavals and strife of musical and religious life at the English royal court
during the Reformation, Thomas Tallis (c.1505-85) could hardly have imagined
that more than 450 years later people would be queuing round the block for the
opportunity spend their lunch-hour listening to the music that he composed in
service of his God and his monarch. »
21 Jul 2015
Two of the important late twentieth century stage directors, Robert Carsen and Peter Sellars, returned to the Aix Festival this summer. Carsen’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a masterpiece, Sellars’ strange Tchaikovsky/Stravinsky double bill is simply bizarre. »
21 Jul 2015
The annual celebration of young talent at the Royal Opera House is a magnificent showcase, and it was good to see such a healthy audience turnout. »
19 Jul 2015
There are few operas that can rival the visceral impact of a well-staged Jenůfa and Des Moines Metro Opera has emphatically delivered the goods. »
19 Jul 2015
The Girl of the Golden West (La Fanciulla del West) often gets eclipsed when compared to the rest of the mature Puccini canon. »
18 Jul 2015
First Night of the BBC Proms 2015 with Sakari Oramo in exuberant form, pulling off William Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast with the theatrical flair it deserves. »
18 Jul 2015
Plus an evening by the superb Modigliani Quartet that complimented the brief (55 minutes) a cappella opera for six female voices Svadba (2013) by Serbian composer Ana Sokolovic (b. 1968). She lives in Canada. »
17 Jul 2015
With its revelatory production of Rappaccini’s Daughter performed outdoors in the city’s refurbished Botanical Gardens, Des Moines Metro Opera has unlocked the gate to a mysterious, challenging landscape of musical delights. »
17 Jul 2015
Des Moines Metro Opera has quite a crowd-pleasing production of The Abduction from the Seraglio on its hands.
»
17 Jul 2015
Even by Shakespeare’s standards A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one of his earlier plays, boasts a particularly fantastical plot involving a bunch of aristocrats (the Athenian Court of Theseus), feuding gods and goddesses (Oberon and Titania), ‘Rude Mechanicals’ (Bottom, Quince et al) and assorted faeries and spirits (such as Puck). »
15 Jul 2015
What do we call Tristan und Isolde? That may seem a silly question.
Tristan und Isolde, surely, and Tristan for short, although
already we come to the exquisite difficulty, as Tristan and Isolde themselves partly seem (though do they only seem?) to recognise of that celebrated ‘und’. »
15 Jul 2015
So this was it, the Pelléas which had apparently repelled critics and other members of the audience on the opening night. Perhaps that had been exaggeration; I avoided reading anything substantive — and still have yet to do so. »
15 Jul 2015
I had last seen Arabella as part of the Munich Opera Festival’s Richard Strauss Week in 2008. It is not, I am afraid, my favourite Strauss opera; in fact, it is probably my least favourite. However, I am always willing to be convinced. »
15 Jul 2015
Some time ago in San Francisco there was an Aida starring Luciano Pavarotti, now in Orange it was Carmen starring Jonas Kaufmann. No, not tenors in drag just great tenors whose names simply outshine the title roles. »
14 Jul 2015
Camille Saint-Saëns once remarked, snidely, that: ‘French criticism has not reproached Delibes with not being a melodist; he has made some operettas.’ »
07 Jul 2015
Director Robert Carsen’s 2012 production of Verdi’s Falstaff, here revived by Christophe Gayral, might be subtitled ‘full of stuff’ or ‘stuffed full’: for it’s a veritable orgy of feasting from first to last - from Falstaff’s breakfast binge-in-bed to the final sumptuous wedding banquet. »
07 Jul 2015
If Strauss’s operas of the 1920s receive far too little performing attention, especially in the Anglosphere, those of the 1930s seem to fare worse still. »
07 Jul 2015
The 67th edition of the prestigious Festival d’Aix-en-Provence opened on July 2 with an explosive production of Handel’s Alcina followed the next night by an explosive production of Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail. »
06 Jul 2015
O/MODƏRNT is Swedish for ‘un/modern’. It is also the name of the festival — curated by artistic director Hugo Ticciati and held
annually since 2011 at the Ulriksdal’s Palace Theatre, Confidencen — which aims to look back and celebrate the past ‘by
exploring the relationships between the work of old composers and the artistic and intellectual creations of modern culture’. »
05 Jul 2015
Matthias Goerne and Menahem Pressler at the Wigmore Hall, London, an intriguing recital on many levels.
»
30 Jun 2015
It is twenty-three years since Rossini’s opera of cultural oppression, inspiring heroism and tender pathos was last seen on the Covent Garden stage, but this eagerly awaited new production of Guillaume Tell by Italian director Damiano Micheletto will be remembered more for the audience outrage and vociferous mid-performance booing that it provoked — the most persistent and strident that I have heard in this house — than for its dramatic, visual or musical impact. »
26 Jun 2015
With its outrageous staging demands, you sometimes wonder why opera companies want to produce Verdi’s Aida. But the piece is about far more than pharaohs, pyramids and camels. »
23 Jun 2015
Given the enduring resonance and impact of the magnificent visual aesthetic of Visconti’s 1971 film of Thomas Mann’s novella, opera directors might be forgiven for concluding that Britten’s Death in Venice does not warrant experimentation with period and design, and for playing safe with Edwardian elegance, sweeping Venetian vistas and stylised seascapes. »
22 Jun 2015
If La Rondine (The Swallow) is a less-admired work than rest of the mature Puccini canon, you wouldn’t have known it by the lavish production now lovingly staged by Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. »
22 Jun 2015
Few companies have championed new or neglected works quite as fervently and consistently as the industrious Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. »
22 Jun 2015
For Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, “everything old is new again.”
»
21 Jun 2015
Why would an American opera company devote its resources to the premiere of an opera by an Italian composer? Furthermore a parochially Italian story? »
19 Jun 2015
Berlioz’ Les Troyens is in two massive parts — La prise de Troy and Troyens à Carthage. »
19 Jun 2015
On Saturday evening June 13, 2015, Los Angeles Opera presented Dog Days, a new opera with music by David T. Little and a text by Royce Vavrek. In the opera adopted from a story of the same name by Judy Budnitz, thirteen-year-old Lisa tells of her family’s mental and physical disintegration resulting from the ravages of a horrendous war. »
18 Jun 2015
Audiences at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan first saw Madama Butterfly on February 17, 1904. It was not the success it is these days, and Puccini revised it before its scheduled performances in Brescia. »
18 Jun 2015
Opera Philadelphia is a very well-managed opera company with a great vision. Every year it presents a number of well-known “warhorse” operas, usually in the venerable Academy of Music, and a few more adventurous productions, usually in a chamber opera format suited to the smaller Pearlman Theater. »
15 Jun 2015
Written in 1783, Giovanni Paisiello’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia reigned for three decades as one of Europe’s most popular operas, before being overshadowed forever by Rossini’s classic work. »
15 Jun 2015
The Princeton Festival has established a reputation for high-quality summer opera. In recent years works by Handel, Britten, Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, Wagner and Gershwin have been performed at Matthews Theater on Princeton University campus: a 1100-seat auditorium with good sight-lines though a somewhat dry and uneven acoustic. »
14 Jun 2015
Die Entführung aus dem Serail was Mozart’s first great public success in Vienna, and it became the composer’s most oft performed opera during his lifetime. »
14 Jun 2015
The Ensemble for the Romantic Century offered a thoughtful and well-curated evening in their production of The Sorrows of Young Werther, which is part theatrical performance and part art song concert. »
12 Jun 2015
This was an adventurous double bill of two ‘quasi-operas’ by Hans Werner Henze, performed by young singers who are studying on the postgraduate Opera Course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. »
12 Jun 2015
High brick walls, a cavernous space, entered via a narrow passage just off a London thoroughfare: Village Underground in Shoreditch is probably not that far removed from the venue in which Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas was first performed — whether that was Josiah Priest’s girl’s school in Chelsea or the court of Charles II or James II. »
12 Jun 2015
Hats off to Garsington for championing once again some criminally neglected Strauss. I overheard someone there opine, ‘Of course, you can understand why it isn’t done very often.’ »
08 Jun 2015
Mozart and Da Ponte’s Cosi fan tutte provides little in the way of background or back story for the plot, thus allowing directors to set the piece in a variety settings. »
08 Jun 2015
Based on a play, Chrysomania (The Passion for Money), by
the Russian playwright Prince Alexander Shokhovskoy, Pushkin’s short story The Queen of Spades is, in the words of one literary critic, ‘a sardonic commentary on the human condition’. »
07 Jun 2015
Time was when many felt compelled to ‘make allowances’ for ‘smaller’ companies. Now, more often than not, the contrary seems to be the case, instead apologising for their elder and/or larger siblings: ‘But of course, it is far more difficult for House X, given the conservatism of its moneyed audience,’ as if House X might not actually attract a different, more intellectually curious audience by programming more interesting works. »
07 Jun 2015
Having performed two contemporary operas (including commissioning Will Todd’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) as part of their family friendly strand, Opera Holland Park ventured into contemporary opera on their main stage last night (6 June 2015) when, rather amazingly, they gave the first professional London performance of Jonathan Dove and April de Angelis’s 1998 opera Flight. »
05 Jun 2015
Is it okay to tweet during a concert, if it allows those who couldn’t attend to engage with the performance and the music? Or is it really just distracting, on top of all the coughing? »
05 Jun 2015
2012 was a good year for Swiss tenor Mauro Peter. He participated at the Young Singers Project of the Salzburg Festival under the baton of Ivor Bolton, and won 1st Prize and the Audience Prize at the Peter Schumann Competition in Zwickau. »
31 May 2015
With 27 named roles and a large orchestra (including instruments such as mandolins), Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari’s 1911 opera, I gioielli della Madonna (The Jewels of the Madonna) might seem a surprising choice for a relatively small opera house like the Slovak National Theatre / Slovenské národné divadlo (SND) in Bratislava, Slovakia. »
30 May 2015
As the editor of Opera magazine, John Allison, notes in his editorial in the June issue, Donizetti fans are currently spoilt for choice, enjoying a ‘Donizetti revival’ with productions of several of the composer’s lesser known works cropping up in houses around the world. »
22 May 2015
Donizetti’s Poliuto at Glyndebourne could well become one of of the great Glyndebourne classics. »
22 May 2015
Dystopic vision of Carmen, brought to life by vibrantly gripping performances »
19 May 2015
Pacific Opera Project, a small Los Angeles company, presented a production of Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos at the Ebell Club with an excellent group of young singers at the beginning of what should be good careers. »
16 May 2015
Six people, dressed in ordinary clothing, sitting in a row at desks adorned only with microphones and glasses of water, and talking for ninety minutes: is it opera? »
16 May 2015
The spring concert of Rising Stars in Concert, sponsored by and featuring current members of the Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center at Lyric Opera of Chicago, showcased a number of talents that will no doubt continue to grace the stages of the world’s operatic theaters. »
15 May 2015
New York Opera Exchange’s production of Carmen from May 8th to 10th highlighted that which opera devotees have been saying for years: Opera, far from being dead, is vibrant and evolving. »
11 May 2015
I have sometimes lamented the preference of Ian Page’s Classical Opera for concert performances and recordings over staged productions, albeit that their renditions of eighteenth-century operas and vocal works are unfailingly stylish, illuminating and supported by worthy research. »
11 May 2015
Topsy Turvy, Mike Leigh’s 1999 film starring Timothy Spall and Jim Broadbent, dramatized the fraught working relationship of William Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan; it won four Oscar nominations (garnering two Academy Awards, for costume and make-up) and is a wonderful exploration of the creative process of bringing a theatrical work to life. »
08 May 2015
There’s little doubt that Puccini’s Turandot is a flawed, illogical fairytale. Yet it continues to resonate today with its undying “love shall conquer all” ethos, where even the most heinous crimes may be forgiven by that which makes the world go ‘round. »
06 May 2015
On April 25, 2015, San Diego Opera presented it’s second Mariachi opera: El Pasado Nunca se Termina (The Past is Never Finished) by Jose “Pepe” Martinez, Leonard Foglia and Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán. »
06 May 2015
Ambition achieved! Antonio Pappano brought the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House out of the pit and onto the stage, the centre of attention in their own right. »
04 May 2015
Jiří Bělohlávek’s annual Czech opera series at the Barbican, London, with the BBC SO continued with Bedřich Smetana’s Dalibor. »
04 May 2015
R.B. Schlather’s production of Handel’s Orlando asks the enigmatic question: Where do the boundaries of performance art begin, and where do they end? »
03 May 2015
A good number of recent shorter operas, particularly those performed in this country, made a stronger impression with their libretti than their scores. »
02 May 2015
It has taken almost 89 years for Karol Szymanowski’s Król Roger to reach the stage of Covent Garden. »
01 May 2015
San Diego Opera, the company that General Manager Ian Campbell had scheduled for demolition, proved that it is alive and singing as beautifully as ever. Its 2015 season was cut back slightly and management has become a bit leaner, but the company celebrated its fiftieth season in fine style with a concert that included many of the greatest arias ever written. »
29 Apr 2015
In the early sixties, Italian film director Mario Bava was making pictures with male body builders whose well oiled physiques appeared spectacular on the screen. »
16 Apr 2015
Philippe Jaroussky lends poetry and poise to the sounds of nineteenth- and
twentieth-century France »
16 Apr 2015
At this start of the year, Classical Opera embarked upon an ambitious project. MOZART 250 will see the company devote part of its programme
each season during the next 27 years to exploring the music by Mozart and his
contemporaries which was being written and performed exactly 250 years
previously. »
15 Apr 2015
The Concordia Foundation was founded in the early 1990s by international singer and broadcaster Gillian Humphreys, out of her ‘real concern for building bridges of friendship and excellence through music and the arts’. »
14 Apr 2015
An opera dealing with — or at least claiming to deal with — the events of 11 September 2001? I suppose it had to come, but that does not necessarily make it any more necessary. »
13 Apr 2015
On April 10, 2015, Arizona Opera ended its season with La Fille du Régiment at Phoenix Symphony Hall. A passionate Marie, Susannah Biller was a veritable energizer bunny onstage. Her voice is bright and flexible with a good bloom on top and a tiny bit of steel in it. Having created an exciting character, she sang with agility as well as passion. »
13 Apr 2015
This second revival of Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser’s 2005 production of Rossini’s Il Turco in Italia seems to have every going for it: excellent principals comprising experienced old-hands and exciting new voices, infinite gags and japes, and the visual éclat of Agostino Cavalca’s colour-bursting costumes and Christian Fenouillat’s sunny sets which evoke the style, glamour and ease of La Dolce Vita. »
12 Apr 2015
English Touring Opera’s 2015 Spring Tour is audacious and thought-provoking. Alongside La Bohème the company have programmed a revival of their acclaimed 2013 production of Donizetti’s The Siege of Calais (L’assedio di Calais) and the composer’s equally rare
The Wild Man of the West Indies (Il furioso all’isola di San
Domingo). »
03 Apr 2015
Mary Zimmerman’s still-fresh production is made fresher still by Shagimuratova’s glimmering voice, but the acting disappoints »
03 Apr 2015
When WNYC’s John Schaefer introduced Meredith Monk’s beloved Panda
Chant II, which concluded the four-and-a-half hour Meredith Monk &
Friends celebration at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall, he described it as “an expression of joy and musicality” before lamenting the fact that playing it on his radio show could never quite compete with a live performance. »
03 Apr 2015
This year’s concert of the Chicago Bach Project, under the aegis of the Soli Deo Gloria Music Foundation, was a presentation of the St. John Passion (BWV 245) at the Harris Theater in Millennium Park. »
31 Mar 2015
It is not an everyday opera. It is an opera that illuminates a larger verismo history. »
30 Mar 2015
On March 26, 2015, Los Angeles Opera presented Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro). The Ian Judge production featured jewel-colored box sets by Tim Goodchild that threw the voices out into the hall. Only for the finale did the set open up on to a garden that filled the whole stage and at the very end featured actual fireworks. »
29 Mar 2015
Gotham Chamber Opera’s latest project, The Tempest Songbook, continues to
explore the possibilities of unconventional spaces and unconventional programs
that the company has made its hallmark. The results were musically and
theatrically thought-provoking, and left me wanting more. »
26 Mar 2015
Nixon in China is a three-act opera with a libretto by Alice Goodman and music by John Adams that was first seen at the Houston Grand Opera on October 22, 1987. It was the first of a notable line of operas by the composer. »
26 Mar 2015
It is thanks to Céline Ricci, mezzo-soprano and director of Ars Minerva, that we have been able to again hear Daniele Castrovillari’s exquisite melodies because she is the musician who has brought his 1662 opera La Cleopatra to life. »
26 Mar 2015
Lyric Opera of Chicago, in association with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, has staged a production of Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser with an estimable cast. »
22 Mar 2015
Puccini and his fellow verismo-ists are commonly associated with explosions of unbridled human passion and raw, violent pain, but in this revival (by Justin Way) of Moshe Leiser’s and Patrice Caurier’s 2003 production of Madame Butterfly, directorial understatement together with ravishing scenic beauty are shown to be more potent ways of enabling the sung voice to reveal the emotional depths of human tragedy. »
21 Mar 2015
Rarely, very rarely does a Tosca come around that you can get excited about. Sure, sometimes there is good singing, less often good conducting but rarely is there a mise en scène that goes beyond stock opera vocabulary. »
20 Mar 2015
The Nash Ensemble’s 50th Anniversary Celebrations at the Wigmore Hall were crowned by a recital that typifies the Nash’s visionary mission. Above, the dearly-loved founder, Amelia Freeman, a quietly revolutionary figure in her own way, who has immeasurably enriched the cultural life of this country. »
19 Mar 2015
On March 7, 2015, Arizona Opera presented Dan Rigazzi’s production of Die Zauberflöte in Tucson. Inspired by the works of René Magritte, designer John Pollard filled the stage with various sizes of picture frames, windows, and portals from which he leads us into Mozart and Schikaneder’s dream world. »
18 Mar 2015
There are some concert programmes which are not just wonderful in their execution but also delight and satisfy because of the ‘rightness’ of their composition. This Wigmore Hall recital by soprano Carolyn Sampson and three period-instrument experts of arias and instrumental pieces by Henry Purcell was one such occasion. »
14 Mar 2015
It has been a cold and gray winter in the south of France (where I live) made splendid by some really good opera, followed just now by splendid sunshine at Trafalgar Square and two exquisite productions at English National Opera.
»
11 Mar 2015
At long last, Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny has come to the Royal Opera House. Kurt Weill’s teacher, Busoni, remains scandalously ignored, but a season which includes house firsts both of this opera and Szymanowsi’s King Roger, cannot be all bad. »
11 Mar 2015
RILM Abstracts of Music Literature is an international database for
musicological and ethnomusicological research, providing abstracts and indexing
for users all over the world. As such, RILM’s style guide (How to Write
About Music: The RILM Manual of Style) differs fairly significantly from
those of more generalized style guides such as MLA or APA. »
09 Mar 2015
Unsuk Chin’s Alice in Wonderland returned to the Barbican,
London, shape-shifted like one of Alice’s adventures. The BBC Symphony
Orchestra was assembled en masse, almost teetering off stage, creating
a sense of tension. “Eat me, Drink me”. Was Lewis Carroll on hallucinogens
or just good at channeling the crazy world of the subconscious? »
09 Mar 2015
Dominic Cooke’s 2005 staging of The Magic Flute and Richard Jones’s 1998 production of Hansel and Gretel have been brought together for Welsh National Opera’s spring tour under the unifying moniker, Spellbound. »
06 Mar 2015
Carolyn Sampson has long avoided the harsh glare of stardom but become a favourite singer for “those in the know” — and if you are not one of those it is about time you were. »
06 Mar 2015
Gaetano Donizetti and Malcolm Arnold might seem odd operatic bedfellows, but this double bill by the Guildhall School of Music and Drama offered a pair of works characterised by ‘madness, misunderstandings and mistaken identity’ which proved witty, sparkling and imaginatively realised. »
05 Mar 2015
Saturday, February 28, 2015, was the first night for Los Angeles Opera’s revival of its 2009 presentation of The Barber of Seville, a production by Emilio Sagi, which comes originally from Teatro Real in Madrid in cooperation with Lisbon’s Teatro San Carlos. Sagi and onsite director, Trevor Ross, made comedy the focus of their production and provided myriad sight gags which kept the audience laughing. »
02 Mar 2015
Commenting on her recent, highly acclaimed CD release of late-nineteenth-century song, Chansons Perpétuelles (Naive: V5355), Canadian contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux remarked ‘it’s that intimate side that interests me … I wanted to emphasise the genuinely embodied, physical side of the sensuality [in Fauré]’. »
28 Feb 2015
An evening of strange-bedfellow one-acts in high-concept stagings, mindbogglingly delightful. »
27 Feb 2015
On February 19, 2015, Pacific Symphony presented its annual performance of a semi-staged opera. This year’s presentation at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, California, featured Georges Bizet’s Carmen. Director Dean Anthony used the front of the stage and a few solid set pieces by Scenic Designer Matt Scarpino to depict the opera’s various scenes. »
26 Feb 2015
Although the English National Opera has been decidedly sparing with its Wagner for quite some time now, its recent track record, leaving aside a disastrous Ring, has perhaps been better than that at Covent Garden. »
24 Feb 2015
On Friday February 20, 2015, San Diego Opera presented Mozart’s Don Giovanni in a production by Nicholas Muni originally seen at Cincinnati Opera. »
24 Feb 2015
In a production first seen in Houston several years ago, and now revised by its director John Caird, Puccini’s Tosca has returned to Lyric Opera of Chicago with two casts, partially different, scheduled into March of the present season. »
16 Feb 2015
Henri Dutilleux’s music has its devotees. I am yet to join their ranks, but had no reason to think this was not an admirable performance of his song-cycle Correspondances. »
15 Feb 2015
In 1980, the Metropolitan Opera commissioned composer John Corigliano to write an opera celebrating the company’s one-hundredth anniversary. It was to be ready in 1983. »
12 Feb 2015
English National Opera’s revival of Peter Konwitschny’s production of Verdi’s La Traviata had many elements in common with the
production’s original outing in 2013 (The production was a co-production with Opera Graz, where it had debuted in 2011). »
08 Feb 2015
You might believe you could go to an opera and take in what you see at face value. But if you did that just now in Lyon you would have had no idea what was going on. »
08 Feb 2015
I wonder whether we need a new way of thinking — and talking — about operatic ‘revivals’. Perhaps the term is more meaningful when it comes to works that have been dead and buried for years, before being rediscovered by subsequent generations. »
08 Feb 2015
Hopefully this brilliant new production of Iphigénie en Tauride from the Grand Théâtre de Genève will find its way to the new world now that Gluck’s masterpiece has been introduced to American audiences. »
06 Feb 2015
Tristan first appeared on the stage of the Théâtre du Capitole in 1928, sung in French, the same language that served its 1942 production even with Wehrmacht tanks parked in front of the opera house. »
05 Feb 2015
Arizona Opera presented Eugene Onegin during and 1999-2000 season
and again on February 1 of this year as part of the 2014-2015 season. In this
country Onegin is not a crowd pleaser like La Bohème or
Carmen, but its story is believable and its music melodic and
memorable. Just hum the beginning of the “Polonaise” and your friends will
know the music, if not where it comes from. »
02 Feb 2015
Florian Boesch and Roger Vignoles at the Wigmore Hall in Ernst Krenek’s Reisebuch aus den österreichischen Alpen. Matthias Goerne has called Hanns Eisler’s Hollywooder Liederbuch the Winterreise of the 20th century. Boesch and Vignoles showed how Krenek’s Reisebuch is a journey of discovery into identity at an era of extreme social change. It is a parable, indeed, of modern times. »
01 Feb 2015
Lyric Opera of Chicago’s new Anna Bolena, a production shared with Minnesota Opera, features a distinguished cast including several notable premieres. »
01 Feb 2015
On Tuesday January 27, 2015, San Diego Opera presented Giacomo Puccini's La Boheme. It is the opera with which the company opened in 1965 and a work that the company has faithfully performed every five years since then. »
01 Feb 2015
Last year we tracked Orfeo on his desperate search for his lost Euridice, through the labyrinths and studio spaces of Central St Martin’s; this year we were plunged into Macbeth’s tragic pursuit of power in the bare blackness of the CSM’s Platform Theatre. »
01 Feb 2015
Béla Bartók’s only opera, Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, composed in 1911 and based upon a libretto by the Hungarian writer Béla Balázs, was not initially a success. »
29 Jan 2015
Káťa Kabanová is, they say, Janáček's first mature opera — it comes a mere 20 years after his masterpiece, Jenůfa. »
29 Jan 2015
Nice’s golden winter light is not that of England’s North Sea coast. Nonetheless the Opéra de Nice’s new production of Peter Grimes did much to take us there. »
27 Jan 2015
Peasants revolt in a sea of Maserati and Ferrari’s. »
26 Jan 2015
Figaro 90210 is Vid Guerrerio’s modern version of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo DaPonte’s 1786 opera, The Marriage of Figaro. »
26 Jan 2015
David McVicar’s production of Wagner’s seminal music drama runs aground on the Cornish coast. »
22 Jan 2015
The coming of ‘Night’ brings darkness, shadows and mystery; sleep, dreams and nightmares; fancies, fantasies and passions. »
21 Jan 2015
Umberto’s Giordano’s Andrea Chénier, now at the Royal Opera House, is no more about history than Jesus Christ Superstar is about theology. »
20 Jan 2015
Mariusz Treliński’s staging of Tchaikovsky’s operatic masterpiece is visually fascinating but psychologically confusing »
16 Jan 2015
The regal trumpets and sackbuts sound their bold herald and, followed by admiring eyes, the powers of state and church begin their dignified procession along a sloping walkway to assume their lofty positions upon the central dais. »
07 Jan 2015
Vestiges of a momentous era . . . »
05 Jan 2015
There were hints that L’elisir is one of the great bel canto masterpieces. »
01 Jan 2015
Aron Stiehl’s production of this rare early Wagner opera cheerfully brings commedia dell’arte to La Cage aux Folles. »
30 Dec 2014
Stage director Pierre Audi is not one to be strictly representational in his story telling.
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26 Dec 2014
For the first time in its 42-year history, Manitoba Opera presented Beethoven’s mighty ode to freedom, Fidelio, with an extraordinary production that resonated as loudly as tolling bells of freedom. »
22 Dec 2014
Forty-one years is a long time for any partnership to be sustained and to flourish — be it musical, commercial or marital! And, given The Hilliard Ensemble’s ongoing reputation as one of the world’s finest a cappella groups, noted for their performances of works dating from the 11 th century to the present day, it must have been a tough decision to call an end to more than four decades of superlative music-making. »
22 Dec 2014
Daniel Barenboim makes a triumphant departure as direttore musicale del Teatro alla Scala with Beethoven’s operatic masterpiece. »
21 Dec 2014
Star singer and star composer, a combination guaranteed to bring in the fans. Christian Gerhaher sang Mahler at the Wigmore Hall with Gerold Huber. Gerhaher shot to fame when he sang Wolfram at the Royal Opera House Tannhäuser in 2010. »
19 Dec 2014
Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera at the Royal Opera House — a masked ball in every sense, where nothing is quite what it seems. »
15 Dec 2014
Small country, small opera house — big ensemble spirit. Internationally acclaimed soprano Natalia Ushakova steps in for indisposed local Violetta with mixed results. »
15 Dec 2014
Bulgarian director Vera Nemirova’s production of Otello for the Romanian National Opera in Bucharest was certainly full of new ideas — unfortunately all bad. »
15 Dec 2014
For its current revival of the 2006-2007 production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Il trovatore by Sir David McVicar Lyric Opera has assembled a talented quintet of principal singers whose strengths match this conception of the opera. »
15 Dec 2014
This Winterreise is the final instalment of Matthias Goerne’s series of Schubert lieder for Harmonia Mundi and it brings the Matthias Goerne Schubert Edition, begun in 2008, to a dark, harrowing close. »
11 Dec 2014
O Maria Deo grata — ‘O Mary, pleasing to God’: so begins Robert Fayrfax’s antiphon, one of several supplications to the Virgin Mary presented in this thought-provoking concert by The Cardinall’s Musick at the Wigmore Hall. »
06 Dec 2014
Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde at the Royal Opera House, first revival of the 2009 production, one of the first to attract widespread hostility even before the curtain rose on the first night. »
28 Nov 2014
On November 22, 2014, Los Angeles Opera staged Francesca Zambello’s updated version of Florencia in el Amazonas. »
28 Nov 2014
John Adams and his long-standing collaborator Peter Sellars have described The Gospel According to the Other Mary as a ‘Passion oratorio’. »
28 Nov 2014
Superb conducting from veteran Croatian maestro Nikša Bareza makes up for an absurd waterlogged new production of Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece. »
22 Nov 2014
After the horrors of Jagoš Marković’s production of Le Nozze di
Figaro in Belgrade, I was apprehensive lest Nabucco in Serbia’s
second city of Novi Sad on 27th October would be transplanted from
6th century BC Babylon to post-Saddam Hussein Tikrit or some
bombed-out kibbutz in Beersheba. »
22 Nov 2014
First Toronto, then Houston and now San Francisco, the third stop of a new production of Puccini's La bohème by Canadian born, British nurtured theater director John Caird. »
21 Nov 2014
Every once in a while Los Angeles Opera presents an important recital in the three thousand seat Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. »
21 Nov 2014
This third revival of Laurent Pelly’s production of Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore needed a bit of a pep up to get moving but once it had been given a shot of ‘medicinal’ tincture things spiced up nicely. »
20 Nov 2014
Founded in 1996, Samling describes itself as a charity which ‘inspires musical excellence in young people’. »
19 Nov 2014
The good news is that you don’t have to go all the way to Pesaro for great Rossini. »
19 Nov 2014
Maître à danser: William Christie and Les Arts Florissants at the Barbican, London, presented a defining moment in Rameau performance practice, choreographed with a team of dancers. »
10 Nov 2014
Should looks matter when casting the role of the iconic temptress for HD simulcast? »
10 Nov 2014
Maurice Greene (1696-1755) had a highly successful musical career. Organist of St. Paul’s Cathedral, a position to which he was elected when he was just 22 years-old, he later became organist of the Chapel Royal, Professor of Music at the University of Cambridge and, from 1735, Master of the King’s Music. »
07 Nov 2014
Yet another Tosca is hardly exciting news, if news at all. The current five performances have come just two years after SFO alternated divas Angela Gheorghiu and Patricia Racette in the title role. »
06 Nov 2014
What an enjoyable opportunity to encounter Dvořák’s sixth opera, Šelma Sedlák¸or The Cunning Peasant! »
06 Nov 2014
Whether biblical parable or mythological moralising, it’s all the same really: human hubris, humility, sacrifice and redemption. »
05 Nov 2014
Opera Rara brought a rare performance of Donizetti’s first opera for the Paris Opera to the Royal Festival Hall on 4 November 2014, following recording sessions for the opera. »
02 Nov 2014
Bass baritone, Luca Pisaroni, known to opera lovers throughout the world for his excellence in Mozart roles, offered San Diego vocal aficionados a double treat on October 28th: his mellifluous voice, and a recital of German songs.
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02 Nov 2014
Jonathan Miller’s production of La bohème for ENO, shared with Cincinnati Opera, sits uneasily, at least as revived by Natascha Metherell, between comedy and tragedy. »
02 Nov 2014
Any Florian Boesch and Malcolm Martineau performance is superb, but this Wigmore Hall recital surprised, too. Boesch's Schubert is wonderful, but this time, it was his Liszt and Strauss songs which stood out. This year at the Wigmore Hall, we've heard a lot of Liszt and a lot of Richard Strauss everywhere, establishing high standards, but this was special. »
01 Nov 2014
The weather was auspicious for Wexford Festival Opera’s first-night firework display — mild, clear and calm. But, as the rainbow rockets exploded over the River Slaney, even bigger bangs were being made down at the quayside. »
28 Oct 2014
The cast of supporting roles was especially strong in the company’s new production of Mozart’s matchless masterpiece »
27 Oct 2014
The company uncorks its 40th Anniversary season with a visually and musically satisfying production of Johann Strauss Jr.’s farcical operetta »
27 Oct 2014
Although performances of Richard Strauss’s last opera Capriccio have increased in recent time, Lyric Opera of Chicago has not experienced the “Konversationsstück für Musik” during the past twenty odd years. »
18 Oct 2014
The former lyric soprano holds up well — and survives the intrusive close-up camerawork of the ‘Live in HD’ transmission »
16 Oct 2014
Houston Grand Opera commissioned Cruzar la Cara de la Luna from composer José “Pepe” Martínez, music director of Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán, who wrote the text together with Broadway and opera director Leonard Foglia. The work had its world premier in 2010. Since then, it has traveled to several cities including Paris, Chicago, and San Diego. »
15 Oct 2014
“Why should I go to hear Plácido Domingo” someone said when Verdi’s I due Foscari was announced by the Royal Opera House. There are very good reasons for doing so. »
15 Oct 2014
Music Theatre Wales presented the world premiere of Philip Glass’s The Trial (Kafka) last night at the Linbury, Royal Opera House. Music Theatre Wales started doing Glass in 1989. Their production of Glass’s In the Penal Colony in 2010 was such a success that Glass conceived The Trial specially for the company. »
11 Oct 2014
To say that the English Concert’s performance of Handel’s Alcina at the Barbican on 10 October 2014 was hotly anticipated would be an understatement. Sold out for weeks, the performance capitalised on the draw of its two principals Joyce DiDonato and Alice Coote and generated the sort of buzz which the work did at its premiere. »
09 Oct 2014
The subject is regicide, a hot topic during the Italian risorgimento when the Italian peninsula was in the grip of the Hapsburgs, the Bourbons, the House of Savoy and the Pontiff of the Catholic Church. »
08 Oct 2014
Lyric Opera of Chicago opened its sixtieth anniversary season with a new production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni directed by Artistic Director of the Goodman Theater, Robert Falls. »
06 Oct 2014
It was a little over two years ago that I heard Sir Colin Davis conduct the Berlioz Requiem in St Paul’s Cathedral; it was the last time I heard — or indeed saw — him conduct his beloved and loving London Symphony Orchestra. »
06 Oct 2014
Part of their Liberty or Death season along with Rossini’s Mose in Egitto and Bizet’s Carmen, Welsh National Opera performed David Pountney’s new production of Rossini’s Guillaume Tell (seen 4 October 2014). »
06 Oct 2014
Welsh National Opera’s production of Rossini’s Mose in Egitto was the second of two Rossini operas (the other is Guillaume Tell) performed in tandem for their autumn tour. »
06 Oct 2014
In Monteverdi’s first Venetian opera, Il Ritorno d’Ulisse (1641), Penelope’s patient devotion as she waits for the return of her beloved Ulysses culminates in the triumph of love and faithfulness; in contrast, in L’incoronazione di Poppea it is the eponymous Queen’s lust, passion and ambition that prevail. »
06 Oct 2014
After the triumphs of love, the surprises: Les Paladins, under their director Jérôme Correas, and soprano Sandrine Piau are following their tour of material from their 2011 CD, ‘Le Triomphe de L’amour’, with a new amatory arrangement. »
05 Oct 2014
At the ENO, Puccini's La fanciulla del West becomes The Girl of the Golden West. Hearing this opera in English instead of Italian has its advantages, While we can still hear the exotic, Italianate Madama Butterfly fantasies in the orchestra, in English, we're closer to the original pot-boiler melodrama. Madama Biutterfly is premier cru: The Girl of the Golden West veers closer, at times, to hokum. The new ENO production gets round the implausibility of the plot by engaging with its natural innocence. »
30 Sep 2014
Presenting a well-structured and characterful programme, Italian soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci demonstrated her prowess in both soprano and mezzo repertoire in this Wigmore Hall recital, performing European works from the early years of the twentieth century. Assuredly accompanied by her regular pianist Donald Sulzen, Antonacci was self-composed and calm of manner, but also evinced a warmly engaging stage presence throughout. »
29 Sep 2014
Bold, bright and brash, Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier’s Il barbiere di Siviglia tells its story clearly in complementary primary colours. »
19 Sep 2014
Bampton Classical Opera’s 2014 double bill neatly balanced drollery and gravity. Rectifying the apparent prevailing indifference to the 300th centenary of Christoph Willibald Gluck birth, Bampton offered a sharp, witty production of the composer’s Il Parnaso confuso, pairing this ‘festa teatrale’ with Ferdinando Bertoni’s more sombre Orfeo. »
19 Sep 2014
Harry Christophers and The Sixteen Choir and Orchestra launched the Wigmore Hall’s two-year series, ‘Purcell: A Retrospective’, in splendid style. Flexibility, buoyancy and transparency were the watchwords. »
19 Sep 2014
It would be unfair, but one could summarise this concert with the words, ‘Senator, you’re no Leonard Bernstein.’ »
19 Sep 2014
On September 13, Los Angeles Opera opened its 2014-2015 season with a revival of Marta Domingo’s updated, Art Deco staging of Giuseppe Verdi’s La traviata. It starred Nino Machaidze as Violetta, Arturo Chácon-Cruz as Alfredo, and Plácido Domingo as Giorgio Germont. The conductor was Music Director James Conlon. »
19 Sep 2014
In its annual concert previewing the forthcoming season Lyric Opera of Chicago presented its “Stars of Lyric Opera at Millennium Park” during the past weekend to a large audience of enthusiastic listeners. »
18 Sep 2014
Come to think of it the 1950‘s were operatically rich years in America compared to other decades in the recent past. Just now the San Francisco Opera laid bare an example, Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah. »
17 Sep 2014
Nicholas Hytner’s production of Handel’s Xerxes (Serse) at English National Opera (ENO) is nearly 30 years old, and is the oldest production in ENO’s stable. »
15 Sep 2014
On Friday evening September 5, 2014, tenor Stephen Costello and soprano Ailyn Pérez gave a recital to open the San Diego Opera season. After all the threats to close the company down, it was a great joy to great San Diego Opera in its new vibrant, if slightly slimmed down form. »
15 Sep 2014
English National Opera’s 2014-15 season kicked off with an ear-piercing orchestral thunderbolt. Brilliant lightning spears sliced through the thick black night, fitfully illuminating the Mediterranean garret-town square where an expectant crowd gather to welcome home their conquering hero. »
14 Sep 2014
It is now three and a half years since Anna Nicole was unleashed on the world at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. »
12 Sep 2014
It was a Druid orgy that overtook the War Memorial. Magnificent singing, revelatory conducting, off-the-wall staging (a compliment, sort of). »
12 Sep 2014
There was a quasi-party atmosphere at the Wigmore Hall on Monday evening, when Joyce DiDonato and Antonio Pappano reprised the recital that had kicked off the Hall’s 2014-15 season with reported panache and vim two nights previously. It was standing room only, and although this was a repeat performance there certainly was no lack of freshness and spontaneity: both the American mezzo-soprano and her accompanist know how to communicate and entertain. »
07 Sep 2014
In strict architectural terms, the stupendous 2nd century Roman
theatre of Aspendos near Antalya in southern Turkey is not an arena or
amphitheatre at all, so there are not nearly as many ghosts of gored gladiators
or dismembered Christians to disturb the contemporary feng shui as in
other ancient loci of Imperial amusement. »
07 Sep 2014
Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra brought their staging of Bach's St Matthew Passion to the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall on Saturday, 6 September 2014. »
02 Sep 2014
Every so often an opera fan is treated to a minor miracle, a revelatory performance of a familiar favorite that immediately sweeps all other versions before it.
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02 Sep 2014
On August 30, Los Angeles Opera presented the finals concert of Plácido Domingo’s Operalia, the world opera competition. Founded in 1993, the contest endeavors to discover and help launch the careers of the most promising young opera singers of today. Thousands of applicants send in recordings from which forty singers are chosen to perform live in the city where the contest is being held. Last year it was Verona, Italy, this year Los Angeles, next year London. »
01 Sep 2014
The second day of the Richard Strauss weekend at the BBC Proms saw Richard
Strauss's Elektra performed at the Royal Albert Hall on 31 August 2014
by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Semyon Bychkov, with Christine
Goerke in the title role. »
31 Aug 2014
Triumphant! An exceptionally stimulating Mahler Symphony No 2 from Daniel Harding and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, BBC Prom 57 at the Royal Albert Hall. Harding's Mahler Tenth performances (especially with the Berliner Philharmoniker) are pretty much the benchmark by which all other performances are assessed. Harding's Mahler Second is informed by such an intuitive insight into the whole traverse of the composer's work that, should he get around to doing all ten together, he'll fulfil the long-held dream of "One Grand Symphony", all ten symphonies understood as a coherent progression of developing ideas. »
31 Aug 2014
The BBC Proms continued its Richard Strauss celebrations with a performance of his first major operatic success Salome. Nina Stemme led forces from the Deutsche Oper, Berlin,at the Royal Albert Hall on Saturday 30 August 2014,the first of a remarkable pair of Proms which sees Salome and Elektra performed on successive evenings »
29 Aug 2014
On August 9, 2014, Santa Fe Opera presented a new updated production of Don Pasquale that set the action in the 1950s. Chantal Thomas’s Act I scenery showed the Don’s furnishing as somewhat worn and decidedly dowdy. Later, she literally turned the Don’s home upside down! »
25 Aug 2014
At a concert in the Cathedral of Saint Joseph in San Jose, California, on August 22, 2014, a few selections preceded the piece the audience had been waiting for: the world premiere of Dolora Zajick’s brand new composition, an opera scene entitled Roads to Zion. »
25 Aug 2014
This elegant, smartly-paced film turns Gluck’s Orfeo into a Dostoevskian study of a guilt-wracked misanthrope, portrayed by American countertenor Bejun Mehta. »
23 Aug 2014
Ossia Il barbiere di Siviglia. Why waste a good tune. »
22 Aug 2014
By emphasizing the love between Sun Yat-sen and Soong Ching-ling, Ruo showed us the human side of this universally revered modern Chinese leader. Writer Lindsley Miyoshi has quoted the composer as saying that the opera is “about four kinds of love.” It speaks of affection between friends, between parents and children, between lovers, and between patriots and their country. »
22 Aug 2014
In light of the 2012 half-centenary of the premiere in the newly re-built Coventry Cathedral of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, the 2013 centennial celebrations of the composer’s own birth, and this year’s commemorations of the commencement of WW1, it is perhaps not surprising that the War Requiem - a work which was long in gestation and which might be seen as a summation of the composer’s musical, political and personal concerns - has been fairly frequently programmed of late. And, given the large, multifarious forces required, the potent juxtaposition of searing English poetry and liturgical Latin, and the profound resonances of the circumstances of the work’s commission and premiere, it would be hard to find a performance, as William Mann declared following the premiere, which was not a ‘momentous occasion’. »
21 Aug 2014
Both by default and by merit Il barbiere di Siviglia is the hit of the thirty-fifth Rossini Opera Festival. But did anyone really want, and did the world really need yet another production of this old warhorse? »
20 Aug 2014
Armida (1817) is the third of Rossini’s nine operas for the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, all serious. The first was Elisabetta, regina di Inghilterra (1815), the second was Otello (1816), the last was Zelmira (1822). »
15 Aug 2014
Santa Fe opera has presented Carmen in various productions since 1961. This year’s version by Stephen Lawless takes place during the recent past in Northern Mexico near the United States border. The performance on August 6, 2014, featured Ana Maria Martinez as a monumentally sexy Gypsy who was part of a drug smuggling group. »
10 Aug 2014
Sir Mark Elder and the Hallé Orchestra persuasively balanced passion and poetry in this absorbing Promenade concert. Elder’s tempi were fairly relaxed but the result was spaciousness rather than ponderousness, with phrases given breadth and substance, and rich orchestral colours permitted to make startling dramatic impact. »
10 Aug 2014
Although far from perfect, the performance of Berio’s Sinfonia in the first half of this concert was certainly its high-point; indeed, I rather wish that I had left at the interval, given the tedium induced by Shostakovich’s interminable Fourth Symphony. Still, such was the programme Semyon Bychkov had been intended to conduct. Alas, illness had forced him to withdraw, to be replaced at short notice by Vasily Petrenko. »
10 Aug 2014
Handel's Rinaldo was first performed in 1711 at London's King's Theatre. Handel's first opera for London was designed to delight and entertain, combining good tunes, great singing with a rollicking good story. Robert Carsen's 2011 production of the opera for Glyndebourne reflected this with its tongue-in-cheek Harry Potter meets St Trinian's staging. »
08 Aug 2014
On August 7, 2014, the Santa Fe Opera presented a double bill of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s The Impresario and Igor Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol (The Nightingale). The Impresario deals with the casting of an opera and Le Rossignol tells the well-known fairy tale about the plain gray bird with an exquisite song. »
08 Aug 2014
Utah Festival Opera and Musical Theatre has gifted opera enthusiasts with a thrilling Barber, and I don’t mean . . . of Seville. »
08 Aug 2014
In typical Proms fashion, BBC Prom 28 saw Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex performed in an eclectic programme which started with Beethoven's Egmont Overture and also featured Electric Preludes by the contemporary Australian composer Brett Dean. Sakari Oramo,was making the first of his Proms appearances this year, conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Singers and BBC Symphony Chorus. »
07 Aug 2014
Santa Fe Opera presented Beethoven’s Fidelio for the first time in 2014. Since the sides of the opera house are open, the audience watched the sun redden the low hanging clouds and set below the Sangre de Cristo mountains while Chief Conductor Harry Bicket led the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra in the rousing overture. At the same time, Alex Penda as the title character readied herself for the ordeal to come as she endeavored to rescue her unjustly imprisoned husband. »
03 Aug 2014
We see the characters first in two boxes at an opera house. The five singers share a box and stare at the stage. But Konstanze’s eye is caught by a man in a box opposite: Bassa Selim (actor Tobias Moretti), who stares steadily at her and broods in voiceover at having lost her, his inspiration. »
31 Jul 2014
Best of the season so far! William Christie and Les Arts Florissants performed Rameau Grand Motets at late night Prom 17. »
28 Jul 2014
Twelve years after Opera Holland Park's first production of Francesco Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur, the opera made a welcome return. »
27 Jul 2014
The Italianate cloister setting at Iford chimes neatly with Monteverdi’s penultimate opera The Return of Ulysses, as the setting cannot but bring to mind those early days of the musical genre. »
27 Jul 2014
Once again, we find ourselves thanking an unrepresentable being for Welsh National Opera’s commitment to its mission. »
27 Jul 2014
If you don’t have the means to get to the Rossini festival in Pesaro, you would do just as well to come to Indianola, Iowa, where Des Moines Metro Opera festival has devised a heady production of Le Comte Ory that is as long on belly laughs as it is on musical fireworks. »
26 Jul 2014
Composed during just a few weeks of the summer of 1926, Janáček’s Slavonic-text Glagolitic Mass was first performed in Brno in December 1927. »
26 Jul 2014
With the conclusion of the ROH 2013-14 season on Saturday evening - John Copley’s 40-year old production of La Bohème bringing down the summer curtain - the sun pouring through the gleaming windows of the Floral Hall was a welcome invitation to enjoy a final treat. The Jette Parker Young Artists Summer Showcase offered singers whom we have admired in minor and supporting roles during the past year the opportunity to step into the spotlight. »
26 Jul 2014
Many words have already been spent - not all of them on musical matters - on Richard Jones’s Glyndebourne production of Der Rosenkavalier, which last night was transported to the Royal Albert Hall. This was the first time at the Proms that Richard Strauss’s most popular opera had been heard in its entirety and, despite losing two of its principals in transit from Sussex to SW1, this semi-staged performance offered little to fault and much to admire. »
22 Jul 2014
Twenty years ago stage director Christopher Alden introduced Rossini’s then forgotten comedy to Southern California audiences in a production that is still remembered. In Aix Alden has revisited this complex work that many critics now consider Rossini’s greatest comedy. »
20 Jul 2014
The BBC Proms 2014 season began with Sir Edward Elgars The Kingdom (1903-6). It was a good start to the season,which commemorates the start of the First World War. From that perspective Sir Andrew Davis's The Kingdom moved me deeply.
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19 Jul 2014
One is unlikely to come across a cast of Figaro principals much better than this today, and the virtues of this performance indeed proved to be primarily vocal. »
19 Jul 2014
That’s A Winter’s Journey and A Night of Mourning for metteurs-en-scène William Kentridge (South Africa) and Katie Mitchell (Great Britain), completing the clean sweep of English language stage directors for the Aix Festival productions this year. »
18 Jul 2014
Assured elegance, care and thoughtfulness characterised tenor James Gilchrist’s performance of Schubert’s Schwanengesang at the Wigmore Hall, the cycles’ two poets framing a compelling interpretation of Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte. »
12 Jul 2014
‘Music for a while shall all your cares beguile.’ Dryden’s words have never seemed as apt as at the conclusion of this wonderful sequence of improvisations on Purcell’s songs and arias, interspersed with instrumental chaconnes and toccatas, by L’Arpeggiata. »
12 Jul 2014
The acoustic of the gigantic Théâtre Antique Romain at Orange cannot but astonish its nine thousand spectators, the nearly one hundred meter breadth of the its proscenium inspires awe. There was excited anticipation for this performance of Verdi’s first masterpiece. »
10 Jul 2014
Richard Strauss may be most closely associated with the soprano voice but
this recording of a selection of the composer’s lieder by baritone Thomas
Hampson is a welcome reminder that the rapt lyricism of Strauss’s settings
can be rendered with equal beauty and character by the low male voice. »
08 Jul 2014
Opera Theatre of Saint Louis has once again staked claim to being the summer festival “of choice” in the US, not least of all for having mounted another superlative world premiere. »
08 Jul 2014
In past years the operas of the Aix Festival that took place in the Grand Théâtre de Provence began at 8 pm. The Magic Flute began at 7 pm, or would have had not the infamous intermittents (seasonal theatrical employees) demanded to speak to the audience. »
07 Jul 2014
High drama in Aix. Three scenarios in conflict — those of G.F. Handel, Richard Jones and the intermittents (disgruntled seasonal theatrical employees). Make that four — mother nature. »
06 Jul 2014
The programme declared that ‘music, water and night’ was the connecting thread running through this diverse collection of songs, performed by soprano Lucy Crowe and pianist Anna Tilbrook, but in fact there was little need to seek a unifying element for these eclectic works allowed Crowe to demonstrate her expressive range — and offered the audience the opportunity to hear some interesting rarities. »
06 Jul 2014
‘Only make the reader’s general vision of evil intense enough … and his own experience, his own imagination, his own sympathy … will supply him quite sufficiently with all the particulars. »
06 Jul 2014
It is not often that concept, mood, music and place coincide perfectly. On the first night of Opera della Luna’s La Fille du Regiment at Iford Opera in Wiltshire, England we arrived with doubts (rather large doubts it should be admitted)as to whether Donizetti’s “naive and vulgar” romp of militarism and proto-feminism, peopled with hordes of gun-toting soldiers and praying peasants, could hardly be contained, surely, inside Iford’s tiny cloister? »
02 Jul 2014
‘Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,/ Such shaping fantasies,
that apprehend/ More than cool reason ever comprehends.’ »
02 Jul 2014
Belgian soprano Sophie Karthäuser has a rich range of vocal resources upon
which to draw: she has power and also precision; her top is bright and glinting
and it is complemented by a surprisingly full and rich lower register; she can
charm with a flowing lyrical line, but is also willing to take musical risks to
convey emotion and embody character. »
30 Jun 2014
‘When two men like us set out to produce a “trifle”, it has to become a very serious trifle’, wrote Hofmannsthal to Strauss during the gestation of their opera about opera. »
27 Jun 2014
Janáček started The Cunning Little Vixen on the cusp of old age in 1922 and there is something deeply elegiac about it. »
26 Jun 2014
It took only a couple of years for Il trovatore and Rigoletto to make it from Italy to the Opéra de Marseille, but it took La traviata (Venice, 1853) sixteen years (Marseille, 1869). »
23 Jun 2014
Gesamtkunstwerk, synthesis of fable, sound, shape and color in art, may have been made famous by Richard Wagner, and perhaps never more perfectly realized than just now by San Francisco Opera. »
23 Jun 2014
Luca Francesconi is well-respected in the avant garde. His music has been championed by the Arditti Quartett and features regularly in new music festivals. His opera Quartett has at last reached London after well-received performances in Milan and Amsterdam. »
19 Jun 2014
Manon Lescaut at the Royal Opera House, London, brings out the humanity which lies beneath Puccini's music. The composer was drawn to what we'd now called "outsiders. In Manon Lescaut, Puccini describes his anti-heroine with unsentimental honesty. His lush harmonies describe the way she abandons herself to luxury, but he doesn't lose sight of the moral toughness at the heart of Abbé Prévost's story, Manon is sensual but, like her brother, fatally obssessed with material things. Only when she has lost everything else does she find true values through love..
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18 Jun 2014
Writing in a programme article to accompany this first revival of her 2010 production of Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers, director Penny Woolcock remarks upon the opera’s ‘plethora of beautiful arias, duets, choral and orchestral music … and catchy tunes that spawn earworms’. »
16 Jun 2014
An ideal choice for this year's Aldeburgh Music Festival, Britten's Owen Wingrave. From a very early age, Britten was incensed by bullying and repression. »
13 Jun 2014
To be uncomplimentary about the current production of Show Boat at San Francisco Opera will surely provoke a summons to appear before the House Un-American Activities Commission. »
12 Jun 2014
La Traviata has hit the stage at San Francisco Opera every three to five years (even annually in some periods) since 1924. Surprises have been rare. »
11 Jun 2014
On June 6, 2014, Opera Las Vegas presented Gioachino Rossini’s The Barber of Seville with a cast drawn from the Metropolitan Opera and other major companies. »
11 Jun 2014
The geographical and chronological transportation of Rossini’s famous
factotum from 18th-century Seville to 19th-century London
is director Oliver Platt’s most radical notion in this satisfying, if
somewhat straightforward, new production of Il barbiere di Siviglia
for Opera Holland Park. »
11 Jun 2014
In its annual concert devoted to performances by current members of the Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center, Lyric Opera of Chicago showcased a roster of talented singers who will doubtless add greatly to operatic and concert stages of the immediate future. »
10 Jun 2014
Having become so jaded with indifferent — or, sadly, far worse than merely indifferent — stagings of an opera I love more than words can tell, it proved a relief and indeed a joy for me to attend this first revival of Jonathan Kent’s 2010 Glyndebourne production, especially its first act. »
10 Jun 2014
Is Garsington the new Glyndebourne, a Glyndebourne for the 21st Century? »
09 Jun 2014
Bernarda Fink’s recording of Gustav Mahler’s Lieder is an important new release that includes outstanding performances of the composer’s well-known songs, along with compelling readings of some less-familiar ones. »
06 Jun 2014
First, a sigh of relief: in almost every respect, this new ENO staging of
Benvenuto Cellini marks a significant improvement »
06 Jun 2014
‘I like the atmosphere of the West’, Puccini wrote after seeing three of David Belasco’s plays performed on Broadway in 1907, ‘but in all the “pièces” I have seen, I have found only a few scenes here and there. »
03 Jun 2014
On May 23rd the Los Angeles Philharmonic premiered its production of
Così fan tutte, the third and last of the Mozart/Daponte opera series
it inaugurated in 2012. »
02 Jun 2014
A month in which London, or indeed anywhere else, saw one performances of a Birtwistle drama would be something. »
02 Jun 2014
For the final recital in his three-concert residency at the Wigmore Hall, Canadian bass-baritone Gerald Finley offered the familiar and the new in striking juxtaposition, Franz Schubert’s posthumously published Schwanengesang enclosing Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Rubáiyát, which was written specially for Finley. »
02 Jun 2014
A black bare stage heaving with a rebellious revolutionary throng; they stare with still hostility directly at the audience, stark light streaming from above. »
29 May 2014
Siberian born baritone, Dmitri Hvorostovsky returned to Dorothy Chandler Hall on May 22nd with a unique all Russian song recital which included songs composed to Pushkin’s poetry and Dmitri Shostakovich’s Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarroti. »
27 May 2014
In this Schubert Liederabende — the second in Ian Bostridge and Julius Drake’s planned series of four recitals at the Wigmore Hall — dark, sombre worlds evoking the romantic turbulence of Death and the Maiden were only briefly alleviated by radiance and light. »
22 May 2014
As Athanaël, Placido Domingo created a realistic monk who was ostensibly tempted to disregard his vows. The audience knew that had the courtesan Thaïs lived longer, he would have thrown his immortal soul into the wind. »
22 May 2014
As Blanche, Renée Fleming sang her role with a sultry air. Her smooth, creamy tones revealed her character’s ultra-refined dream world as she told of having once been married to a gay man. The moment when Blanche met Stanley was electric. From that first second, the audience knew he hated everything she valued. »
22 May 2014
With the FIFA World Cup just three weeks away perhaps it is permissible to use a sporting metaphor, for this performance by The English Concert at the Wigmore Hall — part of the ensemble’s 40th anniversary celebrations — really was a game of two halves. »
19 May 2014
The company bids a smiling farewell to its 2013-14 HD simulcast season with Rossini’s comic masterpiece »
19 May 2014
It must be the sea air. In Thomas Hardy’s vignette ‘The History of the Hardcomes’, two young women — quiet, gentle Emily Darth, and the more lively, rumbustious Olive Pawle — are betrothed to two cousins, James and Stephen Hardcome; but the quartet decide that they are paired up wrongly, and so ‘swap’ suitors, submitting to a moment of irrational infatuation. »
19 May 2014
If it is supposed to bring bad luck to even whisper the name of the “Scottish Play” out loud, someone must have screamed Macbeth deafeningly before the performance at Saarbrücken’s State Opera House. »
19 May 2014
This was a truly outstanding performance, thoroughly worthy of its standing ovation. The only problem now will be of upholding such standards throughout the Barbican’s Birtwistle at 80 series. »
18 May 2014
Der Rosenkavalier opened Glyndebourne’s 80th anniversary season, dedicated to the memory of George Christie, who created country house opera as we know it today. »
13 May 2014
For its final production of the 2013-14 season Lyric Opera of Chicago featured Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito in a staging originating at the
Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, in co-production with the Théatre du Capitole de Toulouse and l’Opéra de Marseille. »
08 May 2014
Baden’s Easter Festival centerpiece was a solid production of Manon Lescaut that was well-intended, well-designed, and well-performed. »
08 May 2014
What a difference a venue and a cast can make!
»
07 May 2014
“Oh! Woman! Woman! Woman!” So, cries Beaumarchais’s Figaro, in his
angry, self-chastising, at times self-pitying diatribe against the injustices
of ‘life’. “Oh, servants, servants, servants!” might be the Count’s
complaint in David McVicar’s production of Le Nozze di Figaro,
revived here for the sixth time. »
06 May 2014
Excellent Wigmore Hall recital with Stéphane Degout and Simon Lepper. Degout is one of the great names in French repertoire and in French baroque in particular. »
05 May 2014
Julian Anderson’s Thebans at the Coliseum, London, absolutely justifies the ENO's mission: opera, in English, and of national significance. Anderson is one of the most influential figures in modern British music. »
30 Apr 2014
Poulenc’s racy little 1947 confection took stage within Kurt Weill’s peculiar little 1927 singspiel Mahagonny all framed within the current California drought and doomsday predictions of impending global aridity. »
26 Apr 2014
Librettist Leonard Foglia based his elegant and literate text on the late Horton Foote’s play, A Coffin in Egypt, and the opera has the original play’s dramatic punch. »
25 Apr 2014
The latest recital in the Songlives series at the Wigmore Hall turned the spotlight on a figure whose short compositional career and small oeuvre might have been expected to confine him to the margins of musical history, but whose name has in fact become almost synonymous with a whole genre of song: mélodie. »
23 Apr 2014
Manitoba Opera’s first production in nine years of Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème still stirs the heart and inspires tears with its tragic tale of bohemian artists living — and loving — in 1840s Paris. »
23 Apr 2014
On April 12, 2014, Arizona Opera opened its series of performances of Donizetti's Don Pasquale in Tucson. Chuck Hudson’s production of this opera combined Commedia dell’arte with Hollywood movie history. »
15 Apr 2014
This quotation from Cervantes was displayed before the opening of the opera’s final scene:“The greatest madness a man can commit in this life is to let himself die, just like that, without anybody killing him or any other hands ending his life except those of melancholy.” »
13 Apr 2014
Gounod's Faust makes a much welcomed return to the Royal Opera House. With each new cast, the dynamic changes as the balance between singers shifts and brings out new insights. In that sense, every revival is an opportunity to revisit from new perspectives. This time Bryn Terfel sang Méphistophélès, with Joseph Calleja as Faust - stars whose allure certainly helped fill the hall to capacity. And the audience enjoyed a very good show. »
10 Apr 2014
The company ends its 2013-14 season on a high note with a staged performance of Gershwin’s theatrical masterpiece »
10 Apr 2014
Lyric Opera of Chicago’s new production of Antonin Dvorak’s Rusalka is visually impressive and fulfills all possible expectations musically with unquestioned excitement. »
10 Apr 2014
The reliable Badisches Staatstheater has assembled plenty of talent for its new Un Ballo in Maschera. »
10 Apr 2014
This varied, demanding programme indisputably marked soprano Louise Alder as a name to watch. »
09 Apr 2014
Can this be the best British opera in years? Luke Bedford’s Through His Teeth at the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Theatre is exceptional. Drop everything and go. »
08 Apr 2014
As one descends the steel steps into the cavernous bunker of Ambika P3, one seems about to enter rather insalubrious realms — just right one might imagine, then, for an opera which delves into the depths of the seedier side of celebrity life. »
01 Apr 2014
Kaiserslautern’s Pfalztheater has produced a tantalizing realization of Gluck’s Iphigénie en Aulide, characterized by intriguing staging, appealing designs, and best of all, superlative musical standards. »
30 Mar 2014
Never thought I’d say it but...... »
27 Mar 2014
Celebrating the 80th birthday of one of the UK's greatest composers (if not the greatest), this concert was an intriguing, and not always stimulating, mix. Birtwistle with Carter makes sense, but Birtwistle with Adams does not - or at least only within the remit of the concert series. The concert was actually entitled “Nash Inventions: American and British Masterworks, including an 80th Birthday Tribute to Sir Harrison Birtwistle” and was the final concert in the “Inventions” series.
»
27 Mar 2014
On Wednesday, March 19, 2014, General Director Ian Campbell of San Diego Opera announced that the company would go out of business at the end of this season. The next day the company performed their long-planned Verdi Requiem with a stellar cast including soprano Krassimira Stoyanova, mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe, tenor Piotr Beczala, and bass Ferruccio Furlanetto. »
21 Mar 2014
Visual elements in Richard Eyre’s striking production offset Massenet’s melodic shortcomings »
19 Mar 2014
New productions of repertoire staples such as Gioachino Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia bear much anticipation for both performers and staging. »
19 Mar 2014
On March 15, 2014, Los Angeles Opera presented Elkhanah Pulitzer’s production of the opera, which she set in 1885 when women were beginning to be recognized as persons separate from their fathers, brothers and husbands. At that time many European countries were beginning to allow women to own property, obtain higher education, and choose their husbands. »
19 Mar 2014
On March 11, 2014, San Diego Opera presented Verdi’s A Masked Ball in a traditional production by Leslie Koenig. Metropolitan Opera star tenor Piotr Beczala was Gustav III, the king of Sweden, and Krassimira Stoyanova gave an insightful portrayal of Amelia, his troubled but innocent love interest. »
19 Mar 2014
From the moment she walked, resplendent in red, onto the Wigmore Hall platform, Anne Schwanewilms radiated a captivating presence — one that kept the audience enthralled throughout this magnificent programme of Romantic song. »
19 Mar 2014
Magnificent! Following the first night of this new production of Die Frau ohne Schatten, I quipped that I could forgive an opera house anything for musical performance at this level, whether orchestral, vocal, or, in this case, both. »
12 Mar 2014
Donizetti’s opera comique La Fille du regiment returned to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, for its third revival. »
10 Mar 2014
With Schoenberg, I tend to take every opportunity I can — at least since my first visit to the Salzburg Festival, when understandably I chose to see Figaro over Boulez conducting Moses und Aron, though I have rued the loss ever since. »
06 Mar 2014
As the Britten centenary events draw to a close, the Birmingham Royal Ballet are offering one final highlight: a new version of Britten’s only ballet, The Prince of the Pagodas, with choreography by David Bintley. »
04 Mar 2014
Nashville Opera Artistic Director John Hoomes set the opera as Violetta’s dying dream, so colors and other aspects of the backgrounds were symbolic and bright. »
04 Mar 2014
Will wonders never cease? Wheat stalks 6 meters high? Rats 2 meters tall. Setting Donizetti’s little comedy amidst biological mutations engendered by Chernobyl does seem a bit farfetched. »
03 Mar 2014
Handel’s great opus, Rodelinda, at English National Opera on
Friday night was the latest in the Coliseum’s recent run of new and
co-produced productions, and also renowned director Peter Jones’ latest foray
into the world of opera. »
02 Mar 2014
On Sunday afternoon, February 23, 2014, San Diego Opera presented The Elixir of Love in a traditional production by Stephen Lawless. »
02 Mar 2014
Billy Budd, portrayed by handsome lyric tenor Liam Bonner, is a charismatic embodiment of innocence. »
24 Feb 2014
This was in almost every respect an excellent performance — which therefore exacerbates the problem lying at the heart, or whatever it is that lies in its place, of the work itself. »
24 Feb 2014
Bilbao is always news, Calixto Bieito is always news, Carmen with a good cast is always news. So here is the news. »
24 Feb 2014
French mistresses are much in the news these days, and now the Théâtre du Capitole’s new production of Donizetti’s La Favorite has added considerable fuel to the fire. »
22 Feb 2014
In a 1960 BBC interview, Britten explained to Lord Harewood: ‘I was very much influenced by [W.H.] Auden … »
20 Feb 2014
Michael Tippett’s opera King Priam premiered as part of the
same arts festival in Coventry for which Britten’s War Requiem was
written and in fact the two works have something in common, dealing with the
issues of war and its consequences. »
19 Feb 2014
In Lyric Opera of Chicago’s recent performances of Johann Strauss’s
Die Fledermaus several debuts are notable to both American and Chicago
audiences. »
16 Feb 2014
One wonders if it wasn’t rather risky of ENO to stage a new version of Rigoletto when Jonathan Miller’s ‘mafioso’ production, which served the company so well for a quarter of a century, is still fresh in opera-goers’ minds and hearts? »
16 Feb 2014
Its soothing wooden walls gently bathed in aquamarine light, the very modern Hall at King’s Place made a surprisingly fitting venue for a musical journey to the intimate Elizabethan chamber. »
11 Feb 2014
A handsome new production, beautifully staged in Marseille’s fine old opera house cried out for a cast to make the opera bel canto. »
09 Feb 2014
Harry Bicket and the English Concert brought Handel's wonderful late oratorio Theodora to the Barbican on Saturday 8 February 2014 after a Tour in America and now taking in Birmingham, London and Paris. »
07 Feb 2014
Opera in the British Isles might seem a rather sparse subject in the period 1875 to 1918. Notoriously described as the land without music, even the revival of the native tradition of composers did not include a strong vein of opera. »
07 Feb 2014
It is not often that a Aaron Copland's The Tender Land comes along with resources like those of the Opéra de Lyon, one of Europe's finest. So carpe diem! »
06 Feb 2014
Kasper Holten’s new production of Don Giovanni at the Royal Opera
House risks laying the house’s Director of Opera open to charges of
antiquated mores and misogyny: for he seems to suggest that the women are just
as bad, if not worse, than their seducer — and that a soulful man who seeks
genuine love is likely to find his ‘ideal beloved’ forever out of reach. »
06 Feb 2014
On January 28, San Diego Opera presented Pagliacci as the opening production of the 2014 season. Often staged along with another opera, such as Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana, this Pagliacci faced the opera world alone. »
05 Feb 2014
If satire is your thing you will not want to miss this opera about human testicles grafted onto a dog. »
03 Feb 2014
Every-once-in-a-while a Rusalka comes along, and this week there are even two here on the French Riviera — just now in Monaco and upcoming Saturday on movie screens all along the coast. »
31 Jan 2014
For many years, the shadow of Peter Pears hovered at the shoulder of any tenor who dared to offer their own reading of Britten’s equivocal fisherman. But, as the aural memories of Pears’ visionary dreamer soften — in the opera house, at least, if not on recordings — modern singers are increasingly released from the ghostly echoes of the past. »
30 Jan 2014
On January 25, 2014, Arizona Opera presented Candace Evans production of Puccini’s La bohème with exciting young artists Zach Borichevsky and Corinne Winters as a romantic Rodolfo and his charming but not-so-innocent Mimì. »
25 Jan 2014
Francesco Bartolomeo Conti (1681-1732) isn’t a name that trips off opera-goers’ tongues; similarly neglected is Conti’s last opera L’Issipile, despite the fact that composer (who was also a theorbo player at the Viennese Imperial Court) was the first of several opera composers to set Metastasio’s libretto. »
24 Jan 2014
Christoph Prégardien has always been a master of creative, exciting ways with Lieder. »
23 Jan 2014
The dimly lit stage becomes gradually suffused with spare light during the prelude to Richard Wagner’s Parsifal in its new production at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. »
22 Jan 2014
In a staging shared with Houston Grand Opera and the Canadian Opera Company, Lyric Opera of Chicago presented recently a new production of Giuseppe Verdi’s La traviata. »
22 Jan 2014
If you’re the sort of audience member who, when watching a performance of a play or opera, often experiences the urge to abandon your seat and join in with action, then the English Pocket Opera Company’s 2014 collaborative project will be just the thing for you. »
22 Jan 2014
Tenor or baritone? Everyone will have their own individual preference about the voice type best suited to Schubert’s Winterreise — and about the manner in which the songs should be performed (narrated, or acted?). »
22 Jan 2014
Tart with a heart, pleasure-loving ingénue, exploited naïf, or femme fatale? »
22 Jan 2014
This recital, part of an inventive series overseen by pianist Malcolm
Martineau, did exactly what it said on the tin: it journeyed the length of
Brahms’ creative life as a composer of songs, from his earliest adolescent
essays, through the early years of expansion and experiment, to the period of
maturity and confidence as the composer established himself in Vienna,
concluding with the moving, nuanced testaments of Brahms’ final years. »
21 Jan 2014
Entering the hall there arose the Dantesque “abandon all hope ye who enter” feeling — a cluttered a vista socialist setting, a poster of Lenin and large letters proclaiming Moscow, December 1999. »
17 Jan 2014
Harry Christophers and The Sixteen brought Handel's final oratorio, Jephtha, to the Barbican (14 January 2014) preparatory to recording the work. »
13 Jan 2014
This Cosi fan tutte completes the Montpellier Mozart/da Ponte trilogy staged by French metteur en scène and esthète Jean-Paul Scarpitta. Primarily studies in elegance and refinement these mises en scènes have provoked all that that is most precious and perfect in Mozart’s scores. »
08 Jan 2014
At the Wigmore Hall, London, Matthias Goerne and Lief Ove Andsnes performed Mahler in a unique programme built around Shostakovich's Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarroti, op 145 (1974). »
08 Jan 2014
Forget Shakespeare, this was distinctly an Otello without the ‘h’. It was Italian melodramma to its core, the collaboration of its metteur en scène Davide Livermore, wunderkind conductor Andrea Battistoni and its Desdemona, Maria Agresto. »
07 Jan 2014
Maybe there can be no bigger feat than making it through Les Contes d’Hoffmann in the Laurent Pelly version without a hitch or two. »
30 Dec 2013
Manitoba Opera opened its 41st season with a rootin’ tootin’ new production of Don Pasquale from November 23 through 29, last staged by the Prairie company in 1997. »
24 Dec 2013
In this unusual programme of late-seventeenth-century airs de cour,
Les Arts Florissants presented a flowing sequence of songs for solo and
ensemble voices with chamber accompaniment, the intimacy of the Wigmore Hall
neatly mimicking the privacy of the royal chambers of Louis XIV in which the
courtly compositions were originally performed. »
19 Dec 2013
Francesco Zambello’s 2006 Carmen, here revived for the sixth time, seems to have something of an identity crisis: sumptuous spectacle or gritty drama? »
17 Dec 2013
Premiered in Paris in 1872, Jacques Offenbach’s Fantasio received
just ten performances before the opera was withdrawn and its composer found himself on the receiving end of bitter attacks and criticism. »
16 Dec 2013
With the gaudy excesses of secular seasonal indulgence just a few streets away and the tills of Oxford Street traders rattling out melodies of materialism, this advent programme of elegance and refinement offered by lutenist Elizabeth Kenny and the early music ensemble which she founded, Theatre of the Ayre, provided a welcome opportunity for repose and reflection. »
16 Dec 2013
Jihoon Kim is shining proof that the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme at the Royal Opera House, London, develops singers into complete artists.
»
11 Dec 2013
Los Angeles Opera's new production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's The Magic Flute opened on November 23, 2013. Brought here from the Komische Oper in Berlin where it premiered last year, the production is a multimedia rendition in the style of the British theater group 1927. »
11 Dec 2013
As part of this year’s tribute to Benjamin Britten the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Chorus, and soloists recently gave several performances of the composer’s War Requiem. »
04 Dec 2013
Heldentenor Jay Hunter Morris tells us about the lean times when the phone did not ring, as well as those thrilling moments when companies entrusted him with the most important roles in opera. »
02 Dec 2013
In its ongoing celebration of Verdi’s centennial year, the Los Angeles Opera offered a new production of Falstaff, the composer’s last and most brilliant opera — brilliant in every scintillating, sparkling sense of the word. »
02 Dec 2013
Poor Weber: opera companies, especially in England, do him anything but proud. »
29 Nov 2013
Acis and Galatea was one of Handel’s most popular works, frequently revived in his life time and beyond. »
27 Nov 2013
German tenor Werner Güra, who has made a speciality of the German lieder repertoire, opened this recital at the Wigmore Hall with Beethoven’s An Die Ferne Geliebte, the composer’s only song cycle and the first significant example of the form. »
22 Nov 2013
It’s been renamed “The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess,” it hails itself as “The American Musical” and further qualifies itself as “The Porgy and Bess for the Twenty-First Century.”
»
19 Nov 2013
Richard Wagner wrote: "The voyage through the Norwegian reefs made a wonderful impression on my imagination; the legend of the Flying Dutchman, which the sailors verified, took on a distinctive, strange coloring that only my sea adventures could have given it.” »
18 Nov 2013
‘If she is adulterous, why is she praised? If chaste, why was she put to death?’ »
17 Nov 2013
San Francisco Opera wraps up its fall season of five operas with what it insists is a new production of Rossini’s comic masterpiece. »
11 Nov 2013
On Remembrance Sunday, Semyon Bychkov conducted Benjamin Britten's War Requiem at the Royal Albert Hall with Roderick Williams, Allan Clayton, Sabrina Cvilak, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Chorus, Crouch End Festival Chorus and choristers of Westminster Abbey. »
09 Nov 2013
The mantle of tenor Peter Pears’ legacy hung heavily over his immediate ‘successors’, as they performed music that had been composed by Benjamin Britten for the man to whom he avowed, ‘I write every note with your heavenly voice in my head’. »
08 Nov 2013
One year since the launch of their project to create a contemporary book of Italians madrigals, vocal ensemble Exaudi returned to the Wigmore Hall to present an intermingling of old and new madrigals which was typically inventive, virtuosic and compelling. »
08 Nov 2013
Mozart’s The Magic Flute at the Coliseum could give the ENO a welcome boost. »
07 Nov 2013
Lyric Opera of Chicago’s current new production of Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, an effort shared with Houston Grand Opera and the Grand Théâtre de Genève, tends to emphasize emotional involvements against a backdrop of spare sets. »
07 Nov 2013
Dmitri Shostakovich’s opera, The Nose, based on Gogol’s short story of the same name, was a smash hit for the Metropolitan Opera company in 2010 and once again, this season. »
05 Nov 2013
There might not be much ‘Serenissima’ about Yoshi Oida’s 2007 production of Death in Venice — it’s more Japanese minimalism than Venetian splendour — but there is still plenty to admire, as this excellent revival by Opera North as part of its centennial celebration, Festival of Britten, underlines. »
05 Nov 2013
With an absorbing production of Peter Grimes and a freshly spontaneous La bohème, Canadian Opera Company has set the bar very high indeed for its current season. »
02 Nov 2013
Whatever you think of some of the Metropolitan Opera’s recent productions, you cannot fault the Gelb administration for fearing to take risks. »
01 Nov 2013
The lustreless white tiles of the laboratory which forms the set of Keith Warner’s pitiless staging of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck offer little respite — cold, hard, rigid and severe, they are a material embodiment of the bleakness and barrenness of the tragic events which will be played out within the workshop walls (sets by Stefanos Lazaridis). »
31 Oct 2013
At this year’s Wexford Festival — the 62nd operatic gathering in this small south-eastern Irish town - the trio of operas on show present many a wretched battle between duty and desire. »
29 Oct 2013
At the heart of this Wigmore Hall recital were two sacred vocal works for solo countertenor and small instrumental forces, recently recorded by Florilegium and Robin Blaze to considerable critical acclaim: J.S. Bach’s cantata ‘Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust’ and Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s ‘Salve Regina’. »
24 Oct 2013
Train wrecks are fascinating events, huge forces collide, brutal destruction results. Investigators rush to the scene to explain how and why it happened. »
23 Oct 2013
After the bitter disappointment of »
23 Oct 2013
There is a cornucopia of ideas on display in Gluck’s Armide at Amsterdam’s Het Muziektheater, but sadly only a few of them seemed to serve the piece.
»
23 Oct 2013
Even before it opened, Royal Opera’s Les vêpres siciliennes was the must-see production of the season. »
23 Oct 2013
Lyric Opera of Chicago has opened the season with a revival of its 2001 production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Otello. »
23 Oct 2013
Having impressed UK audiences in La Boheme (for ENO) and American Lulu (for the Opera Group/Scottish Opera), »
22 Oct 2013
First seen in 2005, and since feted in London (several times), New York and Lithuania, Anthony Minghella’s cinematic production of Madame Butterfly remains a breath-taking visual banquet. »
15 Oct 2013
The star of the show was the agile Robert Orth as Sir Joseph Porter, the First Lord of the Admiralty. A fine operatic baritone, Orth’s patter was machine gun fast, crisp, and completely understandable. »
13 Oct 2013
Venerable San Francisco Opera kicked off its fall season with a wholly pleasing revival of a landmark production, complemented by an engrossing world premiere. »
13 Oct 2013
Carmen Lite: Singing shines in Syracuse Opera’s pocket-sized The Tragedy of Carmen »
13 Oct 2013
No matter how or where Carmen is produced, or by whom directed, costumed and performed, its promise of free wheeling sex and exciting rhythmic music, has made it one of the most popular operas in the world. »
13 Oct 2013
What do you get if you cross the sultry folk melodies of Greece, Spain and Italy with the formal repetitions of Baroque instrumental structures, and add a dash of the shady timbres and rhythmic litheness of jazz? »
13 Oct 2013
‘All Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.’ The sentiments of the closing lines of Gerald Manley Hopkins’ sonnet, ‘No worst, there is none. »
13 Oct 2013
Britten’s War Requiem is one of the defining artistic works of
the twentieth century. Consummate artwork, religious ritual and prayer,
ceremonial commemoration, ideological political statement, public expression of
mourning, and private avowal of faith, »
11 Oct 2013
James Conway’s production of Monteverdi’s final masterpiece, L’incoronazione di Poppea was »
10 Oct 2013
The company’s new production of the Tchaikovsky masterpiece is cramped and
cheap, leaving the listener longing for a return of the 1997 version »
09 Oct 2013
A rambunctious ensemble on the stage and in the pit. A star conductor. Falstaff showed its stuff as one of the repertory’s greatest masterpieces.
»
09 Oct 2013
Performances of Verdi’s Macbeth take shape and leave an overall impression from both individual and collective emphases. »
09 Oct 2013
Miah Persson and Florian Boesch sang Schumann with Malcolm Martineau at the Wigmore Hall for the latest of his Songlives series. »
07 Oct 2013
For the final instalment of Welsh National Opera’s Tudor trilogy, Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux, director »
07 Oct 2013
The second installment of Welsh National Opera’s Tudor trilogy, Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda saw »
07 Oct 2013
Once again, one can only applaud English Touring Opera’s sense of
adventure — and commitment. Its autumn season comprises three Venetian
operas: L’incoronazione di Poppea, Giasone, and
Agrippina, all in translation. »
07 Oct 2013
‘Chacun à son goût!’ cries the inebriated Prince Orlovsky, invigorated by champagne and high-living. An indifferent ‘each to his own’? »
06 Oct 2013
Coincidentally last Friday night was the closing night of San Francisco Opera’s Dolores Claiborne and the opening night of Ray of Light Theatre’s Carrie The Musical. »
05 Oct 2013
More than two centuries on, Fidelio may well remain the most misunderstood opera of all. »
05 Oct 2013
Welsh National Opera's new production of Donizetti's Anna Bolena is the first part of their trilogy of Donizetti's Tudor operas, Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux. »
30 Sep 2013
Vladimir Jurowski conducted a fascinating Peter Grimes with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall. Fascinating, because Jurowski finds things in Britten other conductors don't get in the first place. Jurowski approaches Britten as a composer, without the usual baggage of Britishness and Brittenish. »
30 Sep 2013
Johannes Erath's production of Verdi's La Traviata opened at the Staatsoper Hamburg in February this year, with Ailyn Perez in the title role. Perez returned with Stephen Costello as Alfredo for three performances in September 2013 »
29 Sep 2013
Charles Edwards’s production of Elektra, first seen in 2003, »
29 Sep 2013
Last week I enjoyed the opportunity to see Bampton Classical Opera’s
light-hearted, witty production of Mozart’s earliest opera — La finta
semplice — a work which, despite lacking the melodic variety and texture
dynamism of the later operas, is still a remarkably accomplished achievement
for a boy of merely twelve years of age. »
29 Sep 2013
In its annual concert presented to the city at Millennium Park, Lyric Opera of Chicago introduced its 2013-14 season on a recent weekend evening with a program of selections featuring several present, past, and future stars of the company. »
28 Sep 2013
Matthias Goerne and Andreas Haefliger’s recital at the Wigmore Hall was eagerly anticipated. Goerne and Haefliger are a Dream Team, who have worked together for over 15 years. »
26 Sep 2013
In the first of his two recitals at the Wigmore Hall this week, Matthias Goerne sang Schubert, but Schubert with a difference. »
26 Sep 2013
Opera in San Francisco is what occurs at the War Memorial Opera House. Every so often though you can think outside the box and find some interesting performances nearby. »
24 Sep 2013
I was a little taken aback by the reaction I received upon mentioning that I was looking forward to seeing American Lulu. »
22 Sep 2013
Dolores Claiborne, the heroine of the book Dolores Claiborne (1992), is a figment of the imagination of prolific pulp horror novelist Stephen King. »
22 Sep 2013
Here is the exception. The revival of an old opera production need not always be perceived as an expedient (read cheap) solution to getting a season of opera put together, but may pass instead as an artistically thoughtful choice. »
22 Sep 2013
Mozart cut his operatic teeth on La finta semplice, as a twelve-year-old prodigy being paraded before the Viennese court by his ambitious father, Leopold. »
19 Sep 2013
Scarcely had Julius Drake seated himself, when the piano’s turbulent stream of relentless semiquavers precipitously announced the opening of Schubert’s ‘Der Strom’ (The river), the opening song in Ian Bostridge’s recital series, Schubert Lieder. »
18 Sep 2013
Although this is their fifth outing, Tanya McCallin’s sets for David McVicar’s Le Nozze di Figaro remain a sumptuous feast for the eyes. »
16 Sep 2013
Thomas Hampson “lives” Mahler. He's the greatest Mahler singer of our time, and a serious Mahler scholar as well. »
10 Sep 2013
The Royal Opera's production of Puccini's Turandot is nearly 30 years old. Created for the 1984 Olympics, Andrei Serban's production has been
revived 15 times. »
10 Sep 2013
The Wigmore Hall 2013/14 season started in exuberant style. Simon Keenlyside, Bryn Terfel and Malcolm Martineau devised a programme that was festive and fun. And, this being the Wigmore Hall, the recital was as erudite as it was popular »
09 Sep 2013
Das Rheingold launches what is perhaps the single most ambitious project in opera, Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen. »
06 Sep 2013
Stefan Herheim’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in Salzburg will transfer to the Met. Will audiences collapse in hysteria? »
27 Aug 2013
This live performance of Laurent Pelly’s Glyndebourne staging of
Humperdinck’s affectionately regarded fairy tale opera, was recorded at
Glyndebourne Opera House in July and August 2010, and the handsomely produced
disc set — the discs are presented in a hard-backed, glossy-leaved book and
supplemented by numerous production photographs and an informative article by
Julian Johnson — is certainly stylish and unquestionably recommendable. »
27 Aug 2013
Recorded at a live performance in 2012, this CD brings together an eclectic
selection of turn-of-the-century orchestral songs and affirms the extraordinary
versatility, musicianship and technical accomplishment of mezzo-soprano
Magdalena Kožená. »
27 Aug 2013
Prom 57’s Parsifal (Mark Elder, the Hallé) brought us John Tomlinson, perhaps the greatest Wagnerian bass of our time. »
22 Aug 2013
Once I was: Songs by Ricky Ian Gordon features an assortment of
songs by Ricky Ian Gordon interpreted by soprano Stacey Tappan, a longtime
friend of the composer since their work on his opera Morning Star at
the Lyric Opera of Chicago. »
22 Aug 2013
An overly sophisticated L’italiana in Algeri, a sublime, interminable Guillaume Tell (William Tell), a nostalgic L’occasione fa il ladro. »
22 Aug 2013
This programme of twentieth-century British music burst dazzlingly into life with the blazing flourishes of Michael Tippett’s Fanfare No.5, arranged by Meirion Bowen from music drawn from the composer’s oratorio, The Mask of Time. »
19 Aug 2013
Alfredo Kraus, one of the most astute artists in operatic history in terms of careful management of technique and vocal resources, once said in an interview that ‘you have to make a choice when you start to sing and decide whether you want to service the music, and be at the top of your art, or if you want to be a very popular tenor.’ »
19 Aug 2013
In generations past, an important singer’s first recording of Italian arias would almost invariably have included the music of Verdi. »
19 Aug 2013
In the first of her two visits to the Royal Albert Hall this summer, Marin Alsop led the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and its associated Choir through three nineteenth-century works which are united by their romantic intensity and progression from darkness to light. »
19 Aug 2013
On Wednesday August 7, Santa Fe Opera presented an energetic, fun-loving production of Jacques Offenbach, Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy's The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein. »
19 Aug 2013
On Thursday, August 8, Santa Fe Opera revived the Bruce Donnell production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. »
19 Aug 2013
Commonly viewed as a ‘second-rate’ composer — a European radical persecuted by the Nazis whose trans-Atlantic emigration represented a sell-out to an inferior American popular culture — »
17 Aug 2013
Sir Michael Tippett's The Midsummer Marriage has a lot of things against it, it requires a large cast including dancers and a large chorus and orchestra, the plot with its elements of Jungian analysis is confusing, the composer's libretto with its colloquial elements now sounds rather dated and frankly a bit embarrassing. »
13 Aug 2013
Based on Sir Walter Scott’s narrative poem “The Lady of the Lake,” the opera by Rossini and librettist Andrea Leone Tottola was first seen in 1819 at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. »
13 Aug 2013
In their magnificent Glyndebourne production of Billy Budd, first seen in 2010 and revived here to mark Britten’s centenary anniversary, director Michael Grandage (revival director, Ian Rutherford) and designer Christopher Oram immerse us, quite literally, in the harsh realities of life aboard a late-eighteen-century man-’o-war: the uncompromisingly, and perhaps optimistically, named Indomitable. »
13 Aug 2013
Oscar Wilde wrote: “We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.” On July 27, 2013, Theodore Morrison’s opera Oscar had its world premiere at Santa Fe. »
13 Aug 2013
“World-class” is an encomium often used indiscriminately by promoters and publicists but in light of Glimmerglass Festival’s triumphant Der Fliegende Holländer the press office has my full encouragement to use the phrase loud and often.
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13 Aug 2013
A massive antique Roman theater where stadium opera is always grand opera and often good opera as well. »
08 Aug 2013
Conductor Leo Hussein, like many of the artists in the production, was making his debut. His take on the story was immediately ascertainable when he played parts of the overture with an earthy tone. This was Violetta’s world, where otherwise refined men wined, dined, and cavorted with the most expensive Parisian courtesans. »
06 Aug 2013
With celebrations of the Verdi Bicentennial in full swing, there have been
many grumblings about the precarious state of Verdi singing in the world’s
major opera houses today. »
03 Aug 2013
The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor at Gloucester Cathedral, highlight of this year's Three Choirs Festival. »
02 Aug 2013
In the thirty-five years immediately following its American première at the Metropolitan Opera in 1914, Italo Montemezzi’s ‘Tragic Poem in Three Acts’ L’amore dei tre re was performed in New York on sixty-six occasions. »
02 Aug 2013
Few operas inspire the kind of competing affection and controversy that have surrounded Mozart’s Così fan tutte almost since its first performance in Vienna in 1790. »
01 Aug 2013
The double-bill program of sacred vocal works uses choreography, sets and costumes to heighten the drama within the music »
31 Jul 2013
During his career in film, opera, and operetta, Richard Tauber (1891 - 1948) enjoyed the sort of global fame that eludes all but the tiniest handful of ‘serious’ singers today. »
30 Jul 2013
By the end of the first act, I was convinced that, barring a catastrophe of, well, Götterdämmerung-like proportions, this would now turn out to be the greatest Ring since Bernard Haitink’s 1998 Royal Opera performances— also semi-staged, also at the Royal Albert Hall. »
30 Jul 2013
For those whose Wagnerian thirst had not yet been quenched by three parts of the Ring, the Proms now offered Tristan und Isolde. »
30 Jul 2013
The brightest star in this performance proved once again to be the Staatskapelle Berlin, under Daniel Barenboim’s guidance. »
30 Jul 2013
When faced with the illustrious Winterreises of the past and the renowned, and often highly original, interpretations of present-day performers, how is a tenor to approach Schubert’s setting of Wilhelm Müller’s pessimistic exploration of a mind spinning into disillusion and despair? »
30 Jul 2013
One can only imagine the small-ad: “exquisite small italianate water garden wishes to meet pastoral “little opera” in intimate setting, small cast and orchestra ideal, with music of delightful poise and accessibility. »
30 Jul 2013
Don Giovanni — the coup de coeur. Elektra — a masterpiece. Rigoletto — a hit and a miss. »
24 Jul 2013
The superstitious would have us believe that it is better not to build up expectations, lest they be confounded. »
23 Jul 2013
This zany production of Verdi’s only comic opera before ‘Falstaff’ keeps the singers in chaos and the audience in stitches »
23 Jul 2013
That’s Helen (of Troy) by Cavalli, so maybe you are interested after all, though the more engaging experience was The House Taken Over by Vasco Mendonça. »
23 Jul 2013
For me, this is almost to have come full circle — though as anyone with even the slightest acquaintance with the Ring will tell you, the so-called ‘cycle’ does not end where it began, its world having been changed forever. »
22 Jul 2013
The final concert in pianist Julius Drake’s Perspectives series united song, literature and biography through the prism of Dominick Argento’s Pulitzer Prize-winning song-cycle, From the Diary of Virginia Woolf. »
20 Jul 2013
The Royal Albert Hall was made for Karl-Heinz Stockhausen. BBC Prom 11 2013 featured Gesang der Jünglinge and Welt-Parliament from Mittwoch from Licht. »
20 Jul 2013
‘Wort oder Ton?’ may be the Countess’s question, but it is far from the only question asked in, let alone by, Capriccio. »
19 Jul 2013
David Pittsinger, as King Arthur, provided most of the magic in this
pleasant but unspectacular production of the Lerner and Loewe musical »
19 Jul 2013
Donizetti’s late comedy Don Pasquale debuted in Paris in 1843 and has been popular ever since. It was produced at the Glyndebourne Festival in 1938 but, rather surprisingly, Mariame Clement’s 2013 production, refreshingly set in the 18th century rather than being update, was the first festival production since 1938. »
19 Jul 2013
This remarkably cohesive programme of works by Britten, Lutoslawski and Adès was underpinned by a dark intensity; tragic realism interwoven with transient intimations of hope. »
18 Jul 2013
Known principally for its two concert show-pieces for the leading lady, the success of Francesco Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur relies upon finding a soprano willing to take on, and able to pull off, the eponymous role. »
17 Jul 2013
There are forces to be reckoned with at l’Opéra de Marseille — a first class orchestra, a first class chorus, first class casts (with notable exception, see below) who inhabit an extraordinarily fine old opera house. »
17 Jul 2013
Pia Furtado’s production of Donizetti’s gentle rom-com, L’elisir d’amore, opens in the greenhouse-laboratory of a sunflower factory — all steel trolleys and agronomic apparatus. »
17 Jul 2013
Excellent staging and strong vocal efforts put wind in the sails of this legendary ghost ship »
16 Jul 2013
Although part of a series entitled Cambridge Introductions to Music, Robert Cannon’s wide-ranging, imaginative and thought-provoking survey of opera is certainly not a ‘beginners’ guide’. »
13 Jul 2013
Ermonela Jaho caused a sensation at Covent Garden in London five years ago, when she took over Violetta at short notice from Anna Netrebko. »
11 Jul 2013
First performed at this year’s Brighton Festival and originally designed for the Theatre Royal Brighton, this multi-media staging of Benjamin Britten’s five Canticles by long-standing collaborators Neil Bartlett and Paule Constable, also had an outing at Snape Maltings Aldeburgh in May this year, and has now arrived on the austere stage of the Linbury Studio at the Royal Opera House. »
10 Jul 2013
Central City Opera’s meticulous staging of Our Town makes as good a case as is likely possible for Ned Rorem’s operatic version of that classic play.
»
10 Jul 2013
Since its inception in 2006, the annual community opera at Blackheath Halls has become a favourite fixture in the local summer calendar. »
08 Jul 2013
It would be condescending and perhaps even offensive to suggest that singing
traditional Spirituals is a rite a passage for artists of color, but the musical heritage of the United States has been greatly enriched by the performances and recordings of Spirituals by important artists such as Paul Robeson, Marian Anderson, Leontyne Price, Martina Arroyo, Shirley Verrett, Grace Bumbry, Jessye Norman, Barbara Hendricks, Florence Quivar, Kathleen Battle, Harolyn Blackwell, and Denyce Graves. »
08 Jul 2013
Poised between ritual and drama, between East and West, between Zen-Buddhist
symbolism and Christian medieval morality play, Britten’s three church parables pose some tricky problems — including a deliberately objectivised framing device which can distance the work from the audience, and, unusually for Britten, some less than effective musico-dramatic pacing. »
08 Jul 2013
‘Tis the season for aerial starbursts, and for my money more than a few rockets could be sent up to laud Des Moines Metro Opera.
»
07 Jul 2013
La Rondine isn’t Puccini’s finest moment. As drama it’s a retread of La Bohème. The music resembles out-takes from Madama Butterfly. What holds it together is Magda. »
05 Jul 2013
As a companion to their excellent Great Wagner Singers boxed set
compiled and released in celebration of the Wagner Bicentennial, Deutsche
Grammophon have also released Great Wagner Conductors, a selection of
orchestral music conducted by five of the most iconic Wagnerian conductors of
the Twentieth Century, extracted from Deutsche Grammophon’s extensive
archives. »
02 Jul 2013
Glyndebourne revitalizes Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie. Baroque tastes were extravagant. Louis XIV, Le Roi Soleil, and his successor Louis XV, epitomized the aesthetic: audacity, not gentility, vigour, not timidity. »
30 Jun 2013
Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers confirms the composer’s deftness in penning a good tune and spinning a faux-Oriental orchestral fabric. But, opera is more than simply a catchy melody or two, and if it wasn’t for the tenor-baritone friendship duet ‘Au Fond du Temple Saint’, the opera’s one-dimensional characters and dramatic stiltedness would probably see it consigned to the drawer marked ‘lesser-known, justly neglected’. »
29 Jun 2013
Thomas Hampson's first Simon Boccanegra at the Royal Opera House makes this revival of Verdi's great opera worthwhile. It's a role which suits a singer of Hampson's intelligence. »
28 Jun 2013
We’ll never know exactly how Handel’s first opera, Almira, Königin von Castilien, appeared at its 1705 premiere in Hamburg. »
24 Jun 2013
Engelbert Humperdinck and his sister Adelheid Wette rather softened the story when they came to write the opera Hansel und Gretel, though sufficient undercurrents remain to allow a director scope for exploration of the more psychological aspects of the story. »
22 Jun 2013
A glance at the ROH programme which accompanies this new production of Benjamin Britten’s Gloriana reveals a striking number of ‘role débuts’; evidence that, since its Coronation-commissioned revelation in 1953, this opera has had a relatively quiet 60 years - hyperbolically announced as ‘one of the great disasters of operatic history’ at its troubled opening. »
21 Jun 2013
There could be no greater gift to the Wagnerian celebrating the Master’s
Bicentennial than this compilation from Deutsche Grammophon, aptly entitled
Great Wagner Singers. »
20 Jun 2013
With the world premiere of Champion, the enterprising Opera Theatre of Saint Louis set the bar very high indeed for the summer festival season. »
20 Jun 2013
Those of us of a certain age have fond memories of James Melton, who entertained our parents starting in the 1930s and the rest of us in the 1940s and beyond on recordings, the radio, and films. »
18 Jun 2013
The Importance of Being Earnest , Gerald Barry’s fifth opera, was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and the Barbican, and was first performed in concert, Thomas Adès conducting the London premiere. »
17 Jun 2013
‘Beauty is the one form of spirituality that we experience through the senses.’ In Thomas Mann’s, Death in Venice, Plato’s axiom stirs the hopes of the aging, intellectually stale poet, Gustav von Aschenbach, that he may rekindle his creativity. »
16 Jun 2013
What better way for Masonic brothers, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Emmanuel Shikaneder to disseminate Masonic virtues, than through the most popular musical entertainment of their age, a happy ending folktale that features a dragon, enchanting flutes and bells, mixed-up parentage, and a beautiful young princess in distress? »
14 Jun 2013
There is a sense in which it all began in London, Puccini having been seized in 1900 with the idea of an opera on this subject after watching David Belasco’s play here. »
13 Jun 2013
The tenor that the audience most wanted to hear, Plácido Domingo, opened the vocal program with “Junto al puente de la peña” (Next to the rock bridge) from La Canción del Olvido (The song of Oblivion) by José Serrano. He sounded rested and his voice soared majestically over the orchestra. »
12 Jun 2013
Tucked away somewhere in the San Francisco Opera warehouse was an old John Cox production of Così fan tutte from Monte Carlo. Well, not that old by current standards at San Francisco Opera. »
12 Jun 2013
Rossini's Maometto Secondo is a major coup for Garsington Opera at Wormsley, confirming its status as the leading specialist Rossini house in Britain. Maometto Secondo is a masterpiece, yet rarely performed because it's formidably difficult to sing. It's a saga with some of the most intense music Rossini ever wrote, expressing a drama so powerful that one can understand why early audiences needed "happy endings" to water down its impact »
11 Jun 2013
I suppose it was inevitable that, in this Britten Centenary year, the 66th Aldeburgh Festival would open with Peter Grimes. »
10 Jun 2013
Die Entführung aus dem Serail at Garsington Opera at Wormsley isn’t Mozart as you’d expect but it’s true to the spirit of Mozart who loved witty, madcap japes. »
09 Jun 2013
What a pity! On a glorious — well, by recent English standards — summer’s day, there can be few more beautiful English countryside settings
than Glyndebourne, with the added bonus, as alas much of the audience appears
to understand it, of an opera house attached. »
09 Jun 2013
Described by one critic as “cosmically gifted”, during her tragically short career, American mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson amazed and delighted audiences with the spellbinding beauty of her singing and the astonishing honesty of her performances. »
09 Jun 2013
Since its first performance at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo during Venice’s 1643 Carnevale, Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea has been one of the most important milestones in the genesis of modern opera despite its 250 years of unmerited obscurity. »
09 Jun 2013
“I wrote it almost without noticing.” So Verdi declared when reminded of his eighth — and perhaps least frequently performed, opera, Alzira. One might say that, since he composed the work, no-one else has much noticed either. »
09 Jun 2013
Just when you thought the protagonist was Hoffmann! Who, rather what stole the show? »
05 Jun 2013
When is verismo verily veristic? Or what is a virginal girl dressed in communion white doing in the two murderous acts of the Los Angeles Opera’s current production of Tosca? And why does she sing the shepherd's song? »
04 Jun 2013
Though 2013 is the bicentennial of the births of Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner, the releases of Cecilia Bartoli’s recording of Bellini’s Norma on DECCA, a new studio recording of Donizetti’s Caterina Cornaro from Opera Rara, and this première recording of Saverio Mercadante’s forgotten I due Figaro, suggest that this is the start of a summer of bel canto. »
03 Jun 2013
Wagner’s Lohengrin is not an unfamiliar visitor to the UK thanks,
in the main, to Elijah Moshinsky’s perennial production at Covent Garden. »
02 Jun 2013
Philip Glass's The Perfect American at the ENO in London is a visual treat, but the libretto is mind-numbingly anodyne. »
31 May 2013
Recording Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen is for a
record label equivalent to a climber reaching the summit of Mount Everest: it is the zenith from which a label surveys its position among its rivals and appreciates an achievement that can define its reputation for a generation. »
30 May 2013
Few people who love opera in general and bel canto in particular have never heard the comment made by Lilli Lehmann, veteran of the inaugural Ring at Bayreuth in 1876, that singing all three of Wagner’s Brünnhildes—in Die Walküre, Siegfried, and
Götterdämmerung, respectively, all of which she sang to great acclaim—pales in comparison with singing the title rôle in Bellini’s Norma. »
30 May 2013
Jonathan Dove's Mansfield Park, with libretto by his regular collaborator Alasdair Middleton, has the remarkable distinction of being the first completed operatic adaptation of any Jane Austen novel to be staged. »
30 May 2013
London’s two principal opera companies have offered a baffling
near-silence as their response to Wagner’s two-hundredth anniversary. »
30 May 2013
If a recent trio of musically superlative performances at Canadian Opera Company is indicative of their norm, the casting director should get a hefty bonus. »
30 May 2013
Just when you imagine you’ve got the operatic time-line fixed in your mind
in a clean sweep of what goes where and when and how, you hear another work
from another forgotten corner of the repertory that upends one’s conclusions. »
30 May 2013
Nothing inspires fable quite like defeat. The great riddle of Spanish
history is how the Christian Visigoths managed to lose the Iberian peninsula to
the Moors in one small battle in 711 and took eight hundred years to get it
back. »
30 May 2013
Take a pair of peripatetic, sharp witted, libidinous dramatists with deeply
humanist hearts, add a brilliant, fun loving young composer, who believed in
forgiveness, and you end up with The Marriage of Figaro, a comic,
always relevant opera, which the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra presented
in Disney Hall, as part of its Mozart/DaPonte series. »
30 May 2013
Since receiving some fairly mixed reviews of their production of Mozart’s
Zaide at the 2010 Buxton Festival, Ian Page’s Classical
Opera seem to have focused their attention on recordings and themed
concert performances of 18th-century riches and rarities, »
25 May 2013
In May of 2013, the Spire Series at the First Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, Maryland, observed the fiftieth anniversary of the death of President John F. Kennedy by presenting a work dealing with the 1963 assassination. »
22 May 2013
Dulce Rosa, a brand new opera, had its world premiere Friday night, May 17, 2013 at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica, California. It was produced by Los Angeles Opera, but staged in the smaller theater. »
22 May 2013
Richard Jones’ 2009 production of Verdi’s Falstaff translates the action from the first Elizabethan age to the start of the second. »
21 May 2013
Baritone Gareth John is rapidly accumulating a war-chest of honours. Winner of the 2013 Kathleen Ferrier Award, he recently won the Royal Academy of Music Patrons’ Award and was presented the Silver Medal by the Worshipful Company of Musicians. »
21 May 2013
This second revival of Jonathan Miller’s La bohème was the first time I had caught the production. »
21 May 2013
It’s Verdi’s bicentenary year and Rolando Villazón has two new CDs to plug — titled somewhat confusingly, ‘Villazón: Verdi’ and ‘Villazón’s Verdi’, the latter a ‘personal selection’ of favourite numbers performed by stars of the past and present. »
20 May 2013
Nicola Luisotti and the San Francisco Opera Orchestra climbed out of the War Memorial pit, braved the wind whipped bay and held spellbound an audience at Cal Performances’ Zellerbach Auditorium at UC Berkeley. »
20 May 2013
Paul Dukas’ Ariane et Barbe-Bleue, first heard in 1907, once seemed important. Arturo Toscanini conducted the Met premiere in 1911 with Farrar and later arranged some of its music for a 1947 recording with his NBC Symphony. »
19 May 2013
Utterly mad but absolutely right — Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos started the Glyndebourne 2013 season with an explosion. Strauss could hardly have made his intentions more clear. Ariadne auf Naxos is not “about” Greek myth so much as a satire on art and the way art is made. »
14 May 2013
“Man is an abyss. It makes one dizzy to look into it.” So utters Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck, repeating what was also a recurring motif in the playwright’s own letters. »
11 May 2013
National Opera Company of the Rhine has marked this year’s Benjamin Britten celebration with a remarkably compelling, often gripping new production of the seldom-seen Owen Wingrave. »
11 May 2013
Once upon a time, Frankfurt Opera had the baddest ass reputation in Germany as “the” cutting edge producer of must-see opera. »
11 May 2013
Productions of Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto can serve as a vehicle for individual singers to make a strong impression and become afterward associated with specific roles in the opera. »
11 May 2013
Just in case we were not aware that the evening’s programme was ‘themed’, the Britten Sinfonia designed a visual accompaniment to their musical exploration of night, sleep and dreams. »
10 May 2013
Poor Aida! She never seems to have anything go her way. »
05 May 2013
Is it possible to upstage Jonas Kaufmann? Kaufmann was brilliant in this Verdi Don Carlo at the Royal Opera House, London, but the rest of the cast was so good that he was but first among equals. Don Carlo is a vehicle for stars, but this time the stars were everyone on stage and in the pit. Even the solo arias, glorious as they are, grow organically out of perfect ensemble. This was a performance that brought out the true beauty of Verdi's music. »
04 May 2013
The big names were absent: Duparc, D’Indy, Debussy, Ravel … and while Fauré, Chausson, Roussel and several members of Les Six put in an appearance, in less than familiar guises, this survey of French song of the early 20th century and interwar years deliberately took us on a journey through infrequently travelled terrain. »
03 May 2013
Composed between 1718 and 1720, Handel’s Esther is sometimes described as the ‘first English Oratorio’, but is in fact a hybrid form, mixing elements of oratorio, masque, pastoral and opera.
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01 May 2013
Hector Berlioz's légende dramatique, La Damnation de Faust, exists somewhere between cantata and opera. Berlioz's flexible attitude to dramatic form made the piece unworkable on the stages of early 19th century Paris and his music is so vivid that you wonder whether the piece needs staging at all. »
28 Apr 2013
St. John’s Smith Square was the site of Elizabeth Connell’s final London concert, intended as a farewell to London on her moving to Australia. It was rendered ultimately final by her unexpected death.
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25 Apr 2013
With the building of the Suez Canal, Egypt became more interesting to Western Europeans. Khedive Ismail Pasha wanted a hymn by Verdi for the opening of a new opera house in Cairo, but the composer said he did not write occasional pieces. »
23 Apr 2013
Back for its fourth revival, David McVicar’s 2003 production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte has much charm, beauty and artistry. »
16 Apr 2013
The economics of the recording companies dictate much that is not ideal.
Wagner’s operas were not composed as they were in order to permit the
extraction of bleeding chunks, even on those occasions when strophic song forms
do occur. »
12 Apr 2013
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro has a libretto by Lorenzo daPonte based on the French play La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro (The Crazy Day or the Marriage of Figaro) by Pierre Caron de Beaumarchais (1732-1799). »
11 Apr 2013
For its world class Easter Festival, Baden-Baden mounted a Die Zauberflöte that owed more to the grey penitential doldrums of Lent than to the unbridled jubilance of re-birth. »
11 Apr 2013
Once Berkeley Opera, renamed West Edge Opera, this enterprising company offers the Bay Area’s only serious alternative to corporate opera, to wit Bonjour M. Gauguin. »
11 Apr 2013
In the first of pianist Julius Drake’s three-part series,
‘Perspectives’, our gaze was directed at Gustav Mahler’s eclectic musical
responses to human experiences: from the trauma and distress of anguished love
to the sweet contentment of true friendship, from the agonised introspection of
the artist to the diverse dramas of human interaction. »
10 Apr 2013
The Los Angeles opera company marketed its spring production of Rossini's La Cenerentola as Cinderella though there is no opera by that name. The libretto of La Cenerentola is not the Cinderella story we know. »
05 Apr 2013
The Paris Opéra has not staged a full Ring Cycle since 1957, but its current season will conclude with a correction of this grand operatic gap. »
05 Apr 2013
Washington National’s 2012-2013 season continues this spring with a production of Giacomo Puccini’s first successful opera. »
05 Apr 2013
Italian composer Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880-1968) wrote more than fifteen operas, of which almost none are staged today. »
04 Apr 2013
The Opera Group’s latest event, The Firework-maker’s Daughter by David Bruce and Glyn Maxwell is currently on tour and arrived at the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Theatre last night (3 April 2013). »
03 Apr 2013
Composer John Adams’ smashing, crashing and poignant The Gospel
According to the Other Mary, created in collaboration with Peter Sellars,
made its second appearance at Disney Hall with the Los Angeles Philharmonic
Orchestra. »
31 Mar 2013
“Gli arredi festivi giù cadano infranti, Il popol di Giuda di lutto s’ammanti!”. Verdi’s Nabucco at the Royal Opera House respected the spirit of the opera. »
26 Mar 2013
The Los Angeles Opera company opened its spring season in celebration of
Richard Wagner's bicentennial with the composer's The Flying Dutchman,
written in 1843. »
26 Mar 2013
Cruzar la Cara de la Luna (To Cross the Face of the Moon) has been performed in Houston and Paris. »
20 Mar 2013
Don’t miss UC Opera’s I Lombardi at the Bloomsbury Theatre. »
19 Mar 2013
Sets and costumes are gorgeous and the singing is good, but the libretto’s slow and continuously interrupted dramatic action grows tiresome »
18 Mar 2013
In the final of scene of Götterdämmerung in a new production at
the Staatsoper Berlin, Brünnhilde appears in a flowing pink gown just as the
music has modulated and penetrates the hall of the Gibichungs, represented by
rows of glowing translucent boxes that preserve the dismembered limbs of their
victims. »
15 Mar 2013
With Robert Carsen’s production of Falstaff almost inescapably
making the rounds of the world's operatic stages, it is well worth it to take
in another production altogether. »
15 Mar 2013
Rossini's “other” comic masterpiece of 1817 came into the world only a few weeks after the much better known The Barber of Seville. But it has had a place in the repertoire since its premiere. »
12 Mar 2013
Productions of Richard Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg are ambitious undertakings, if only for the number of performers involved and the duration of orchestral and vocal commitment. »
11 Mar 2013
San Francisco and Naples have much in common these days — streets with potholes, ever more gourmet pizzerias, homeless, etc., and, yes, Nicola Luisotti. »
11 Mar 2013
Giuseppe Verdi and his librettist, Salvatore Cammarano, based the opera on Antonio García Gutiérrez’s Spanish play El Trovador. »
10 Mar 2013
George Benjamin's Written on Skin sinks deeply into the psyche. A Protector wants brightly coloured images to display his power and wealth. »
09 Mar 2013
Jean-Baptiste Lully's Phaeton is rarely heard live in Britain, so this performance with a superlative cast was a special occasion. It was part of the Barbican Hall's continuing series of baroque, and particularly French baroque operas. »
06 Mar 2013
ENO’s advertising emphasises the ‘25th anniversary year’ of Jonathan Miller’s staging of The Barber of Seville. It holds the stage well enough without offering any especial insight — at least by now. »
05 Mar 2013
This prioduction of Wagner's Parsifal, directed by François Girard, premiered in Lyons last year. The Met, being a far wealthier house, was able to assemble a truly spectacular cast: Jonas Kaufmann, René Pape, Katarina Dalayman, Peter Mattei and Evgeny Nikitin. Success guaranteed, even if the production is European and modern. These performances set new benchmarks. This Parsifal will be the stuff of legend for decades to come. »
05 Mar 2013
Palm Beach audiences are famous for their glamour, but in recent years a special star has sparkled amid the jewels, sequins, feathers and furs (whatever the weather). »
05 Mar 2013
Puccini’s “shabby little shocker”, to quote Kerman, does not invite subtlety. For those who feel that opera — a hybrid art form encompassing all the arts and embracing all of life and love, transfiguration and tragedy — is ideally suited to depicting the excesses of human ecstasy and suffering, Tosca epitomises the immoderations of the genre. »
05 Mar 2013
Argentinean mezzo-soprano Bernarda Fink continued her series residency at the Wigmore Hall with an unusual programme of Italian baroque works, partnered by the Academy of Ancient Music, led by violinist Rodolfo Richter. »
02 Mar 2013
Samson and Delilah is the only opera by Camille Saint-Saens that is
still regularly performed. He had written two previous operas and would write
several more, along with a long list of instrumental pieces including The
Carnival of the Animals. »
02 Mar 2013
When opera companies arrange their seasonal schedules, one wonders how much
thought they give to Valentine’s Day. If it falls in the midweek, it is potentially a very propitious day for getting people out: that is, if the opera is right. »
26 Feb 2013
Michael Mayer’s glitzy neon lights production, set in Rat Pack-era Sin City, proves a fitting backdrop for an opera about a curse »
26 Feb 2013
Bavarian State Opera’s recent staging of Der Ring des Nibelungen was often a restless, even reckless affair, but there is no denying its substantial musical assets.
»
21 Feb 2013
Fun and Hugo Wolf ? Wolf's songs are the epitome of art song, due great reverence. But they're also vibrant with good-hearted wit. This latest concert in Julius Drake's ongoing "Perspectives" series at the Wigmore Hall brought together Sophie Daneman, Ian Bostridge and Julius Drake, all of whom have been working together for many years. The chemistry was almost palpable. »
17 Feb 2013
In 1704, 11 years after its first performance in 1693 before the royal court
of Louis XIV, and 17 years after the death of Lully — and at a time when
the relative merits of respective French and Italian aesthetics were constantly
and fiercely being debated — Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Médée was
condemned by the ‘Lullist’ faction, who were determined to defend
their leader’s guardianship of the tragédie en musique, as an
‘abomination’: hard, dry and characterised by excess. »
17 Feb 2013
With its staging of Alcina, Stuttgart Opera seems to set out to prove that George Friedrich Handel can be all ‘sexypants.’
»
14 Feb 2013
Sadistic revenge and sadistic challenge in equal parts. You know the story — if Oreste had not slaughtered his mother Elektra would have. And did over and over in nearly two hours of raving about killing her mother. Elektra is one of the repertory's more beloved operas. »
12 Feb 2013
Handel's Radamisto HWV 12a confirms the Barbican Hall as one of the finest places for baroque in London. Superb performances from David Daniels, Luca Pisaroni, and Patricia Bardon, with Harry Bicket conducting The English Concert from the harpsichord »
11 Feb 2013
Palm Beach Opera opened its new season with the opera that began it all, La Traviata. »
11 Feb 2013
For the first of her two February recitals at the Wigmore Hall, the
Argentinean mezzo-soprano Bernarda Fink was joined by the Hugo Wolf Quartett in
an eclectic, Italian-themed programme in which singer and instrumentalists
sculpted diverse and beautiful musical vistas and communicated a remarkably
coherent, shared vision. »
11 Feb 2013
This concert was part of a greater weekend of concerts at the Southbank
Centre looking at Paris during the second and third decades of the twentieth
century, the weekend itself part of the year-long Rest is Noise
season. »
10 Feb 2013
Joyce DiDonato brought her Drama Queens tour to the Barbican Hall last night, 6 February 2012. Accompanied by Il Complesso Barocco, directed by Dmitry Sinkovsky, she enabled us to hear a wide range of arias by mainly Italian baroque composers from Monteverdi to Handel, by way of Porta, Cesti, Orlandini and Hasse. »
10 Feb 2013
The fearsome Ottoman Turks had threatened the Austrian borders for centuries. But Mozart’s little singspiel makes light of this truly serious situation, and offers a quite enlightened resolution for the conflict as well. »
10 Feb 2013
Boasting one of France’s grandest opera houses (said to be the model for Paris’ Opéra Garnier) Toulon hosts a season of five operas — Aida, Butterfly and Flute are hand in hand with Carmen and, yes, Dialogues des carmélites. »
07 Feb 2013
Kasper Holten’s directorial debut in the Royal Opera House begins with
silence. »
06 Feb 2013
Born to a very poor family in 1797, Gaetano Donizetti was lucky enough to become the pupil of Johann Simone Mayr, the Maestro di Capella of his native city, who recognized his talent and made sure he received appropriate instruction. »
06 Feb 2013
The libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa for Giacomo Puccini’s opera Tosca is based on Victorien Sardou’s French play, La Tosca. »
06 Feb 2013
With a visually beautiful and dramatically honest staging, Netherlands Opera has made as compelling a case as I would imagine possible for Rossini’s grand opera Guillaume Tell. »
03 Feb 2013
An important new book on Italo Montemezzi sheds light on his opera Nave. The author/editor is David Chandler whose books on Alfredo Catalani have done so much to restore interest in the genre. »
02 Feb 2013
Recent seasons have seen a surge in so-called ‘Holocaust
operas,’ from Peter Androsch’s Spiegelrund, which
premiered in Vienna last week, to Mieczysław Weinberg’s The
Passenger, unveiled with a half-century of delay in Bregenz in 2010. »
02 Feb 2013
In remounting its 2001 production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel Lyric Opera of Chicago has demonstrated the timeless nature of the score and narrative as well as the ingenuity of the production with its thoughtful and touching updating to a twentieth-century milieu. »
01 Feb 2013
The Met’s opulent and well-sung Maria Stuarda cannot overcome its insipid libretto. »
31 Jan 2013
Soile Isokoski and Maria Viitasalo made a welcome return to theWigmore Hall, London. Their recital was a masterclass in what singing really should be about: not simply sound production, but the expression of meaning.
»
23 Jan 2013
Pelléas et Mélisande, in t-shirts and jeans, were out riding bicycles. They came upon a fountain. You know what happened. »
23 Jan 2013
Surveying British chamber and instrumental music written between the 1890s and WWII, the Nash Ensemble’s Wigmore Hall residency series, Dreamers of Dreams, has illuminated the creativity and originality of British musical life during this period, revealing the shared and the idiosyncratic preoccupations of composers; the intertwined biographies of musicians; the influence of key individual performers on repertoire, style and idiom; the dialogue between old and new; and the prevailing shadows of war and irreversible change. »
20 Jan 2013
The New Year 2013 is here and San Diego Opera will open its season at the
end of this month. The company will present four well known operas:
Gaetano Donizetti's The Daughter of the Regiment (La Fille du Regiment),
Camille Saint-Saëns' Samson and Delilah, Ildebrando Pizzetti's Murder in
the Cathedral (Assassinio nella Cathedrale) and Giuseppe Verdi's Aida
along with a Mariachi opera: Cruzar la Cara de la Luna, (To Cross the
Face of the Moon). »
20 Jan 2013
If, first time around, in 2008, The Minotaur offered the obvious excitement of the premiere, it was now noteworthy how quickly it had settled into repertory status. Not that it has yet been performed elsewhere than Covent Garden, though it should be as a matter of urgency, but that its 2013 outing proceeded with the apparent ease one might expect of, say, The Magic Flute or Carmen. That is surely testament both to the excellence of the performances we heard as well as to the stature of Birtwistle’s opera itself. »
19 Jan 2013
The Barbican is going have a bit of a baroque moment next month. Joyce DiDonato will be bringing her Drama Queens programme, then there will be complete performances of Handel's Radamisto and Lully's Phaeton.
»
16 Jan 2013
In its recent run of Gaetano Donizetti’s Don Pasquale Lyric Opera of Chicago has taken the 1973 production from Covent Garden, via Dallas Opera, and revivified it with the efforts of an excellent cast and the local directorial debut of British bass-baritone Sir Thomas Allen. »
15 Jan 2013
Once a mainstay of the repertory L’Italiana in Algeri now usually gives way to Il Turco in Italia when an opera company wants to give Il barbiere di Sivigllia and La cenerentola a rest. »
10 Jan 2013
The opening concert of the Wigmore Hall’s spring season exemplified the high standards of intelligent musicianship and imaginative programming so typical of the Hall’s artists. Soprano Carolyn Sampson and theorbo player Matthew Wadsworth presented a thoughtful, inventive programme, ‘Echoes of Venice’, alternating tender and impassioned songs of love with striking instrumental pieces. »
09 Jan 2013
Julius Drake's latest Hugo Wolf Songbooks recital at the Wigmore Hall featured Angelika Kirchschlager and Dietrich Henschel. These singers have very different voices indeed, so Drake's programme made the most of the contrast. »
09 Jan 2013
Graham Johnson chose the title "In the Shadow of the Opéra" for his recital at the Wigmore Hall, London, with Lucy Crowe and Christopher Maltman. Given the renaisaance in French opera, it's good that we should be thinking of the nature of French song and its relationship to French opera and culture. »
01 Jan 2013
Among the recent recordings of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, Valery Gergiev’s release on the LSO Live label is an excellent addition to the discography of this work. »
23 Dec 2012
Well, so many don’t nowadays, it appears to me, judging by the critical
reception of Robert le Diable at the ROH. Rum-ti-tum? We recall
Macbeth, Rigoletto, Trov and even Trav being characterised
thus, popular fare but risible or blush- making, yet those works now command
the highest respect. »
17 Dec 2012
Wintery weather in London for Florian Boesch's Schubert Winterreise at the Wigmore Hall. But what bliss to hear an austere interpretation that challenged assumptions ! »
16 Dec 2012
Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt op 23 is rarely heard in full, though the Suites thereon are ubiquitous. At the Barbican Hall in London, Grieg's incidental music for Henrik Ibsen's play was heard complete, enhanced by incidental speech. »
14 Dec 2012
This recital, which focused on a narrowly specific time and place —
1888-1933 Vienna — paradoxically illuminated not only the musical scope and
richness of that epoch but also, as Renée Fleming notes in her prefatory programme article, the extraordinary extent of the diversity, transformation and flux, both historical and cultural, that characterised the era. »
14 Dec 2012
Director David Alden’s confusing production concepts in Verdi’s A
Masked Ball may make you wonder whether you came to the right party »
10 Dec 2012
The live HD simulcast of Mozart’s final operatic effort, set in ancient Rome, reached friends, Romans and countrymen the world over »
09 Dec 2012
Why was Giacomo Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable an overwhelming success in its time ? The Royal Opera House production suggests why: it's a cracking good show! Extreme singing, testing the limits of vocal endurance, and extreme drama. Robert le Diable is Faust, after all, not history, and here its spirit is captured by audacious but well-informed staging. Listen with an open mind and heart and imagine how audiences in Meyerbeer's time might have imagined the madness and magic that is Robert le diable. »
07 Dec 2012
Manitoba Opera launched its celebratory, all-Verdi 40th anniversary season with the Italian master’s Rigoletto that still rattles the soul with its tale of revenge, murder, deceit and heart-wrenching pathos. »
07 Dec 2012
The Nash Ensemble’s final contribution to the Wigmore Hall’s Britten centenary series, ‘Before Life and After’, presented works for soloists and strings. »
06 Dec 2012
‘Canticle’ is the term Britten used to denote an extended setting of a text of spiritual substance. »
05 Dec 2012
They say that there’s nothing worse than a musically-obtuse staging of any opera to put a rookie opera-goer off a composer (or even opera itself) for life. »
29 Nov 2012
Vladimir Jurowski said all the right things during a brief address at the opening of the concert. Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony should not be regarded as the climax of the performance, but as the fifth movement in a single work, whose theme was human suffering and the strength of the human spirit, never quashed by the former. »
28 Nov 2012
A beautiful, blingless Butterfly. How else to describe the pleasures of four glorious voices singing Puccini’s heart breaking, passionate melodies without igniting romantic sparks? »
27 Nov 2012
Haydn’s settings of the Mass ought to be heard incessantly, in churches and in the concert hall. »
24 Nov 2012
Drawing on the dark viciousness and bitter malevolence of Prosper Mérimée’s ethnographical novella, Calixto Bieito’s Carmen rejects any notion of flamboyant exoticism and alluring eroticism, and presents us instead with a sordid twilight zone of sexual violence and brutal malice. »
23 Nov 2012
French composer Charles Gounod wrote his five-act opera Roméo et Juliette to a libretto that Jules Barbier and Michel Carré based on William Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. »
23 Nov 2012
Extraordinary diva, Angela Gheorghiu pulled out of opening night after act one. It was news when she made it to the end of the second performance. Here is what happened at the third performance. »
21 Nov 2012
Jeanne D’Arc—Szenen aus dem Leben der Heiligen Johanna, the last stage work of the German composer Walter Braunfels, documents a passage in music history that has only recently begun to break through the surface. »
21 Nov 2012
Wozzeck Wozzeck, Wozzeck: The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Laureate
Conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen, now Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor to the London’ Philharmonia Orchestra, is touring the United States with a program that includes three staged performances of Alban Berg’s opera, Wozzeck. »
21 Nov 2012
The Nash Ensemble's series at the Wigmore Hall, "Dreamer of Dreams" continued its survey of British music in the first half of the 20th century with an intriguing programme. Many underlying themes, and thoughtful juxtapositions. »
18 Nov 2012
Who is Patricia Racette? Sexually ripe Nedda, maternal Cio-Cio-San, neurotic Sister Angelica? But now the jealous Tosca? And without question Mme. Racette has again proven herself the Puccini heroine par excellence of this moment. »
16 Nov 2012
Operatic train wreck in San Francisco, hopes crushed for 3000 opera-goers, impresario’s grand scheme derailed. »
16 Nov 2012
While not unknown, the songs of Alexander von Zemlinsky (1871-1942) deserve to be heard more frequently. »
16 Nov 2012
Recorded on 5 and 6 May 2008 and 17 and 18 January 2009 at the Lisztzentrum (Raiding, Austria), this recent Bridge release makes available the piano-vocal versions of three song cycles by Gustav Mahler, Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Rückert-Lieder, and Kindertotenlieder performed by mezzo-soprano Hermine Haselböck, accompanied by Russell Ryan. »
16 Nov 2012
One of the main reasons for interest in the Royal Opera’s latest revival of Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore was that tenor Roberto Alagna had chosen to return to the role of Nemorino. Though he had sung Nemorino earlier in his career, he had never sung the role at Covent Garden. The other cast members were of a high order too, with Alexandra Kurzak as Adina, Ambrogio Maestri as Dulcamara and Fabio Capitanucci as Belcore. So plenty of reasons for seeing the revival, which I caught on opening night 13 November 2012.
»
16 Nov 2012
The Wigmore Hall Celebration of Mendelssohn Song series culminated in a recital of works by Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn and by Robert and Clara Schumann. The programme was very well chosen because Felix, Fanny, Robert and Clara knew each other.. »
14 Nov 2012
At this famous bastion of intellect the biggest drama was the parking. Though the football stadium may have been stuffed, Zellerbach Hall was not. »
13 Nov 2012
In its current production of Simon Boccanegra Lyric Opera of Chicago draws on vocal strengths as well as musical and stage direction that do honor to Giuseppe Verdi’s masterpiece of political and emotional intrigue in fourteenth-century Genoa. »
10 Nov 2012
Contraltos rarely achieve the acclaim and renown of sopranos. Assigned few leading roles in opera, they are condemned to playing the villain or the grandmother, or to stealing the castrati’s trousers in en travesti roles. »
10 Nov 2012
Wexford Opera’s 2012 trio of rarities, seen on the opening three nights of the Festival, spanned a mere twenty years but offered operatic idioms ranging from verismo to pantomime, operetta to Wagnerian love-death apotheosis. »
10 Nov 2012
Following their 2011 Decca recording of Striggio’s Mass in 40 Parts (1566), I Fagiolini continue their quest to unearth lost treasures of the High Renaissance and early Baroque, with this collection of world-premiere recordings, ‘reconstructions’ and ‘reconstitutions’ of music by Giovanni and Andrea Gabrieli, Monteverdi, Palestrina, and their less well-known compatriots Viadana, Barbarino and Soriano. »
10 Nov 2012
Italo Montemezzi’s great “lost” epic opera, La Nave, was heard on 31 October for the first time since 1938, leaving an enthusiastic New York audience wondering why on earth it had been neglected for so long. »
10 Nov 2012
Marking Oliver Knussen’s sixtieth birthday came a BBC Total Immersion
weekend at the Barbican: a double-bill of Knussen’s two operas written in
collaboration with Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are and
Higgledy Piggledy Pop! on Saturday, followed by a day of two chamber
concerts, a film, and an orchestral concert conducted by the composer himself
on Sunday. »
10 Nov 2012
After a slow, long period of gestation, commencing with a short dramatization at Reigate Priory in 1906 and spanning more than 40 years, the first performance of Vaughan Williams’ The Pilgrim’s Progress took place at Covent Garden on 26 April 1951, as part of the Festival of Britain. »
01 Nov 2012
An intriguing blend of old and new marked the tenth anniversary of the
British vocal group, Exaudi, juxtaposing the adventurous intricacies and
affectations of the late-sixteenth century with the virtuosic refinements of
today’s avant garde. »
28 Oct 2012
Every major opera company needs a production of La bohème. It is one of the operas which has the potential to attract everyone, the work which will tempt the occasional opera goer into the theatre. »
27 Oct 2012
The opening images of Richard Strauss’s Elektra in its new production at Lyric Opera of Chicago establish a tension persisting until the final chords of the score indeed signal a resolution of this familial tragedy. »
27 Oct 2012
Netherlands Opera is surely to be numbered among the world’s most adventurous international companies. »
27 Oct 2012
Exquisite pianissimos, sumptuous climaxes, gigantic fortes, insistent horns, sugary winds, tremulous brass, blasting trumpets, whispering strings, pulsating oboes, more gigantic fortes, even more sumptuous climaxes. »
24 Oct 2012
Parsifal, with its heavy dose of religiosity and strains of racial supremacy, remains at once the most mystical and historically burdened of Wagner’s operas. »
23 Oct 2012
Some especially puerile, needlessly irritating, marketing, involving
pictures of condom packets — oddly chosen in so many ways, since few
people find contraceptive especially erotic, and Don Giovanni would seem an
unlikely candidate to have employed them — had attended the run-up to this
revival of Rufus Norris’s production of Don Giovanni. »
21 Oct 2012
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Mozart and Salieri (1897) received its first ever performance at the Royal Opera House as the highlight of Meet The Young Artists Week at the Linbury Studio Theatre.
»
20 Oct 2012
An opera called Where the Wild Things Are based on a libretto by Maurice Sendak may sound like a mere treat for children, but when paired with the music of Oliver Knussen, as performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, in a new and unique production by Netia Jones, it makes for a forty minute joy ride into fantasy land for adults as well. »
19 Oct 2012
What might a Woody Allen treatment involving opera read like? Tosca, third act — the firing squad lets loose shrapnel from a malfunctioning prop carbine, verily cutting into the Cavaradossi. »
19 Oct 2012
The role of Lucia in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor was written for Fanny Tacchinardi Persiani who lived from 1812 to 1867. »
18 Oct 2012
The first of four concerts in Jonathan Biss’s ‘Schumann: Under the influence’ series at the Wigmore Hall was a focused, intelligent and, at times, sensuous and illuminating, evening of music-making. »
17 Oct 2012
Labelled a “parable of oppression” by the late musicologist, Philip Brett, Britten’s provincial comedy, Albert Herring, is a tough nut to crack. »
12 Oct 2012
Frankfurt Opera’s adventurous season had a notable beginning with a luminous staging of Samuel Barber’s seldom heard Vanessa. »
12 Oct 2012
Forget Herman Melville, forget struggling with deep human complexities. At least those that possessed nineteenth century Americans. »
10 Oct 2012
Lucky Angeleno opera lovers! In anticipation of the Giuseppe Verdi’s bicentennial (it will occur in 2013) Los Angeles Opera treated its patrons to a unique and musically thrilling performance of I Due Foscari, the sixth of the composer’s twenty-six operas. »
10 Oct 2012
‘The last-ever performances of Nicholas Hytner’s production of The Magic Flute,’ claims the programme. »
09 Oct 2012
In our era of minimal cultural restraints Don Giovanni has been the opera of choice for presenting dissolution on stage. Rape, oral sex, drug use and urination have been portrayed to Mozart's melodies. »
09 Oct 2012
Give me good verses, I’ll give you good music, said Bellini to his librettist Felice Romani. Give me a good director and I’ll give you good opera surely thought San Francisco Opera general director David Gockley. »
05 Oct 2012
The first performances of Stockhausen’s Mittwoch — the world premiere took place on Mittwoch 22 August, the composer’s birthday, whilst I attended the last of four performances on Samstag — could hardly have failed to be an ‘event’ of the highest order: the last of the Licht cycle, in duration roughly twice the length of Wagner’s Ring, to receive its first full performance, though it was the sixth of the seven days to be composed. »
05 Oct 2012
“Two classic French comedies, one wardrobe…” was Bampton Classical Opera’s billing for this amusing double bill and, with typically wry wit, director Jeremy Gray duly placed a shabby-chic armoire centre-stage and made it the location of some Cherubino-Countess-style confusions and Goldoni-esque farce. »
05 Oct 2012
Frank Bridge (1879-1941) was a professional violinist and violist, a talented conductor, a versatile composer and skilled teacher; yet he remains something of an enigma and his music relatively unknown. »
05 Oct 2012
During the years from 1890 to 1940, the so-called ‘land without music’ witnessed a remarkable outpouring of chamber and instrumental music. »
05 Oct 2012
W.A. Mozart, despite a historically antagonistic relationship with his city of birth, retains an omnipresence in Salzburg that emerges in full force with each iteration of the illustrious summer festival. »
05 Oct 2012
Cleopatra, one of few female seductresses in operatic history to emerge not only alive but empowered in the final act, is a fitting role for Cecilia Bartoli in her first season as artistic director of the Salzburg Whitsun Festival. »
04 Oct 2012
The Wigmore Hall 2012-3 season (see link below) started with a gala of glamour. Dmitri Hvorostovsky attracts patrons in jewels and designer gowns. »
04 Oct 2012
The ENO gave the British premiere of Bohuslav Martinů's Julietta many years ago, so this new production was eagerly awaited. But what will audiences new to Martinů get from this production? It's a myth that the English language makes opera more accessible. That just means audiences focus on words, rather than really listening or understanding. »
02 Oct 2012
Welsh National Opera have revived Katie Mitchell’s 2003 production of Handel’s Jephtha, with Robert Murray in the title role and a new focus for the drama. »
28 Sep 2012
Four Rigolettos in nine days (for this critic), of twelve Rigolettos in 24 days (are these world records?). »
28 Sep 2012
John Adams’s Nixon in China has become one of the most successful operas in the late 20th/early 21st century wave of post-modernist attempts to revitalise the operatic tradition. It has even started its own sub-genre, the so-called CNN opera. »
28 Sep 2012
Glyndebourne Festival Opera’s visit to the Proms has become a much anticipated annual event. This year on 28 August, they brought Michael Grandage’s new production of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment conducted by Robin Ticciati, who takes over as musical director at Glyndebourne in 2014. »
28 Sep 2012
The ghost of Peter Pears may no longer hover in the wings, but in an age when ‘defining’ interpretations by the likes of Jon Vickers and Philip Langridge still linger powerfully in collective audience memories, Stuart Skelton’s interpretation of Crabbe’s problematic fisherman is assuming a striking individuality and impact. »
27 Sep 2012
The venerable Santa Fe Opera served up a richly eclectic mix of high-caliber offerings that surely is one of their best festivals in recent seasons.
»
28 Aug 2012
Ciro in Babilonia Matilda di Shaban and Il signor Bruschino in Rossini land. »
28 Aug 2012
It is difficult to speak with excessive enthusiasm of the programming of a Salzburg Festival that included both Carmen and La bohème, though it would subsequently be redeemed in part by a staging of Die Soldaten. »
24 Aug 2012
Eternal Echoes is an album of khazones [Jewish cantorial music] for cantorial soloist, solo violin and a blended instrumental ensemble comprising a small orchestra and the Klezmer Conservatory Band. »
24 Aug 2012
It was fitting that in this Year of Creative Scotland, the Edinburgh International Festival should honour James MacMillan’s contribution to Scottish musical life with the premiere of a new work. »
20 Aug 2012
Impresaria Francesca Zambello kept up her seemingly tireless process of rejuvenating the Glimmerglass Opera Festival with an ambitious, nay downright risky repertoire choice. »
20 Aug 2012
When announced in November, this was trailed as the original version of Ariadne auf Naxos, a rare treat indeed. »
20 Aug 2012
At the Salzburg Festival, Riccardo Muiti conducted Liszt’s Von der Wiege bis zum Grabe and Berlioz’s Messe solonnelle. »
14 Aug 2012
Michael Tilson Thomas’s recording of Mahler’s Third Symphony is an outstanding contribution to the composer’s discography. »
14 Aug 2012
Arnold Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder is conceived as cosmic panorama. King Waldemar curses God and is himself cursed, doomed to ride the skies forever, inspiring awe and horror. »
13 Aug 2012
The massed forces of the 600+ singers and players assembled for this exciting performance of Berlioz’s gargantuan Requiem (Grande messe des morts) made for an impressive visual spectacle in the vast high Victorian Royal Albert Hall. »
12 Aug 2012
The Edinburgh International Festival, in partnership with Opera North, presented Janáček’s The Makropulos Case at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre. »
11 Aug 2012
The Edinburgh International Festival got off to a rousing start with Frederick Delius, A Mass of Life, rarely heard because it's scored for huge forces. »
10 Aug 2012
Oliver Knussen burst into British music with an unprecedented flourish. In 1967, the London Symphony Orchestra premiered Knussen’s First Symphony, with István Kertész scheduled to conduct. »
05 Aug 2012
Surrealist fantasy with wit and style! L'heure espagnole and L'enfant et les sortilèges, the Ravel Double Bill at Glyndebourne, mixes charm, intelligence and nightmare. »
03 Aug 2012
Bach probably never intended the full Mass in B Minor to be performed, so it is tricky to talk about what forces he meant it to be performed by. But the Kyrie and Gloria certainly were sent by Bach to the Royal Court at Dresden (which was Roman Catholic), and these movements could be used in the Lutheran Church as well. »
02 Aug 2012
In November 1938 a young Polish Jew, Herschel Grynsban, driven to desperation and despair by the Nazi persecution of his mother, shot a minor German diplomat in Paris. The Nazis retaliated with one of the most savage, vicious pogroms experienced up to that time. A Child of our Time, composed during 1938-41, was Michael Tippett’s musical response to this contemporary tragedy and his attempt to comprehend its universal and eternal relevance. »
02 Aug 2012
Santa Fe, NM : It is not unusual for Santa Fe Opera to produce little known or
rarely heard operas in their enduring devotion to both unusual and ‘lost’ repertory, as well as commissioned and contemporary works. But is it unusual - very - for two such mountings in one season to be smash hits. Santa Fe lately enjoyed two such successes, graced by elevated musical and performance quality, and strong audience acceptance.
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02 Aug 2012
The gifted Polish composer Karol Szymanowski wrote his three-act King Roger, in the 1920's. It is an allegorical tale of honor vs. pleasure set to quite beautiful music, especially in the orchestral writing, which Santa Fe chose to play in the same season as the Rossini in a wide tip of the hat to unknown but worthy repertory. »
01 Aug 2012
This was unquestionably the best all-round performance I have yet seen from Opera Holland Park, staging and musical performances alike often putting august metropolitan houses from around the world to shame. »
30 Jul 2012
Although John Cage’s Seven Haiku for piano are all about chance and accident, this final concert in Ian Bostridge’s Ancient and Modern series was a masterpiece of meticulous planning and execution. »
30 Jul 2012
Few composers seem as remote and yet as necessary to our age as Beethoven, and perhaps the symphonic Beethoven in particular. Irony is a foreign word to him; blazing affirmation and indeed intensity of struggle seem too much for us. »
27 Jul 2012
Pierre Boulez Le marteau sans maître is important as Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, says conductor François-Xavier Roth, who conducted it with members of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in BBC Prom 17. »
23 Jul 2012
Hearing The Trojans in concert at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the Proms was, for me at least, a much happier experience than when it laboured under the crowd-pleasing would-be-musical-comedy served up by David McVicar’s production for the Royal Opera. »
22 Jul 2012
“It is as sunny as the composer’s garden at Busetto, clear as crystal in construction, tender and explosive by turns, humorous and witty without a touch of extravagance or a note of vulgarity.” So wrote Charles Stanford on the occasion of the first performance of Verdi’s final opera, in 1893. »
20 Jul 2012
The Royal Opera House’s Jette Parker Young Artists programme is celebrating the 10th anniversary of their annual Summer Performance. »
19 Jul 2012
Rare, very rare repertory that is not even opera stole the show at the sixty fourth Aix Festival. »
18 Jul 2012
You pay your money, you takes your chances — that is festival life at its best. Sometimes it pays off and sometimes it doesn’t. The fun is in the risk, so the riskier the better.
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18 Jul 2012
Seriousness, elegance and insight characterised this recital of nineteenth-century German song in which Christoph Prégardien and his accompanist, Julius Drake, conducted a moving musical dialogue, perfectly matching each other in the depiction of unbending obsession and unfulfilled aspiration. »
17 Jul 2012
21st-century opera played on period instruments; a ‘drama-less’ opera; a Dali-esque crimson chaise longue, stranded on the platform of the Royal Albert Hall. »
15 Jul 2012
Elijah Moshinsky’s Otello, first seen at Covent Garden in 1987,
and revived numerous times with a range of stellar casts, may be traditional
and conservative, even — excepting the thunderous opening storm scene —
somewhat uninventive; »
11 Jul 2012
Paris Opéra seems to have saved the best for last as they wind up the current season with a trio of diverse and well-judged productions. »
09 Jul 2012
Not about tattoo art, not an evocation of the Holocast, and let us not even try to put our finger on what it is about. »
09 Jul 2012
Ian Bostridge’s thought-provoking ‘Ancient and Modern’ project at the
Wigmore Hall is drawing to a close and this penultimate instalment brought
together Renaissance sensuality and Neo-classical restraint in a meticulously
executed performance. »
02 Jul 2012
Embodying a range of iconic female characters from history, literature and song — both the ‘good’ and the ‘not-so-good’ — Susan Graham delivered a wonderfully suave and entertaining performance before a delighted Wigmore Hall audience. »
02 Jul 2012
Perfection. A seldom used term in critiques of opera performances. There it was, almost (and will be, maybe). »
28 Jun 2012
Based on performances given in Summer 2010 at the Lucerne Festival, this recording of Beethoven’s Fidelio is an admirable recording that captures the vitality of the work as conducted by Claudio Abbado. »
28 Jun 2012
Stanisław Moniuszko (1819-1872) was one of the most popular composers of his day in Poland, and of the many works he wrote for the stage, two are performed from time to time, Halka (1848) and Strazny dwór [The Haunted Manor] (1865). »
28 Jun 2012
The Polish alto Jadwiga Rappé is a familiar voice in various stage and concert works, and the recent release of a selection of songs by Stanisław Moniuszko (1819-1872) is an opportunity to hear her performing artsongs. »
27 Jun 2012
Forget about picking a desert island opera, I want Opera Theatre of St. Louis as my desert island opera company.
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27 Jun 2012
A sensational Les Troyens at the Royal Opera House, London. Berlioz, who understood theatrical gestures so well, builds his opera around the most audacious dramatic device in ancient history: the Trojan Horse. »
26 Jun 2012
First staged at Manchester’s 2011 international festival, Dr Dee
is a theatrical work based on the life of Renaissance cosmographer and
charlatan, John Dee. »
26 Jun 2012
At the Wigmore Hall, there’s long been a tradition of Swedish song. We’ve heard many of the greats, Anne Sofie von Otter, Barbara Bonney and others. Miah Persson and Roger Vignoles are in this constellation. »
26 Jun 2012
Billy Budd, foretopman — and self-styled ‘King of the Birds’ — may yearn for premonition to captain of the mizzen top, but there few spirits that fly afloat or soar in David Alden’s dark, oppressive new production of Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd. »
15 Jun 2012
A feast for the eyes, a feast for the ears, a Flute from America’s heartland that goes directly to your heart. »
15 Jun 2012
Oliver Knussen’s two operas based on books by Maurice Sendak opened this year’s Aldeburgh Music Festival in exuberant style.
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13 Jun 2012
Fanfares that celebrate soldiers with plumed helmets by a composer who donned a helmet (metaphorically) — Verdi the operatic father of the Risorgimento! »
11 Jun 2012
Are my expectations too high when it comes to Mozart’s operas in general,
and to Così fan tutte in general? Probably. Should they be?
Certainly. »
09 Jun 2012
John Adams’ Nixon in China is an amazing, riveting piece of music, and compelling theater to boot.
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09 Jun 2012
Over 60 composers (including Beethoven) wrote music inspired by Metastasio’s L’olimpiade. »
09 Jun 2012
The pavilion at Garsington Opera at Wormsley is stunningly beautiful. Just being there is an experience, which is why the social aspect is so rewarding. »
08 Jun 2012
There are many different ways to analyze the health of New York City. My personal measurements judge the town thus: How many aspiring artsy kids are forced to share a single apartment in an outer borough while they “find themselves” and how many small but immensely able opera companies are functional at any given time. »
05 Jun 2012
“I can guess what you are hiding.
Bloodstain on your warrior’s weapons.
Blood upon your crown of glory.
Red the soil around your flowers.
Red the shade your cloud was throwing.
Now I know it all, oh, Bluebeard.” »
05 Jun 2012
The Los Angeles opera company ended its 2011-2012 season with Giacomo
Puccini’s long-loved La Bohème, in a long-lived production. What is
it about this opera that keeps old loves alive? »
04 Jun 2012
Detlev Glanert’s Caligula at the ENO shows how powerful modern opera can be. Caligula was a tyrant, but this opera isn’t sensationalist. »
04 Jun 2012
Kudos to the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association and Gustavo Dudamel for their courageous plan to present semi staged performances of the Mozart/Da Ponte trilogy of Italian operas with the assistance of outstanding set and costume designers and directors. »
04 Jun 2012
In David McVicar’s staging of Strauss’s disturbing opera, first seen at
Covent Garden in 2008 and now enjoying its second revival, Salome’s descent
down the Stygian staircase is a literal drop into a subterranean slaughterhouse
and an ethical fall into the delights and depravity of her of burgeoning yet deadly sexuality.
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04 Jun 2012
Donizetti’s Maria Padilla received a concert performance with the Chelsea Opera Group. »
04 Jun 2012
A fascinating evening of arias and readings on the theme of Handel’s “rival queens”, Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni.
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04 Jun 2012
Canadian Opera Company’s diverse May offerings included some superlatively sung Handel, a galvanizing star turn from a rising tenor talent, and a well-matched veristic double bill of tragedy and comedy. »
31 May 2012
Yannis Kokkos originally directed and designed Tristan und Isolde as a co-production for Welsh National Opera and Scottish Opera nearly 20 years ago. The production’s latest revival, directed by Peter Watson, was premiered at the Wales Millennium Centre on 19 May 2012. »
30 May 2012
Glyndebourne’s 2012 season started in great style with Leoš Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen. Its rapturous reception would suggest that this could become a Glyndebourne perennial. »
25 May 2012
Originally released on multiple discs in 1981 this reissue on two CDs is a comprehensive collection of art songs by Italian and French composers from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. »
22 May 2012
Iestyn Davies’ Wigmore Hall recital, ‘History Repeating’, may have explored various composers’ engagement with, and reinterpretation and reinvigoration of, music of the past, but Davies himself is very much the countertenor of the moment, and undoubtedly an exciting and fulfilling future lies ahead. »
21 May 2012
You never can tell. I would never have predicted which opera would be my favourite of the seven operas programmed this season by the Canadian Opera Company. »
19 May 2012
The Met saved the best of the season for the end of it, revivals of their first-rate productions of two twentieth-century masterpieces, Jánaček’s Makropoulos Case and Britten’s Billy Budd. »
19 May 2012
It is not long into Act One of Mignon at Geneva’s Grand Theatre when Diana Damrau glides on stage as Philine, commands our rapt attention, and sweeps all before her. »
17 May 2012
Véronique Gens’s recital at the Wigmore Hall, London, was an almost ideal distillation of the belle époque in song. »
12 May 2012
In this, the second of two LSO concerts in which Péter Eötvös replaced
Pierre Boulez, one continued to feel the loss of the latter in his repertoire,
yet one equally continued to value his replacement, very much his own
man. »
09 May 2012
An energetic and exceptionally entertaining production of Così fan tutte sung in English and set during World War II, when the Americans often got the girls. »
09 May 2012
Any performance of Philip Glass’ epic Einstein on the Beach (1976) is a major event. The work’s duration is around five hours and it is directed to be performed without interval (although see below — we had one). »
07 May 2012
Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais’ classic play The Barber of
Seville, set by Rossini to perfectly paced and irresistibly comic music,
was first performed in Rome in 1816, and remains one of the world’s favorite
operas. »
02 May 2012
This year’s Kathleen Ferrier Awards final was both a competition and a
celebration, marking as it did the centenary anniversary of the great singer’s birth. »
01 May 2012
Manitoba Opera laid aside all stereotypes about opera being stuffy and inaccessible with its feel-good production of Donizetti’s 1840 comic opera Daughter of the Regiment. »
01 May 2012
ENO’s peculiar decision not to stage any Wagner during its 2012-13 season, that is the season in which the greater part of Wagner’s bicentenary falls, is at least mitigated by a new production of The Flying Dutchman during this preceding season. »
01 May 2012
The double bill of Zemlinsky’s A Florentine Tragedy with
Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, currently being presented by the Canadian Opera Company, is a marriage made in heaven, a pair of complementary opposites who seem to belong together. »
26 Apr 2012
Massenet’s Manon succeeds in the theater when the soprano has
a real sense of the role and how she wants to present it. »
26 Apr 2012
Croatian National Opera, in collaboration with Würzburg’s (Germany) Mainfranken Theater has made quite a forceful case for Parsifal.
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26 Apr 2012
It is Manon month in the Mid-Atlantic states. In New York, the Met is presenting Massanet’s take, while Opera Company of Philadelphia has just opened Puccini’s version: his first successful opera, Manon Lescaut. »
26 Apr 2012
Los Angeles lieder lovers were treated to two extraordinary Schubertian
journeys on April 16th and 18th when bass-baritone Matthias Goerne partnered
with Christian Eschenbach performed the song cycles, Die schöne
Müllerin and Winterreise, as part of the Los Angeles
Philharmonic’s celebration of the composer’s 215th birthday. »
26 Apr 2012
The unfashionableness of Der Freischütz in England is a little baffling. In its day, not only was the opera celebrated across Germany, it soon conquered other European stages and indeed theatres worldwide. »
25 Apr 2012
An exciting contribution to the discography of this popular opera, the live performance of Richard Strauss’s Salome from the Festspielhaus at Baden-Baden is a compelling DVD. »
25 Apr 2012
The regiment marches onwards! »
19 Apr 2012
Lyric Opera of Chicago has begun with the current season’s production of Show Boat a series of musicals of the American theater to be featured in coming years. »
19 Apr 2012
When the ENO does really innovative work, it does so with style. Wolfgang Rihm’s Jakob Lenz may have taken 34 years to reach London fully staged, but this ENO production made such a strong impression that it might be years before it will be forgotten. »
19 Apr 2012
The Wigmore Hall Dvořák series culminated in a concert by Bernarda Fink and Roger Vignoles. »
19 Apr 2012
I have to rethink my week, because somehow I have to get to see Opera Atelier’s production of Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Armide again. »
19 Apr 2012
It’s unclear whether Mozart composed this highly undramatic “dramatic action” when he was fifteen, for his kindly master Prince-Archbishop von Schrettenbach of Salzburg, or the following year for the newly-elected successor, Prince-Archbishop Colloredo, who, soon afterwards, had the young man literally kicked out of his service. »
16 Apr 2012
Edward Elgar was given a copy of Cardinal Newman’s ‘The Dream of Gerontius’ — a 900-line poem depicting the journey of an old man’s soul after death — as a wedding present in 1889. »
15 Apr 2012
Paris’ Opéra Comique has summoned forth a respectable (if spare) set design for Bluebeard’s Castle, but unfortunately the opera they were performing was Auber’s La Muette de Portici. »
13 Apr 2012
Assumptions about later Italian opera are dominated by Puccini, but Alfredo Catalani, born in the same town and almost at the same time, was highly regarded by their contemporaries. Two new books on Catalani could change our perceptions. »
13 Apr 2012
Sandrine Paiu and Roger Vignoles teamed up for the latest concert in Vignoles’s “Perspectives” series at the Wigmore Hall, London. »
13 Apr 2012
Released in late 2011, Deutsche Grammophon’s DVD of the new staging of Berg’s Lulu at the Gran Teatro del Liceu, Barcelona is an excellent contribution to the discography of this fascinating opera. »
13 Apr 2012
A recent release by the Metropolitan Opera, this two-disc set makes available on DVD the famous performance of Berg’s Lulu that was broadcast on 20 December 1980 as part of the PBS series “Live from the Met.” »
13 Apr 2012
Opera-goers have come to expect high quality opera as part of Sarasota Opera’s Winter Festival. »
12 Apr 2012
The Royal Opera House started doing opera and ballet broadcasts before many other houses, and is now expanding its schedule. On April 17th, Verdi’s Rigoletto is being streamed live in over 600 cinemas in 21 countries.
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02 Apr 2012
How would a period instrument specialist like John Eliot Gardiner approach Rigoletto, Verdi’s sordid tale? This was his first Rigoletto (though not his first Verdi); but he created it with great insight. »
31 Mar 2012
The novels of Sinclair Lewis once shot across the American literary skies like comets, alarming and fascinating readers of that era, but their tails didn’t extend far behind them. »
28 Mar 2012
Once the province of only the most dedicated opera fanatics, mid-20th century recordings of privately taped live performances have become more widely available. »
27 Mar 2012
For sixty years, the Chelsea Opera Group has adorned London opera life. It doesn’t do mass market, but focuses on unusual and obscure repertoire. This audience comes for the music! »
24 Mar 2012
Flute players in opera orchestra around the world must look forward to the frequent appearances of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, knowing that while the stage spotlight in the mad scene will be on the soprano, the orchestral spotlight will be on their instrument. »
24 Mar 2012
The performance at the Wigmore Hall of Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin by Florian Boesch and Malcolm Martineau was outstanding. Over several decades, I’ve heard hundreds of performances, but this was exceptionally perceptive. »
24 Mar 2012
The Barbican’s English oratorio series now reaches the twentieth century, with Tippett’s A Child of Our Time, though it will step back to The Dream of Gerontius next month. »
22 Mar 2012
The Los Angeles Opera, anticipating Benjamin Britten’s centennial gave
the composer, as well as its patrons, an early birthday present of performances
of his charming comic opera, Albert Herring. »
19 Mar 2012
A major part of the rejuvenation of opera in the 21st century is the cultivation of young singers. »
19 Mar 2012
Since his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1971, conductor James Levine has come to represent the house’s commitment to artistic excellence — reliable, professional, and immaculately presented. »
19 Mar 2012
You can’t keep a good opera buffa down. And Gaetano Donizetti’s Don Pasquale is about as good as opera buffa gets. »
19 Mar 2012
Two live camels with trainers in Egyptian garb were stationed in front of Phoenix’s Symphony Hall to publicize the opening of Arizona Opera’s new production of Aida. »
13 Mar 2012
An absurd plot has never stood in the way of a good opera. Unfortunately, Judith Weir’s Miss Fortune at the Royal Opera House isn’t much of an opera. »
12 Mar 2012
The cinema world has given us “star vehicle,” a term used to describe a movie that may not have the best script or direction but which suits a popular actor’s persona so well the film can fairly be called a successful entertainment. »
12 Mar 2012
For an operatic masterpiece The Barber of Seville is surprisingly tricky to do well, it is not one of those pieces which plays itself. »
09 Mar 2012
In this stimulating and uplifting performance, The Cardinall’s Musick, led by director Andrew Carwood, continued their comprehensive project to examine the works of one of England’s greatest composers — William Byrd (c.1540—1623). »
08 Mar 2012
The Barbican’s six-month series celebrating the English oratorio, has now reached Mendelssohn’s Elijah — or perhaps we should
follow the Victorians and refer to it as ‘the Elijah’, given that it was performed in English, in William Bartholomew’s translation. »
06 Mar 2012
Abduction from the Seraglio contains not a single ironic or cynical moment. Enlightened mercy and sincere love triumph totally over revenge, slavery and tyranny. »
05 Mar 2012
Two recent outings at the Paris Opéra might have been subtitled: “Max Bialystock is Alive and Well and Living in Paris.” »
05 Mar 2012
Right to the musical ‘score’ board: Zurich Opera stared down the mighty challenge posed by Rossini’s Otello ossia il moro di Venezia, and knocked it out of the ballpark. »
04 Mar 2012
Tchaikovsky’s Mazeppa is not everyday repertory, nonetheless here in the south of France the Monaco production follows fairly closely (a couple of years) on the heels of the Peter Stein Mazeppa in Lyon. »
04 Mar 2012
André Previn’s leadership of the London Symphony Orchestra in the early 1970s resulted in some highly regarded recordings, including one of the classic accounts of Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony. »
01 Mar 2012
There were high hopes for the 2012 debut production of A Midummer Night’s Dream by the Guildhall School of Music and Drama’s Opera programme . »
01 Mar 2012
A perennial favorite among opera enthusiasts since its 1871 premiere in Cairo, Aida remains a popular work, and its strengths are apparent in the recent Decca DVD from the Metropolitan Opera, New York. »
29 Feb 2012
Sometime everything seems to go right. Just as the Los Angeles Opera Company
did last fall, it opened its spring season with a baritonal eponymous opera; this time, Giuseppe Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra. »
28 Feb 2012
It is a truth universally acknowledged that an interesting opera production will be met with incomprehension and lazy, philistine hostility by vast swathes of the audience in many, perhaps most, of the world’s ‘major’ houses, a truth that renders one all the more grateful for the Royal Opera showing the courage to stage this new — to London — production of Rusalka. »
28 Feb 2012
Welsh National Opera presented a rather undercooked account of Berlioz’s tricky opera, in a revival of Elijah Moshinsky’s classic production »
27 Feb 2012
Based on performances given on 2 and 3 March 2011 (at the Barbican, London), Valery Gergiev’s recording of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony is an engaging and persuasive reading of the score. »
27 Feb 2012
John Adams’s The Death of Klinghoffer is on at the English National Opera, London. »
27 Feb 2012
Modern and historic responses to classical tragedy and myth formed the unifying focus for this latest stage of Ian Bostridge’s year-long ‘Ancient and Modern’ project at the Wigmore Hall. »
24 Feb 2012
When Captain Ahab sailed the Pequod into San Diego this week, he brought a new American opera with him. Jake Heggie’s Moby-Dick is a stunning work likely to have universal appeal. »
24 Feb 2012
Is there somewhere in Italian opera repertory where, as a comic interlude, the portentous clichés of German opera come in for a skewering amid the luscious sunshine of Italianate lyricism? »
24 Feb 2012
Tenor Michael Spyres’ star is on the rise and his highly enjoyable debut recital disc offers ample proof as to why. »
24 Feb 2012
The last opera seria — Mozart’s late, austere masterpiece, and vividly brought it to life. »
24 Feb 2012
A breath-taking stage picture at curtain rise of Netherlands Opera's The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevronia indeed made us involuntarily gasp as one.
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20 Feb 2012
Inaugurated in 1995, the Veronica Dunne International Singing Competition is a triennial competition, held in the National Concert Hall in Dublin, which takes place over a week in January. »
20 Feb 2012
Mark Elder and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment brought Berlioz’s Roméo et Juliette to the Royal Festrival Hall. »
20 Feb 2012
In his memoirs, Five Thousand Nights at the Opera, Sir Rudolph Bing, general manager of the Met from 1950 to 1972, discusses the Met’s move from 39th street to its current home at Lincoln Center. »
20 Feb 2012
Erwin Schrott triumphed as Don Giovanni in the Mozart/da Ponte series at the Royal Opera House, overcoming the limitations of the staging.
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17 Feb 2012
Critics. Can you get along without us? It is possible to reflect on this when the production of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale is shown on television tonight. »
17 Feb 2012
Henri Sauguet is not entirely unknown in opera circles — divas Regine Crespin, Felicity Lott, Nathalie Dessay and Leontyne Price have included his arias in their solo albums. Plus there is a recording of his 1954 opera-comique Les Caprices de Marianne. »
17 Feb 2012
In its current revival of Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida Lyric Opera of Chicago approaches the challenges of the ambitious score with a cast well suited to the music and to the drama. »
16 Feb 2012
It was a performance of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville in the late 90’s that marked my first visit to the Met. »
16 Feb 2012
One of the guiding principles of the revisionist (if not intervisionist) school of opera directing commonly called “regie-theater” is that certain outdated dramatic conventions in the librettos of many great operas can actually interfere with a contemporary audience’s ability to perceive the true artistic worth of the work of art. »
15 Feb 2012
David McVicar’s production of The Marriage of Figaro, previously staged in 2006 (twice), »
13 Feb 2012
Ernani accosts us with the charm and the gaucherie of a provincial youth
without much experience as the host of a classy party. »
11 Feb 2012
In many respects, The Tales of Hoffmann and Richard Jones would seem a good fit. »
10 Feb 2012
Winnipeg music lovers were willingly transported back several centuries as
Daniel Taylor and Montreal-based Theatre of Early Music graced Westminster
United Church with a program of infrequently heard music. »
08 Feb 2012
Recorded on 14 June 1964 at the Großer Saal of the Musikverein, Vienna, as part of the Wiener Festwochen, this legendary performance of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde was released in 2011 on Deutsche Grammophon. »
08 Feb 2012
All the important directors pass through Lyon, so it was just a matter of time before British director David Pountney would be invited to stage a production. It was Puccini’s triptych. »
08 Feb 2012
In advance of the new Rusalka at the Royal Opera House, the Barbican and the BBC Symphony Orchestra brought an electrifying performance of Dvořák's The Jacobin to London. »
08 Feb 2012
If Mahler’s Fourth Symphony is arguably one of his more familiar pieces, live performances of the work can vary depending on the abilities of the performers to meet the various challenges of the piece. »
08 Feb 2012
English National Opera’s revival of Richard Strauss’s fin de
siècle Figaro is a heart-warming treat for a cold winter’s
night. »
08 Feb 2012
I failed to discern any rationale behind programming the Brecht-Weill ballet chanté with various works by Debussy, one orchestrated by Robin Holloway. »
06 Feb 2012
The magic was in the pit, not that all Monaco was not magical — on January 25 a yellow Lamborghini, a red Ferrari, a vintage Jaguar among other magnificent machines stood before the entrance to Monte-Carlo’s resplendent Casino cum transplendent 500-seat opera house. »
03 Feb 2012
Each year, the Wigmore Hall commemorates Franz Schubert’s birthday with a high profile recital. This year, Werner Güra and Roger Vignoles presented a recital which was a timely reminder of what Lieder performance should be. »
02 Feb 2012
The San Diego Opera Company opened its 47th season on Saturday, January 26th
with Richard Strauss’ Salome, a work that has something in it for
everyone: lust, love, lasciviousness, homosexuality, heterosexuality, homicide,
suicide, a voluptuous dance and quickie nudity. »
02 Feb 2012
Released in 2011, this disc reproduces a performance of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde that was recorded on 10 November 1989 at the Grzegorz Fitelberg Concert Hall, Katowice [Poland]. »
02 Feb 2012
Lyric Opera of Chicago’s recent revival of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte offered a production with vocal pairs carefully matched and dramatic representation expressing the varying shades of Mozart’s score. »
02 Feb 2012
British composer Jonathan Harvey’s Wagner Dream came to London four years after its premieres at the Holland Festival and in Luxembourg.
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31 Jan 2012
For the first hour or so of the latest Opera Orchestra of New York venture, a concert performance of Wagner’s Rienzi, I often said to myself, This…isn’t so terrible. »
31 Jan 2012
Repeatedly revived since its final appearance in 1995, Jonathan
Miller’s Così fan tutte returned yet again to the Covent Garden
stage as the second part of the ‘Olympic’ cycle of Mozart-Da Ponte
collaborations. »
31 Jan 2012
A year or two back, Opera Lafayette, the Washington-based company that
specializes in eighteenth-century obscurités françaises, presented
Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny’s Le Magnifique, an
opéra-comique about a race horse. »
27 Jan 2012
Introducing the winter-spring season, ROH Chief Executive Tony Hall explains the (perhaps a tad spurious) Olympic ‘concept’ which has inspired the season’s programming, the five interlocking rings of the Olympic insignia motivating the performance of a series of works staged in ‘cycle form’. »
27 Jan 2012
Founded in 1984, the Basel Chamber Orchestra has developed a penchant for
programmes which combine the modern and unfamiliar with the traditional and
renowned. »
27 Jan 2012
Three La Bohèmes in ten days, a critic’s nightmare that was more fun than a barrel of monkeys. »
25 Jan 2012
This year is a big year for the Met. Of the seven new productions on the roster, two are the last two installments of a much-anticipated Robert Lepage Ring. »
25 Jan 2012
This buoyant, refreshing performance of Haydn’s late oratorio, The Seasons, by Paul McCreesh’s superb Gabrieli Consort and Players conjured
a calendric kaleidoscope of seasonal climes, from the warm bucolic breezes of spring to summer’s fierce suns and flashing storms, from autumnal harvests and hunts to the frozen mists and fiery hearth-sides of winter. »
25 Jan 2012
Composed during the spring hunting season of 1684, for a patron and performance venue unknown, Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s brief six-scene Opera de Chasse (‘Hunting Opera’), Actéon, has remained seldom performed and something of a mystery. »
25 Jan 2012
War and destruction is everywhere these days, not least in Pesaro where Graham Vick staged a lethal Mosé in Egitto last August, nor less so in San Francisco where baritone Thomas Hampson perished as Rick Rescorla in Heart of a Soldier last September. »
25 Jan 2012
Hugo Wolf is a hard sell. Technical expertise isn't enough. The secret to singing Wolf is expressing the unique personality in each song. Wolf, perhaps more than any other composer, creates miniatures that open out into mini-operas when performed well. »
23 Jan 2012
Richard Strauss’s opera Ariadne auf Naxos presents challenges in casting not only because of the vocal line and identity associated with individual characters but also because of its nature as a self-comment on the musical stage and the requisite dramatic skills thus needed. »
23 Jan 2012
What does it say about New York that, in the songs of the city commissioned by the Five Boroughs Music Festival and given performances in Brooklyn, Queens and, now, Manhattan, the poets (often the composers themselves) rarely refer to life in that central part of the city, Rodgers and Hart’s “isle of joy”? »
05 Jan 2012
This performance of La Traviata was the 454th at the Royal Opera House, and the first performance in the 3rd revival this season of Richard Eyre’s production. »
28 Dec 2011
Ruggero Leoncavallo’s name is forever tied to that of Pietro Mascagni. »
28 Dec 2011
In contrast to much music-making on the continent, English composers born in the last quarter of the sixteenth century seem to have embraced a notable degree of stylistic continuity. »
28 Dec 2011
Homage could take diverse forms in Counter-Reformation Rome, and this excellent recording by ensemble officium, Messa di Santa Cecilia, focuses on a particular instance that was interestingly polyvalent. »
23 Dec 2011
Perhaps it’s no accident that Graham Vick’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg returns to the Royal Opera House for the Christmas season. Red, green, gold, sumptuous colours that warm a long, grey evening. »
23 Dec 2011
This latest instalment of Ian Bostridge’s ‘Ancient and Modern’ series juxtaposed the tender melancholy of the Elizabethan age with the modernist anxieties of the early twentieth century, revealing both a sensitivity to textual nuance and profound human sensibilities which transcend temporal epochs. »
22 Dec 2011
2011 has been a good year for baritone Jonathan McGovern: 2nd prize at the Kathleen Ferrier Awards, the Karaviotis Prise at the Les Azuriales Ozone Young Artists Competition, and the John Meikle Duo Prize at the Wigmore Hall/Kohn Foundation International Song Competition are just some of the awards he has garnered. »
22 Dec 2011
In Wilhelm Weitsch’s well-known painting of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, the eldest son of Johann Sebastian seems far distant from the cantorial world of his father. »
19 Dec 2011
Jean-Philippe Rameau, an organist and music theoretician, was active for much of his life in musical centers distant from the cultural juggernaut of Paris. »
19 Dec 2011
In the first part of the seventeenth century, the north German city of Hamburg spawned an unusually rich organ culture, with Jacob Praetorius, the younger, and Heinrich Scheidemann both pupils of the famous Dutch organist, Jan Pieterzoon Sweelinck, as leading figures. »
18 Dec 2011
This recent recording of the men and boys from King’s College, Cambridge, is an anthology organized around the texts and themes of the liturgical year, a scheme that offers ample opportunity for diverse works—in that sense the recording feels something like a “sampler”—but a scheme that also reflects the real experience of the daily life of the choir which sings demanding choral services six days of the week in term time. »
16 Dec 2011
The Wigmore Hall marks the 75th anniversary of the death of Maurice Ravel with a series of concerts that run through to June 2012. »
16 Dec 2011
A self-published recording, baritone Randal Turner’s traversal of contemporary songs in English, Living American Composers, makes for a fine vocal calling card. »
16 Dec 2011
Combining innate musicianship and superb technique, Anne Schwanewilms showed once again that she can run the emotional gamut from light-hearted joy to deep anguish in this flawless performance with pianist, Charles Spencer. »
16 Dec 2011
In 1983, Karita Mattila was the first singer to win the Cardiff Singer of the World competition. »
13 Dec 2011
Buzz Lightyear Meets Hansel and Gretel! Most children who have grown up in
the Toy Story era know that toys come alive when left to their own
devices. »
13 Dec 2011
The English Oratorio season at the Barbican Hall, London continued with Gerald Finley and two very different approaches to Belshazzar’s Feast — William Walton and Jean Sibelius. »
13 Dec 2011
Paris Opera has lavished quite a monumental staging on Verdi’s musically rich (and Piave’s dramatically vapid) La Forza del Destino. »
13 Dec 2011
Soprano Felicity Lott has concentrated her career in her UK homeland and in Europe, although she certainly has had her share of US appearances. »
13 Dec 2011
Apparently the Aalto Theater didn’t get the memo that oratorios often make weak theatre pieces, since the company presented such a gripping dramatic case for Handel’s Hercules.
»
13 Dec 2011
Straight to the point: Netherlands Opera has mounted as luminous and emotionally engaging an Idomeneo as is imaginable. »
13 Dec 2011
More than a gala for Milan and for Italy, this wonderful Don Giovanni at Teatro alla Scala, Milan, was a gala for all the world, broadcast live internationally. »
09 Dec 2011
I have somehow managed to miss Sir Colin Davis’s London performances of L’Enfance du Christ, making it one of the final major Berlioz works I have heard in the flesh. »
06 Dec 2011
At the November 12, 2011 world premiere of Silent Night at the Ordway Theatre in St. Paul, a buzz of energy filled the audience. »
05 Dec 2011
Brad Mehldau seems to be the “go to” jazz pianist for classically trained singers who want to venture into other musical territory than opera and lieder. »
02 Dec 2011
At one point in The Met’s history, Faust was performed so frequently that one critic in mocking reference to Wagner’s opera house at Bayreuth coined the theater Faustophilhaus. »
02 Dec 2011
From the moment the curtain rose to reveal a loony bin instead of the 15th Century Inn of the libretto, it seemed likely the Flemish Opera was going to raise more questions than it answered about Tchaikovsky’s rarely performed The Enchantress.
»
02 Dec 2011
Richard Eyre’s 1994 staging of Verdi’s La Traviata may have been revived many times, but this production reveals striking new depths of interpretation. »
01 Dec 2011
Opera has never been an art form to hold anything back. But even within the
genre itself, Salome is — literally — one tough, depraved act to
follow. »
28 Nov 2011
Although François Couperin won his reputation as an esteemed composer at the
ostentatious and vainglorious court of Versailles, under the patronage of Louis XIV, the ‘Sun King’, his work is often surprisingly discreet and intimate. »
27 Nov 2011
The swift return to the Coliseum of Catherine Malfitano’s production of Tosca, premiered in 2010, contrasts strongly with the increasingly disposable nature of many recent ENO productions. »
25 Nov 2011
Handel’s oratorio Saul was the first dramatic oratorio that he wrote with a strong libretto. »
25 Nov 2011
No cuts, not a single one, nearly four hours of non-stop arias, and its only hit tune happens within the first five minutes. »
23 Nov 2011
Opera North holds a special place in my affections: my first full opera in the theatre was the company’s Wozzeck, which I saw as a schoolboy at the Lyceum Theatre in Sheffield. »
22 Nov 2011
Imagine a tuneful eighteenth-century “ballad opera” of country
life, say Stephen Storace’s enduringly popular No Song No
Supper, cross it with Cavalleria Rusticana, throw in a bit of
Rocky for good measure, and you have some idea of Ralph Vaughan
Williams’s first opera, Hugh the Drover, a “Romantic
Ballad Opera.” »
20 Nov 2011
The magnificent David Hockney Turandot production burst again onto the War Memorial stage with a new cast and conductor that recaptured its potential to make this fairytale into great opera. »
18 Nov 2011
Lyric Opera of Chicago staged Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di
Lammermoor as its second production of the current season with Susanna
Phillips taking on the role of the heroine torn between romantic love and familial pressures. »
17 Nov 2011
If this generation were to stake a claim to its own classical vocal music “Golden Age,” Christine Brewer presents a strong case. »
15 Nov 2011
Deborah Warner’s new production of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin is an evocative and lyrical depiction of elegiac passion. »
14 Nov 2011
They’re no longer just door-to-door missionaries with a science fiction theology and strange underwear! What with a presidential candidacy and a hit Broadway musical, the Mormons are having their breakout season in New York. »
14 Nov 2011
Déja vu. Well, sort of. Last time around (2006) there was a Carmen and then another who canceled leaving San Francisco Opera in the lurch. »
13 Nov 2011
For some years now the opera world has reveled in the appearance of many fine lyric tenors, with Juan Diego Florez leading the charge. »
13 Nov 2011
What could be more appropriate for the Samhain season than a return from
near-death? »
09 Nov 2011
For its first production of the new season, Jacques Offenbach’s
Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Lyric Opera of Chicago assembled a
distinguished roster of soloists with the Lyric Opera Orchestra under the direction of Emmanuel Villaume. »
09 Nov 2011
The operas of a composer born before the settlement of Jamestown face dim prospects of getting staged at the larger American houses. »
09 Nov 2011
Love and gloom at the Los Angeles Opera. »
05 Nov 2011
In 2006 classical music lost one of its great singers — American mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, taken at the height of her career. »
05 Nov 2011
Bellini’s La sonnambula does not have the most gripping or
convincing of opera plots: a young girl sleepwalks into a stranger’s room, where she is discovered by her fiancé; disbelieving her pleas of innocence, he jilts her and plans to wed another; but, she is vindicated when she is spied on a nocturnal wander, and the lovers are reconciled. »
05 Nov 2011
Bartók’s only opera, a masterpiece to rank with other sole works in
the genre such as Fidelio and Pelléas et Mélisande, was
chosen for the climax of the Philharmonia’s year-long series,
‘Infernal Dance: Inside the World of Béla Bartók’. »
05 Nov 2011
Wexford Festival Opera made a boldly calculated choice sixty years ago when it eschewed bread-and-butter titles, and instead raided the dusty closet where forgotten pieces by some famous (and mostly non-) composers were (at best) consigned to history. »
04 Nov 2011
There are some literary texts which, by dint of their intense compression of
incident, their creators’ firm control of structure, and the precision of
linguistic nuance, do not naturally seem to lend themselves to operatic
treatment. »
01 Nov 2011
It’s very unusual for the Met these days—or any major opera house, in any era—to present a glossy new production with two different stars in the leading role. »
01 Nov 2011
Daring dramas which probe dark psychological depths; music that embodies
visceral emotional conflicts, and stirs heated, often contradictory, passions;
the text and score shaped into radical musico-dramatic structures, employing
shockingly inventive harmonic language and orchestral timbres. »
27 Oct 2011
Exactly what makes this entertaining, handsome video of Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Renée Fleming in concert an “odyssey”? »
27 Oct 2011
Luciano Pavarotti died in September 2007, just short of his 72nd birthday and only a few years after his last performance at the Metropolitan Opera, in Tosca. »
27 Oct 2011
“Historically Informed Performance” sure has a nice ring — not only does the acronym capture the trendiness of the movement (“HIP”), but one has to admire the subtle put-down the term encapsulates. »
27 Oct 2011
How is one to write a Romantic opera? »
26 Oct 2011
According to legend, when composing Don Giovanni, Mozart completed
the overture last. It was written the night before the opera’s premiere, while his wife Constanze, a fervent taskmaster, plied him with food and drink to make sure he stayed awake. »
26 Oct 2011
Without young artists, no art form will thrive or grow. The Royal Opera House’s Jette Parker Young Artists scheme nurtures the best from its young artists that their performances attract thoughtful audiences. »
26 Oct 2011
Ossia Maestro Watching in Fog City. Ten years ago it was German provincialism, now it is the Italian sort wanting to take root in the War Memorial Opera House. »
24 Oct 2011
Wagner’s Flying Dutchman returns to the Royal Opera House, London. »
23 Oct 2011
In this appealing lunchtime recital programme, Croatian soprano Renata Pokupić demonstrated a rich, varied tonal palette and strong communicative skills as she spanned one hundred years of European song.
»
23 Oct 2011
‘Erotic oratorio’ is the odd-sounding definition devised by modern scholars, such as Howard E. Smither, for those pious music dramas employing sex-laden plots from the Bible, the Apocrypha or the lives of Saints in order to give the audience moral instruction in a quasi-operatic, if generally unstaged, form. »
12 Oct 2011
‘Requiescant in pace. Amen.’ »
12 Oct 2011
Should I wait until the end of this review to tell you how much fun, how much of a theatrical whoopee cushion Robert Wilson’s production of Die Dreigroschenoper has been at BAM last week? »
12 Oct 2011
Recorded between 24 and 27 October 2008 at the Philhamonie in Berlin, this release offers the dynamism of a concert performance with the sound quality associated with EMI’s fine recordings. »
12 Oct 2011
Some opera masterworks are admirable more than lovable — a distinction usually best revealed by the number of performances the work gets. »
12 Oct 2011
One way of thinking about La Traviata is to consider it as a portrayal of bubble wealth that makes artistic capital from the shimmering, rainbow hues of the surface rather than showing any interest in what sustains the bubble. »
12 Oct 2011
Following Lorin Maazel’s lifeless first movement from Mahler’s Tenth Symphony »
10 Oct 2011
The Los Angeles Opera Company’s charmingly understated new production
of Così fan tutte will please your eyes and delight your ears, but its story might grieve your romantic soul. »
07 Oct 2011
There are two ways to sing the role of Carmen: as a “grand opera” heroine and as a character from opéra-comique. »
05 Oct 2011
As long as one keeps in mind that historical value is not the same as aesthetic quality, this DVD of early 1960’s live German TV performances of two short Gian Carlo Menotti operas makes for fascinating viewing. »
03 Oct 2011
The haughty beauties that are the ancient colleges of Cambridge were definitely feeling the heat this past weekend, and not even the cooling streams of the Cam and its tributaries could assuage the heat of an Indian summer in the Fens of Eastern England. »
02 Oct 2011
Kudos to the Los Angeles Opera Company for expanding its heretofore limited
Russian repertoire and opening its 26th season with Tchaikovsky’s
Eugene Onegin. The romantic work based on the novel in verse of the
same name by Alexander Pushkin, is likely everyone’s favorite
Tchaikovsky opera. »
30 Sep 2011
Love and Death is the name of one of Woody Allen’s earlier films, one built around parodies of Tolstoy and other Russian 19th century literary giants. »
30 Sep 2011
My response to much of this and last year’s Mahler anniversary bonanza
has been to stay away: certainly not out of antipathy, nor out of boredom, nor on account of any other negative reaction to the music of a composer whom I admire as greatly as ever, but simply because there are too many unnecessary performances of that music on offer. »
28 Sep 2011
When the Royal Opera House London does things well, it does them very well indeed. This Gounod’s Faust was a sizzler!
»
28 Sep 2011
Bad news travels fast. Though you are about to read another version of how American diva Renée Fleming failed to bring Lucrezia Borgia alive, let us begin by discussing a few other things you already know. »
28 Sep 2011
What better way for the long-reigning director of the Vienna State Opera, Ioan Holender, to celebrate the end of his time in the post than with a lengthy gala featuring such stars as Gergely Németi, Roxana Constantinescu, Krassimira Stoyanova, and Keith Ikaia-Purdy? »
28 Sep 2011
Among recent recordings of Britten’s opera Billy Budd, the recent
release conducted by Daniel Harding has much to offer in terms of performance
quality, interpretation, and also the quality of recording. »
28 Sep 2011
In 1989, William Christie’s ten-year-old Paris-based baroque troupe, Les Arts Florissants, brought a staged production to the Brooklyn Academy of Music for the first time, Lully’s Atys. »
26 Sep 2011
Christian Gerhaher and Gerold Huber presented Schubert’s song cycles at the Wigmore Hall, London. »
23 Sep 2011
Frederick Delius counts among those many composers whose reputations rely on their orchestral efforts, but who dearly wanted to make a lasting contribution to the opera repertory. »
23 Sep 2011
Lawrence Zazzo’s last visit to the Wigmore Hall, in April earlier this year, saw him present an intriguing sequence of American song from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. »
22 Sep 2011
The circumstances behind Mieczysław Weinberg’s The Passenger at the ENO, London, are extraordinary. »
21 Sep 2011
In a program of Italian and French arias and duets Lyric Opera gave to
Chicago audiences a preview of the first operas in its forthcoming season and
an opportunity to hear familiar voices as well as those soon destined to grace
the operatic stages of the world. »
21 Sep 2011
Los Angeles has been good to Turandot. The gritty 1984 Andre Serban production inaugurated an opera company in Los Angeles where a mere eight years later L.A. Opera bestowed the splendid Luciano Berio ending upon the world in an uber-pompous Gian-Carlo del Monaco production. »
21 Sep 2011
Whether or not one agrees with Joseph Kerman’s immortal definition of
Tosca as a “shabby little shocker,” Puccini’s
melodramma, the inaugural production of the Washington National
Opera’s 2011-12 season, is intense, “blood-and-guts” kind of
entertainment. »
21 Sep 2011
What do a ferociously violent melodrama, an ecstatic spiritual revelation and an ironic black farce have in common? »
21 Sep 2011
It’s easy to dismiss the undoubted charms of Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love with a wry smile and a dash of condescension. »
21 Sep 2011
As one of the most successful Italian opera composers of the late-eighteenth
century, Domenico Cimarosa’s reputation lasted well into the following
century during which his operas were staple repertoire in all the major
European opera houses. »
21 Sep 2011
Stylish, spirited vocalism that rang convincingly through the Palais Garnier was the hallmark of Paris Opera’s thrilling revival of one of Mozart's least appreciated mature operas.
»
21 Sep 2011
As a rule the celebrated incomplete operas of the repertory eluded completion due to the untimely death of the composer. »
21 Sep 2011
While the music industry seems to be spiralling dementedly downmarket, the Wigmore Hall keeps standards extremely high. »
21 Sep 2011
The house lights dimmed, SFO General Director David Gockley instructed us to stand and sing the Star Spangled Banner. This crucial moment revealed the intentions and complexities of this fine production at San Francisco Opera. »
19 Sep 2011
The Wigmore Hall is the most respected centre of art song excellence in Britain and its Song Competition attracts interest from all over the world.
»
15 Sep 2011
Recorded on 31 October 2007 in the Großer Musikvereinssaal, Vienna, this performance of the Cleveland Orchestra offers a compelling interpretation of the three completed movements of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony. »
15 Sep 2011
Opera companies around the world — though relatively few in the United States — cannot resist the temptation to stage Sergei Prokofiev’s first major opera. »
13 Sep 2011
Why would a French composer take an opera which epitomises German Romanticism and Nationalism and adapt it to the conventions of the French grand opera tradition? »
12 Sep 2011
Dialogues des Carmélites is a magnificently anti-operatic opera. »
10 Sep 2011
The distinguished soprano Patricia Racette once advised this observer, “If you are coming to the opera to review me, please attend the latest performance you can.” I knew what she meant. »
09 Sep 2011
When the opera opens, a chorus of Trojan is rejoicing that the Greeks have abandoned the war and gone home. »
08 Sep 2011
I shall not beat about the bush: this was a great performance. »
08 Sep 2011
Hermann Melville wrote a poem called “Fragments of a Lost Gnostic Poem of the Twelfth Century”: »
06 Sep 2011
Bochum’s Jahrhunderthalle, a massive, re-purposed industrial building, seemed an unlikely location to contain and frame the transcendent, unbounded spiritual journey of Wagner’s masterpiece Tristan und Isolde. »
06 Sep 2011
Superstitions surround theatrical productions of Shakespeare’s Scottish tragedy. »
01 Sep 2011
In its final performances of the Summer 2011 season the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus along with guest soloists gave two performances of Verdi’s Requiem. »
30 Aug 2011
Droughts, deserts, false gods, angels, earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis and a firestorm. Plenty of drama in the Bible. In BBC Prom 58, Paul McCreesh and the Gabrieli Consort and Players made a good case for period performance of Mendelssohn’s magnificent Elijah op 70.
»
30 Aug 2011
Newsflash: Wartburg is a world-wide recycling company, at one with the universe, wherein everything and everyone exists in a perfectly sustainable environment.
»
30 Aug 2011
Film biographies of great musicians notoriously exhibit a preference for talking heads nattering on over any music passages. »
29 Aug 2011
It’s becoming rather a fashion to set operas in English public schools. »
29 Aug 2011
When discussing the evolution of opera as a genre, the towering figure of Richard Wagner cannot be ignored. »
29 Aug 2011
“The number of recordings testify to the continuing popularity of
Donizetti’s melodrama in two acts [L’elisir d’amore], which rivals Don Pasquale among his comic operas and is often rated the better on account of its superior libretto by Felice Romani.” »
28 Aug 2011
In 2008, the late Richard Hickox, founder and then music director of the City of London Sinfonia, commissioned a work from composer Colin Matthews to celebrate the orchestra’s 40th anniversary, which takes place this year. »
27 Aug 2011
As this is written, the third week of August, the Santa Fe music season is winding down. »
27 Aug 2011
Superb performance of Elgar’s epic oratorio Caractacus at the The
Three Choirs Festival in Worcester Cathedral. »
27 Aug 2011
Musical excellence was the centerpiece of three of Santa Fe Opera’s annual offerings. »
27 Aug 2011
The back cover of soprano Nino Machiadze’s debut solo recital from Sony Classical quotes her as describing the disc’s selection of arias as “my world, my successes to date and my hopes for the future.” »
27 Aug 2011
In keeping with the festival nature of the piece, the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus, along with guest soloists and a guest chorus director, gave two performances of Franz Schmidt’s Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln on recent weekend evenings. »
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.
»
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.
»
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.
»
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. »
15 Jun 2011
Israel Opera’s summer festival grew astonishingly in the year following its 2010 inaugural season. »
14 Jun 2011
It would seem that in his preparations for this new production of Simon
Boccanegra, the acclaimed Russian director, Dmitri Tcherniakov, has been
familiarising himself Jonathan Miller’s previous ENO efforts. »
14 Jun 2011
Think verismo and one imagines melodramatic, often violent plots which peer unflinchingly into the soul of every character. »
12 Jun 2011
The current Tosca at the Royal Opera House is something of a classic, revived four times in five years. It’s now being filmed for cinema to be released in November 2011. »
09 Jun 2011
It was a lucky happenstance that glorious vocalism characterized Badisches
Staatstheater’s La Gioconda, for effective stagecraft was nowhere in evidence…but, oh, what singing!
»
09 Jun 2011
A capacity crowd at the Wigmore Hall eagerly awaited the arrival of Andreas Scholl and Tamar Halperin on the platform on Tuesday evening. »
07 Jun 2011
‘Glitter and be gay!’ cries Cunegonde, determined to overcome the bitter circumstances in which she finds herself in sordid, downturn Paris. »
06 Jun 2011
The U.S. premiere of Hans Werner Henze’s Phaedra at the Opera Company of Philadelphia may well be the most important and ambitious new work presented by any American company this season. »
03 Jun 2011
Since 2006, movie cineplexes across the USA have attracted a somewhat unlikely crowd for Saturday matinees, from fall to spring. »
01 Jun 2011
Any performance of Brahms and Schumann four part songs is an occasion. »
31 May 2011
Pilgrimages, I suspect, derive a degree of their fruitfulness from the slowness of the journey, a pace born of desire or necessity, that removes the journey from the quotidian, brings the purpose into greater focus, and allows for a richer savoring of the experience. »
31 May 2011
Before a single track has been heard, Jordi Savall’s The Forgotten Kingdom impresses with its scale: a three-CD set packaged in a lavish, bound book that contains fifty dense pages of English commentary by nine different authors; adding the multiple translations, beautiful illustrations, and song texts, the book itself luxuriantly sprawls over 500 pages. »
30 May 2011
“Music, music for a while/ Shall all your cares beguile,” vowed Ian Bostridge at the opening of this recital with his regular accompanist, Julius Drake. »
30 May 2011
This is the one by Giorgio Strehler that opened at Versailles in 1973 and since has endured twenty-three incarnations, first at the Garnier and later at the Bastille. »
27 May 2011
It’s easy to slip into platitudes when eulogising the last London
recital performance of a singer commonly lauded as the outstanding countertenor
of his generation. »
26 May 2011
Teatro Grattacielo gives concert performances of Verismo operas that range from the obscure to the unheard-of. »
26 May 2011
Phyllida Lloyd’s reading of Verdi’s Macbeth –
first seen in 2002 and here revived for the second time – could certainly
not be described as ‘subtle’, either dramatically or visually. »
24 May 2011
Glorious sunshine for Glyndebourne Opera’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg on the eve of Richard Wagner's birthday. »
23 May 2011
André-Modeste Grétry, the greatest opera composer ever to come from Belgium, made his way to Paris in 1767 at the age of 26. »
23 May 2011
On my travels, I often hear occasional opera-goers complain about having wasted time and money on a production that, on the night, bears no relation to their expectations. »
22 May 2011
This substantial book is one of the latest in the Ashgate series of
collected essays in opera studies and draws together articles from a disparate
group of scholarly journals and collected volumes, some recent, some now
difficult to locate. »
22 May 2011
The Washington National Opera has concluded its 2010-11 season with
Gluck’s 1779 masterpiece Iphigénie en Tauride, arguably the
great Viennese composer’s greatest achievement and his swan song (if one
does not count that unfortunate flop of 1780, Echo et Narcisse —
and luckily, one hardly ever does). »
22 May 2011
James MacMillan has reunited with his librettist, the poet Michael Symmons Roberts, to produce his new opera Clemency. »
21 May 2011
By Leporello’s count (in the “Catalogue aria”), Don
Giovanni tallies over 2,000 sexual exploits. »
21 May 2011
Philipp Stölzl’s production of Benvenuto Cellini, from the 2007 Salzburg Festival, is weird almost beyond belief. »
20 May 2011
Classic films often receive the honor of a full “restoration,” especially when a new viewing format appears. »
20 May 2011
A quarter century having passed since its premiere, Nixon in China appears to have secured a niche in the opera repertoire, at least of American opera houses. »
18 May 2011
Gluck’s Orfeo is, intentionally, free of clutter. If you cut
out the scenes of balletic rejoicing just before the finale (and I can’t
think of any good reason not to do so), it’s less than ninety minutes of
music. »
18 May 2011
There’s a lot to be said for lowered expectations. After last
fall’s cramped, over-busy staging of Das Rheingold, I was
prepared for a rough night at Die Walküre—and enjoyed the
occasion very much, the staging, the direction, most of the singing, even the
costumes. »
09 May 2011
Ariadne auf Naxos, the next major endeavor of the Richard Strauss/Hugo von Hofmannsthal collaboration after Der Rosenkavalier in 1911, has been a special challenge for American opera companies. »
09 May 2011
Terry Gilliam was one of the forces behind Monty Python, the popular British TV comedy of the 1970’s. His fans will flock in droves to his version of Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust at the ENO, London. »
29 Apr 2011
For the second time in a matter of just a few weeks, the Wigmore Hall
audience were treated to an evening of seventeenth-century song and dance. »
29 Apr 2011
Rigoletto is the perfect opera. Even Verdi, who wrote so many
wonderful scores, never created anything more flawless. »
29 Apr 2011
Saturday, April 23 was indeed a rainy afternoon in New York City. »
24 Apr 2011
It has long been my belief that the problems of the planet would be resolved
(or move on to their next stage) if only the folk of every ethnicity (nation,
faith, historic minority, tribe) would devote their energy to creating
opera—and perhaps theater or dance—out of its musical and mythical
traditions. »
22 Apr 2011
It’s hard to go wrong with The Magic Flute. Mozart’s
final opera contains every audience-pleasing feature in spades: beautiful
music, a fairy tale story, romance, laughter, villains, heroes/heroines, and
for most — a happy ending. »
22 Apr 2011
There’s more Byron than Brontë in Bernard Herrmann’s 1951
Wuthering Heights. »
22 Apr 2011
By the time he emerged from retirement with Otello, his
twenty-seventh opera, at 73, there wasn’t much Giuseppe Verdi
didn’t know about how to make an orchestra do his bidding, set the mood
of each line of a good story, piling excitement on excitement and letting the
tension mutate to something gentler at the right times in order to make the
outburst to follow the more demoniac. »
22 Apr 2011
To enter into David DiChiera’s space as he talks opera shop is to risk
being pulled into his world, rapt by a tractor beam emitting a constant flow of
music theater load. »
22 Apr 2011
Trust Winnipeg’s resourceful Little Opera Company to come up with a little known, yet charmingly entertaining spring production. »
19 Apr 2011
In Lyric Opera of Chicago’s new production of Handel’s
Hercules there is an undeniable interpretive strategy which prompts
the viewer to consider recurring elements of human emotion, e.g. jealousy,
rage, pity, among others. »
19 Apr 2011
They all wrote songs — lots of them: Ives, Bernstein, Rorem. In recital, however, the American product has never found a place on the perch claimed by Schubert and Schumann. »
19 Apr 2011
The most remarkable aspects of this fresh, illuminating performance of
Schubert’s Winterreise by Ian Bostridge and Mitsuko Uchida were the masterly control of dramatic form and the insightful, quite original, shaping of emotional content. »
19 Apr 2011
The very name Mantovani strikes musical terror in the hearts of high minded Americans and Brits of a certain age. Now the same surname is evidently terrorizing Parisians. »
18 Apr 2011
In Russian-speaking countries, Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride is much loved. In the west, it’s known mainly for its Overture. The Royal Opera House’s production is the first major production of the full opera in Britain. »
14 Apr 2011
In Britain, Katarina Karnéus is closely associated with Grieg and Sibelius. Indeed, her career has almost been defined by her recordings of their songs for Hyperion. »
13 Apr 2011
In those dark days before VCR and DVD, knowledgeable film buffs craved the
return of Solaris and Stalker to a local art house screen. »
13 Apr 2011
A Frenchman, three Germans and a Venezuelan-born French national: musical responses to Venice. »
08 Apr 2011
“Show goes on despite fresh bomb scare”. Not exactly the sort of
headline a new opera company might have dreamt of for its inaugural production. »
06 Apr 2011
Richard Strauss, nearly eighty years old and past caring what anybody
thought (Pauline aside), ignored the Second World War happening just down the
street and collaborated with his longtime conductor Clemens Krauss in an arch
libretto about the feud for primacy between poetry and music, concluding with
their synthesis in opera. »
04 Apr 2011
New York City Opera’s evening of “Monodramas” (under that
general title) may not appeal to the opera-goer who prefers such typical fare as the company’s other offering this week, Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’amore, but I found it a devilish and delightful exploration of the depths of inner consciousness. »
04 Apr 2011
Donizetti described to his father the premiere cast of L’Elisir in terms of lukewarm praise—the tenor only “passable” the soprano’s voice “pretty” and the bass “a little hammy.” »
04 Apr 2011
In this intriguing and unpredictable recital, American countertenor, Lawrence Zazzo, and his accompanist, Simon Lepper, presented a dynamic sequence of American song from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. »
04 Apr 2011
Proof that literalism isn’t truth: Jürgen Flimm’s production of Beethoven’s Fidelio, first heard at the Met and at the Royal Opera House, London in 2007. »
03 Apr 2011
Florian Boesch and Malcolm Martineau gave the finest recital so far in the Wigmore Hall’s decade by decade series of German Song. »
03 Apr 2011
Victorien Sardou wrote the melodrama La Tosca, a play subject to
all sorts of incidental drama and off-stage intrigue, for Sarah Bernhardt. »
29 Mar 2011
Benedict Andrews’ thought-provoking new production of Claudio
Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, the latest of
English National Opera’s innovative stagings at the Young Vic, juxtaposes
images of unremitting modernity with a tapestry of archaic aural colours, all
placed within an antique frame which resonates with universal emotions. »
28 Mar 2011
Rossini’s penultimate stage work, Le Comte Ory, belongs to
the tradition of sexy scoundrel operas, along with such works as Don
Giovanni, Zampa, Fra Diavolo, Barbe-Bleu,
Les Brigands and Threepenny Opera. »
27 Mar 2011
Adapting an extended literary work for the stage remains a challenge today
and was no less so in the baroque era. Ariosto’s enormously long poem
Orlando Furioso was extremely popular and inevitably his highly
coloured characters found their way onto the operatic stage. »
24 Mar 2011
Opera is alive and well in Sarasota. “It feels like it did before,” says Communications Officer for Sarasota Opera Patricia Horwell. »
23 Mar 2011
An operatic work by an esteemed composer, with a libretto adapted from a great author’s story, staged in an intelligent and well-designed production, featuring singers of the top caliber and a conductor with a deep commitment to the composer’s music, leading a chamber-sized group of his orchestra’s best players — magic in the opera house, right? »
23 Mar 2011
This is an opera written with a cannon and a feather. There is sensory
overload—an overload of sensory overload: lights that shine into your face in
the manner of an ophthalmologist scanning your retina; eerie, too-loud sounds
that invade you from every direction; dancing patterns of light that may
resolve into huge words or huge faces; a great chandelier-harp that sometimes
descends to be played, a strumming like the sounds of the sirens in Plato’s
parable of the concentric crystalline spheres. »
23 Mar 2011
With voices of doom predicting the end of the CD format — supposedly to be replaced by downloading — the ancillary art of CD packaging also faces a grim future. »
18 Mar 2011
Vincenzo Bellini’s operas are pure bel canto, with beautiful singing placed above all other considerations. »
18 Mar 2011
Is Guy Joosten’s staging of Roméo et Juliette the
best-looking production in the Met’s current repertory or what? »
16 Mar 2011
It was, of course, only a coincidence, but a week of ideal spring weather — no rain and low humidity — found Shanghai in a perfect mood for an all-Mahler program by the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra on March 12. »
15 Mar 2011
Tchaikovsky’s Pikovaia Dama (The Queen of Spades) is the longest Mad Scene in opera. Ghermann is already half nuts when we meet him in the park in St. Petersburg on a windy day, and he gets crazier from scene to scene. »
15 Mar 2011
Strict courtly hierarchies and the repressed formality of ritual juxtaposed
with violent sexual jealousy and lurid erotic excess … a stage-world
more suited to the Straussian insalubrity of Salomé than to the epic
grandeur of Verdi’s Aida, perhaps? »
15 Mar 2011
It costs a lot to look cheap. And it takes a village to raise a child. In
the case of the Metropolitan Opera’s current revival of Donizetti’s
Lucia di Lammermoor, it takes a lot of talent to produce underwhelming
opera. »
12 Mar 2011
A major label release of a new studio recording of a full opera — with the traditional booklet/libretto — wanders onto the scene almost like a lost and lonely unicorn. »
10 Mar 2011
A key measure of operatic star power is the ability to get an obscure work staged — think Joan Sutherland and her run in Massenet’s Esclarmonde, an outlandish wallow in orchestral excess ladled over a libretto of unfathomable goofiness. »
10 Mar 2011
Francesco Maria Piave’s Italian libretto for Giuseppe Verdi’s
opera La Traviata is based on the French play La Dame aux
Camélias. »
10 Mar 2011
Commanding soprano performances of put-upon heroines securely anchored two recent evenings at the Bastille Opera House.
»
09 Mar 2011
Interesting recordings continue to be produced in the classical music business by smaller labels with particular niche markets. For the label Timpani, their specialty tends to be rarer French repertoire. »
09 Mar 2011
After hearing his stunning Leporello at Glyndebourne and his Figaro at Salzburg, there was no way I was going to miss Luca Pisaroni’s concert with Wolfram Rieger at the Wigmore Hall, London. But I was delighted by how wonderful he sounded close up in recital. »
06 Mar 2011
Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites is an unusual opera, but much sensitive musical thinking has gone into this production at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London. »
06 Mar 2011
Eugène Scribe and Giacomo Meyerbeer were in the business of creating
proto-cinematic spectacles of drama and music, the formula being to take a historical incident in some exotic country or era, put in a tormented love story to hold our attention, and resolve the whole in catastrophe. »
06 Mar 2011
The front leg of the grand piano may rest at a rather precarious angle, and
the out-sized martini glass lean a trifle askew, but Jonathan Miller’s
1986 production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado wears its
twenty-five years lightly — as do Stefanos Lazaridis’
eye-wateringly white, gleaming sets. »
06 Mar 2011
Relaxed, confident and composed, baritone Roderick Williams, accompanied by
pianist Helmut Deutsch, gave a polished and performance before a warmly
appreciative Wigmore Hall audience, performing an interesting selection of
songs by Wolf, Korngold, Mahler and Schumann. »
06 Mar 2011
Little is known about the extent to which Mozart and Da Ponte collaborated on the libretto for Così fan tutte. »
06 Mar 2011
Schubert, but not quite as we know him. You can always rely on the Wigmore Hall to promote adventurous recitals. »
06 Mar 2011
Ariadne on Naxos, or you could call it Bacchus á Bordeaux. It was an orgy of art. »
05 Mar 2011
Neither the music nor the libretto of Charles Gounod’s Roméo et
Juliette is quite compelling enough to have made it a popular standard. »
27 Feb 2011
Gluck’s operas are part of a continuum, a tradition of French vocal
declamation (as opposed to the Italian school of flights of elegant,
open-throated vocal fantasy) that can be traced to him from Lully and Rameau,
and then from Gluck through certain works of Mozart and Gluck’s pupil,
Salieri to the operas of Spontini, Berlioz and Wagner. »
23 Feb 2011
György Kurtág's Kafka Fragments, op 24, is a masterpiece, one of the seminal works of the late 20th century. »
22 Feb 2011
In the mid-nineteenth century, every nationality that did not possess a
national state felt a need to prove itself, to square its shoulders and claim
nationhood with all the identifying marks of a nation: a language with a
literature, a tricolor flag, a national anthem extolling the people’s
stalwart character and the country’s landscape (inevitably the loveliest
in the world), a national theater and a national opera to be performed there. »
21 Feb 2011
Der zerbrochene Krug is a very short opera by Viktor Ullmann, based on a comedy by Kleist, concerning the fall of man. »
20 Feb 2011
The first performance of Thomas Arne’s masque Alfred took
place at Clivedon House on the Thames near Maidenhead, in August 1740. »
20 Feb 2011
This production retains a special place in my heart: its first outing in
1999 was my first Parsifal in the theatre. Saving up my student
pennies, I made the journey not once but twice from Cambridge to London, was
mightily impressed the first time and a little irritated the second. »
18 Feb 2011
From the sublime (Parsifal, the night before) to the not-even-ridiculous. »
17 Feb 2011
The story is ages old, and every culture has a version of it: the mythic
princess of an underwater realm longs for the love of a mortal man. »
15 Feb 2011
Massenet tells us that his Werther is 23 years old, that Charlotte is 20 years old. Albert is 25 and Sophie is but 15. Just now the Lyon Opera assembled just such a cast. »
15 Feb 2011
At the moment, it seems inevitable that John Adams’ 1987 opera Nixon in China will become a fixture in the repertoire. »
12 Feb 2011
Romeo Castellucci is the cat’s whisker of current avant-garde theater directors. Thus it has simply been a matter of time before he would be invited to the Monnaie to stage an opera. »
11 Feb 2011
Although Paris Opéra's Dream Team of soprano Natalie Dessay and director Laurent Pelly promised much for the SRO run of Giulio Cesare in Egitto, for the moment we will have to keep dreaming of what might have been.
»
08 Feb 2011
Witty and airy as an after-dinner anecdote over biscuits and cognac, Don
Pasquale (1844) is, unlikely as it may seem, almost the last opera Donizetti
completed before his descent into the madness of tertiary syphilis. »
07 Feb 2011
In 2010, Florida Grand Opera held a gala to honor Robert Heuer on his 25th
anniversary as general director. »
07 Feb 2011
Preparing for the Met premier of Nixon in China, I resolved to
forget—or place on hold—everything I remembered, or thought I
remembered, about the real persons who are characters in this opera, »
07 Feb 2011
The original story that formed the basis for the libretto of Puccini’s
opera Turandot told of a Mongolian princess who insisted that any
prospective husband endeavor to win a wrestling match with her. »
06 Feb 2011
It’s a rare recital that can be at one and the same time intensely
intimate and extravagantly exuberant, but that’s just what Magdalena
Kozená and the eight-piece Austrian ensemble Private Musicke achieved in this
fascinating and exhilarating concert, which brought a thrill of passion,
spontaneity and excitement to the usually more restrained and rarified
atmosphere of the Wigmore Hall. »
06 Feb 2011
If you are ever lucky enough to have the opportunity to catch a great exponent of just one of two major roles — the heroines or villains — in Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann, you should secure a seat maintenant. »
06 Feb 2011
If proof were needed, the Swiss capital’s heady new Le Comte Ory cements the notion that super-star Cecelia Bartoli certainly seems to have found an ideal home at Zurich Opera. »
06 Feb 2011
Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic have repeated their success with Mahler’s Das klagende Lied at the Royal Festival Hall. »
06 Feb 2011
Premiered in 2003, and aired again in 2005 and 2008, this current revival of David McVicar’s Die Zauberflöte brings many ‘old hands’ back together to re-visit oft-frequented roles on familiar ground. »
06 Feb 2011
The production of Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking currently on
stage at the Houston Grand Opera is marvelously celebratory in its success. »
06 Feb 2011
Carl Marie von Weber’s magical masterpiece has had a hard time of it in France. »
04 Feb 2011
Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia at the English National Opera, London, is an interesting hybrid. The opera is performed “straight” so to speak, but encased in a frame of short filmed passages that add background and depth. These films don’t intrude, but enhance. »
03 Feb 2011
Yoav Gal, an Israeli-born composer-in-residence at the HERE arts complex in
Manhattan’s South Village, calls Mosheh a “VideOpera,” rightly giving as much place to what is seen (electronic projections) as to what is heard (from four sopranos playing the women in the prophet’s life and an orchestra of nine musicians). »
02 Feb 2011
Albéric Magnard, inspired to abandon the law for music by a visit to Bayreuth in 1886, was wealthy enough to ignore the public and go off on his own to compose. »
02 Feb 2011
It’s a joy to watch an athlete finding her legs, especially when you
know she’ll achieve her feat superbly, matchlessly, with supreme grace. I
first heard Sutherland sing I Puritani (three times) during the famous
Met run of 1976. »
02 Feb 2011
This looked an enticing programme before Vladimir Jurowski, in conversation
with the Southbank Centre’s Head of Music, Marshall Marcus, divulged its
secrets. »
02 Feb 2011
In its current production of Giacomo Puccini’s La fanciulla del West Lyric Opera of Chicago celebrates the centenary of the first performances of the opera. »
01 Feb 2011
The 2010-2011 season for Minnesota Opera is steeped in Bel Canto
opera selections, starting with Rossini’s Cenerentola this fall, currently featuring Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda, and for the spring, a production of Verdi’s La Traviata with acclaimed Violetta, Elizabeth Futral. »
01 Feb 2011
A few years ago, a certain major newspaper boasted a music critic who could not bring himself either to take opera seriously or to deny himself the opportunity to review it. »
01 Feb 2011
Issued together, this set includes recordings from two different times, with Mahler’s First Symphony based on performances from 10, 11, and 23 March 2003, and the Ninth from performances between 1 and 3 June 2006. »
31 Jan 2011
Mark Adamo’s opera, based on the famous novel by Louisa May Alcott,
contains one extraordinary scene, a model of how to adapt fiction into opera. »
28 Jan 2011
A recent news report on entertainment technology noted that sales of “regular” DVDs had plummeted in recent years, while the newer Blu-Ray format has seen substantial increases. »
24 Jan 2011
Appearing on Palm Beach Opera’s website video player General Director
Daniel Biaggi points out among the reasons to attend the first show of the
company’s 2010-2011 season, “fantastic artists whose voices will
blow you away.” »
24 Jan 2011
In my July 2009 review of the first revival of Moshe Leiser’s and
Patrice Caurier’s 2005 production of Il barbiere di Siviglia I
commented that the directors, aided by conductor, Antonio Pappano, had
reinvigorated this operatic ‘old friend’, injecting freshness and
spontaneity into familiar material. »
19 Jan 2011
Based on performances give between 3 and 5 November 2005 at Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, the recent release of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony is an excellent addition to the discography of this work. »
19 Jan 2011
The Royal Opera at Covent Garden has hit on a way to revitalize a vintage production — hire a fresh cast of virtually unknown singers. »
19 Jan 2011
Arms swinging loosely at his side, a relaxed smile and bright eyes conveying
his confident ease, James Gilchrist’s young wanderer bounded nimbly onto
the stage at the Wigmore Hall, radiating and embodying the fresh
optimism of spring, at the start of this technically assured and dramatically
coherent performance of Schubert’s song cycle, Die schöne
Müllerin. »
18 Jan 2011
A recent addition to Valery Gergiev’s Mahler cycle with the London Symphony Orchestra, the SACD recording of the Third Symphony has much to recommend. »
16 Jan 2011
The dust on 65th Street is clearing up and the reviews for the renovated Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts are in — the piazza is being hailed as newly “inviting” by architects and arts critics alike, and rightly so. »
16 Jan 2011
They have been fiddling with Luc Bondy’s staging of Tosca. Scarpia doesn’t masturbate on the Madonna; he just sort of pinches her erotically. »
16 Jan 2011
Since he first came to notice a few years ago — in Messiah in this very hall, as Creonte at Covent Garden, and as Arsace in Partenope at New York City Opera, to name by a few recently acclaimed performances — many a starry accolade has been heaped upon young Welsh countertenor, Iestyn Davies: “achingly beautiful tone”,“unforgettable focus and poignancy” and “compelling sense of rhetoric” are typical of the bountiful superlatives. »
11 Jan 2011
This beautifully realized production of Verdi’s somber masterpiece of political intrigue and father/daughter reconciliation could be a complete success except for one missing element — memorable singing. »
11 Jan 2011
There is more than one way to skin a cat. »
09 Jan 2011
Long-dormant operas sometimes rise to meet a new dawn only to then slink away like the creatures of the night they were doomed to be — seductive but dangerous to approach. »
09 Jan 2011
Vincent Giroud’s valuable new French Opera, a Short History, is in hand and very welcome it is. »
07 Jan 2011
Wagner and Verdi were born within 6 months of each other. Rienzi, der letzte der Tribunen comes from 1840, and could in some ways be Wagner’s Simon Boccanegra. »
05 Jan 2011
In its production this season of Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera
Lyric Opera of Chicago has staged the work in its original locale at the royal
court of Sweden. »
31 Dec 2010
Some years ago a witty soul coined the term “jumping the shark” to identify the point at which any long-running television program had exploited all its innate story/character development possibilities and had to resort to ridiculous plot contrivances and spectacle to keep the episodes — and paychecks — coming. »
31 Dec 2010
The Royal Opera at Covent Garden just made something of a splash in international opera news with a star-encrusted revival of an opera once quite popular and yet in recent years — Francesco Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur. »
31 Dec 2010
At the end of November Los Angeles Opera brought two productions to the stage of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. »
31 Dec 2010
Pelléas et Mélisande, Debussy’s impressionist drama closely
based on Maeterlinck’s eerie, symbolist play, is not a terribly vocal opera; it calls more for the subtlety of art song style than the belting of great divas and divos. »
28 Dec 2010
Once a preserve of opulent traditional productions, the summer Salzburg Festival has become a destination for viewing more cutting edge stagings. »
27 Dec 2010
New recordings of classical music don’t appear from the “big labels” very often these days, but those companies have enormous libraries from which to extract selections for compilation discs. »
19 Dec 2010
It may have been five years since Susan Bullock last performed at the Wigmore Hall, as her prominence on the world operatic stage has taken her away from the recital hall, but she wasted no time getting into her stride in this charming and musically varied concert. »
19 Dec 2010
La Fanciulla del West is Puccini’s love letter to an America that had acclaimed him joyously on his triumphant visit of 1907 to attend the Met premieres of Manon Lescaut and Madama Butterfly. »
15 Dec 2010
Badisches Staastheater’s production of Tosca starts off with a bang.
»
14 Dec 2010
No one could accuse the Paris Opera of pinching pennies (or Euro cents) in their lavishly expansive (and expensive) staging of Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler.
»
14 Dec 2010
The Royal Opera House itself is the star of this new production of Richard Wagner Tannhäuser. An intriguing twist on an opera that pits orgiastic excess against purity, pleasure against morality. »
12 Dec 2010
Johann Adolph Hasse (1699-1783) was arguably the most successful opera composer of the 18th century. Together with his favourite librettist, Pietro Metastasio, Hasse defined the genre of opera seria for an entire generation. »
11 Dec 2010
Perhaps the most unexpected occurrence of the evening was the malfunction of the Act I-Act II set change. »
11 Dec 2010
The opening night of the new season at Teatro alla Scala Milan is a gala event, the most glamorous in the entire Italian opera year. »
11 Dec 2010
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Emmanuel Schikaneder had known each other for some time before they wrote The Magic Flute. »
11 Dec 2010
Cecilia Bartoli is something of a phenomenon, capable of attracting an enthusiastic capacity crowd. »
06 Dec 2010
The Barbican’s Great Performers season often acts as a receiving house for continental opera productions, thus giving us in London a chance to hear interesting performances without actually having to travel. »
06 Dec 2010
Transplanting Britten’s Shakespeare opera to an Indian setting seems at first an illogical step by Hollywood director Baz Luhrmann. »
03 Dec 2010
With its tricky ‘orientalist’ connotations, Singspiel-originating spoken dialogue, not to mention the problem of finding five outstanding singers who can cope with the considerable demands of the solo roles (and the commercial challenge presented by the need to pay a chorus who sing barely a few bars of music), Mozart’s Die Entführung aus den Serail does not receive as many stagings as it deserves. »
03 Dec 2010
In a seamless realization with an ideal cast Lyric Opera of Chicago celebrates the magical antics and foibles of both human and fairy in its premiere production of Benjamin Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. »
03 Dec 2010
It may be as well to put matters in context by saying that Don Carlo is a
favorite opera of mine (and of all Verdi lovers), and that I found the Met’s new staging highly satisfactory, vocally very good if less than top flight, orchestrally thrilling—and that I hope to catch it again this
season. (Interesting rumors have been heard about the alternate tenor.) »
01 Dec 2010
Philip Glass has achieved a level of success that places him in a very select group of composers of serious music. »
29 Nov 2010
Not revived too frequently this 1991 production by Elijah Moshinsky updates the story to the 1960s and the films of Federico Fellini inspire the sets and costumes. »
29 Nov 2010
Neil Armfield’s insightful staging of Le nozze di Figaro is making a welcome return in the lead-up to his direction of the Ring Cycle for the Wagner bi-centenary 2013 (the first complete cycle staged in Melbourne in a century). »
23 Nov 2010
Three cheers — at the very least — for the English National Opera! »
23 Nov 2010
What some people won’t do for a standing ovation! Saturday night at the opera was a showcase of excesses. »
21 Nov 2010
Two months into the current season, after a string of so-so revivals and a curiosity which deserved to be box-office dynamite but wasn’t, the Royal Opera has finally got round to a star-studded new production. »
20 Nov 2010
Just now in San Francisco Finnish soprano Karita Mattila kicked ass as Janáček’s 337 year old Elina Makropulos.* »
19 Nov 2010
On Saturday November 13 and Sunday November 14, 2010, Arizona Opera presented Bernard Uzan’s rather different take on Bizet’s Carmen. »
19 Nov 2010
As I strolled around the corner into Piazza Verdi, my first view of Palermo’s Teatro Massimo Vittorio Emanuele stopped me dead in my tracks and damn near took my breath away.
»
18 Nov 2010
Ondine provides a nice bonus for fans of Karita Mattila in its recent DVD release of a 2006 Helsinki recital with accompanist Martin Katz. »
18 Nov 2010
Can Haiku be improved by staging? György Kurtág's Kafka-Fragmente (op. 24), is a masterpiece of zen-like purity. »
11 Nov 2010
Our modern globalized perspective makes us alert to the cultural richness of difference, much as it ironically also seems to blur distinctions with ease of access. »
10 Nov 2010
The commemorate the sesquicentennial of Mahler’s birth in 1860, EMI has released an exceptional set of its recordings in a single box. »
08 Nov 2010
A career of the highest stature earns the professional the right to do as she or he pleases, after decades of dedicated achievement. »
08 Nov 2010
There’s nothing wrong with updating an opera as long as the director,
designer and conductor share an understanding of the work’s principal ideas and motivations, conflicts and contexts, and have a clear vision of how they intend to communicate these in a new setting. »
08 Nov 2010
It’s difficult to be reasonable about Il Trovatore. Reason is the last quality we expect from any of its characters or situations. »
07 Nov 2010
Minnesota Opera’s recent production of Rossini’s La Cenerentola certainly is a fantastical, comical portrayal of the classical fairy tale. »
07 Nov 2010
Pace Tolstoy, happy marriages are not all alike, but they
require a lot of work. »
07 Nov 2010
Angelika Kirchschlager and Malcolm Martineau at the Wigmore Hall showed what real Lieder singing should be. »
03 Nov 2010
The small but perfectly formed Grosvenor Chapel in London’s exclusive Mayfair was the venue last Monday night for a programme of Handel vocal and instrumental music of considerable quality — if minimal quantity. »
03 Nov 2010
For its second production of the current season Lyric Opera of Chicago has staged a modified revival of its Carmen under the direction of Harvey Silverstein. »
02 Nov 2010
After a rather lean 2009, the 59th Wexford Festival Opera season almost felt
like a return to generous days of old. »
02 Nov 2010
Franco Alfano’s Cyrano de Bergerac at the San Francisco Opera has little chance of measuring up to a Cyrano standard once set here in Fog City. »
02 Nov 2010
Haydn’s L’isola disabitata is ideally suited to the modern taste for chamber opera. This is Haydn for those who think they don’t like his operas or even baroque form. »
01 Nov 2010
Clearly, there isn’t one. Yet, Carl Heinrich Graun’s 1755
rarely-performed Montezuma is of special importance in a country
celebrating 200 years of Independence from Spanish rule and 100 years since the
Revolution that ultimately toppled dictator Porfirio Díaz. »
29 Oct 2010
A great vintage Mercury album of Antal Dorati conducting Wagner overtures and preludes featured as a cover a close-up of a medieval chalice, undoubtedly meant to reference the Parsifal excerpt on the enclosed disc. »
29 Oct 2010
“Don’t I have the coolest job in the world?” said Steven Blier. »
28 Oct 2010
We all come to the opera for different things. To escape, to elevate, to laugh, to cry, or perhaps because someone else bought the tickets. »
27 Oct 2010
Charles Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette is almost more musical than opera. Everyone knows the story, and it would be hard to compete with Shakespeare. Gounod wisely focused on music, rather than drama. »
24 Oct 2010
The last curtain call at the opera usually goes to the title character, the star of the work just performed. At the end of the Met’s new Boris Godunov, the calls begin with a solo call for the title character, René Pape as Boris, and conclude with one for the Metropolitan Opera Chorus all by themselves. »
24 Oct 2010
On 16 October 2010 in Tucson, Arizona Opera opened it’s 2010-2011
season with an operetta, The Pirates of Penzance, by W. S. Gilbert and
Arthur Sullivan. »
24 Oct 2010
It’s every opera director’s nightmare. »
24 Oct 2010
The fall opera season in San Francisco has been dealt a wild card — Jerry Springer, The Opera! Not exactly material for SF’s august opera company . . . »
24 Oct 2010
The 50th anniversary of the Metropolitan Opera at the Lincoln Center is just a few years away, so, with something less than dispatch, a DVD of the 25th anniversary Gala appears. »
24 Oct 2010
An American opera house premieres a new work by a Mexico-born composer, to his own libretto in Spanish based on a film in Italian by an English director about an unlikely friendship the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda found when in exile on a small Italian island. »
24 Oct 2010
ENO clearly expect high returns from Jonathan Miller’s La Bohème. »
24 Oct 2010
“One of the most beautiful sets I have ever seen,” crows San Francisco Opera general director David Gockley over the airwaves, “directed by Broadway legend Hal Prince.” »
24 Oct 2010
Paris Opéra’s L’Italiana in Algeri had a lot going for it, including a star mezzo in her local debut, so why was I resistant to its merits? »
24 Oct 2010
Kirsten Flagstad’s voice remains connected to the music of Richard Wagner through the recordings that continue to bring her performances to new audiences. »
21 Oct 2010
In sports they say, “Winning isn’t the most important
thing—it’s the only thing.” In the theater, getting the show
on the boards out front is the key. »
17 Oct 2010
The “popular” Handel is firmly entrenched in the collective
culture with a handful of pieces: the Christmas portion of Messiah,
the “Largo” from Serse (in fact, “Larghetto,”
but collective culture is hard to convince), and instrumental suites of the
Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks come
immediately to mind. »
16 Oct 2010
Jephtha was Handel’s last work — he went blind while
composing it, noting this on the manuscript, and though he lived another seven
years, did not deign to dictate new music. »
16 Oct 2010
Dame Joan Sutherland, ‘La Stupenda’, sang her first Gilda at Covent
Garden in 1957 under the baton of Sir Edward Downes, and sang the role many times and to great acclaim on the ROH stage. »
13 Oct 2010
A successful production of Verdi’s Macbeth relies not only on
incisive vocal characterization as projected by Macbeth and Lady Macbeth but
also on the interaction of these lead figures in order to vivify their descent
into a world of destruction. »
13 Oct 2010
With its playbill half-empty, its general director Placido Domingo
resigning, and the talk of a takeover by the Kennedy Center, Washington
National Opera is in a dire need of good news this season. »
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. »
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. »
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) »
17 Apr 2010
Had John Carpenter come up with the “beheading” of John the Baptist, it might have not been too much different from the effect we endured in the new Salome produced by the Heidelberg City Theatre. »
11 Apr 2010
Thoughtfully devised by Iain Burnside, this recital juxtaposed ballad with
art song, pastoral with love lyric, dark with light, mournful with carefree. An
imaginative sequence of songs, woven together according to linking themes,
confirmed that Ireland truly is a ‘land of song’. »
11 Apr 2010
One of the City Opera’s happiest ventures over the years has been their Handel series. »
11 Apr 2010
An anti-facist, anti-war opera written in Germany while the Nazis were in power? K A Hartmann’s Des Simplicius Simplicissimus Jugend was a brave act of conscience, even though the opera wasn't publicly performed until 1948. »
06 Apr 2010
The boo’s were boisterous when director/designer Achim Freyer came on stage at the end of Götterdämmerung in Los Angeles’ Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on April 3. »
05 Apr 2010
It may be possible that there is no more effervescent entertainment on stage
in London now than the tirelessly clever revival of Il Turco in
Italia now playing at the Royal Opera House. »
03 Apr 2010
Design is rotten in Denmark, evidently — and in every other grand
opera locale. “Palace” has come to mean “high school
basement,” or that’s what they look like. “Royal” is
synonymous with sleazy men in suits. »
03 Apr 2010
Much of the fascination of the new DVD of Verdi’s Falstaff (Glyndebourne 2009) lies in the Richard Jones’s updating: the action takes place in 1946. »
01 Apr 2010
There are two reasons why you need to see the new Otello DVD (Salzburg Festival 2008).
»
29 Mar 2010
Once again, as in L’Etoile, Mark Lamos’s staging and
Robert Wierzel’s lighting nearly steal the show in the City Opera’s
revival of Madama Butterfly. »
28 Mar 2010
Many congratulations and thanks are in order to the Collegiate Chorale for
bringing Ricky Ian Gordon’s adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath to New York audiences this week. »
28 Mar 2010
Unlike instrumental players, singers “are” their instrument. They aren't machines. Performance is affected by many shifting factors, which need to be understood. »
28 Mar 2010
Angels in America, Peter Eötvös’s opera based on the Tony Kushner plays, received its London premiere. This was very high profile. David Robertson conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a performance that will be broadcast internationally, online on www.bbc.co.uk/radio3. »
27 Mar 2010
Premiered on 15 April 2008, The Minotaur is Harrison Birtwistle’s latest opera, and it stands well with the composer’s other stage work. »
26 Mar 2010
Mark Lamos’ production of Chabrier’s L’Etoile is
perfectly ridiculous. »
25 Mar 2010
At one point in her career, Eva Marton appeared poised to be the true inheritor of Birgit Nilsson’s legacy roles: Wagner and Strauss’s most dramatic heroines, as well as key Italian roles (Puccini in particular). »
23 Mar 2010
Genoveva and Lohengrin both premiered in the summer of 1850. Wagner disparaged Schumann, as he disparaged Mendelssohn (Schumann’s hero). Wagner’s opinions were influential. Genoveva has been eclipsed, saddled with a reputation for being hard to stage. »
22 Mar 2010
Yes, the complete Ring des Nibelungen currently on stage at Dresden’s Semper Opera qualifies as Regieoper, but it’s Regieoper with a twist. »
22 Mar 2010
It was a bit of intrigue that recalled the Wagners at home back in Bayreuth’s Haus Wahnfried. »
21 Mar 2010
An enchanting evening at Covent Garden: »
17 Mar 2010
It takes some courage these days for an opera company to program a Gian Carlo Menotti opera. Nonetheless last month the Opéra de Marseille defied current sensibilities to give us a new production of The Saint of Bleecker Street. »
17 Mar 2010
Les Troyens is the noblest grand opera ever composed by a Frenchman, one of those desert-island works of which it is impossible to tire because its depths can never be completely sounded. »
17 Mar 2010
Advertised as ‘ A night of powerful music with today’s superstars,’ Arizona Opera’s concert of opera arias definitely lived up to those words. »
17 Mar 2010
Anguished, lacerating, irredeemably tragic, David Alden’s new production of Katya Kabanova presents a drama of unalleviated suffering and unremitting bleakness. »
17 Mar 2010
Five years after the première of Pelléas et Mélisande, Wilhelm
Worringer published the twentieth century’s first great treatise on
abstraction in art: »
17 Mar 2010
For many, the fine recordings of Richard Strauss’s tone poem Don Juan by the late Karl Böhm seem to have emerged full-spring from the baton of Karl Böhm and the playing of the various orchestras he led. »
17 Mar 2010
Philip Glass's Satyagraha at the English National Opera, at the Coliseum, London, proves that modern minimalism can be extraordinarily moving. The secret is to open your soul, as Gandhi did, when he searched the Baghavad-Gita for inspiration.
»
15 Mar 2010
A silvery tree stretched its gnarled branches across the moonlit stage, and from the briar and bush spiky, feathered fairies wriggled and crept, intent on mischief and malevolence. »
12 Mar 2010
When the orchestra re-tuned itself between the intermissionless acts of the Met premiere of The Nose last week, many in the audience were uncertain whether they were hearing practice or prelude. »
11 Mar 2010
The curtain rises on an enormous pile of crumbling reinforced concrete,
broken wires sticking out every which way – an image that has replaced
(at least in the minds of set designers) the romantic columned or castellated
ruins that thrilled our ancestors, especially around the time, 1846, that Verdi
composed Attila. »
09 Mar 2010
As a medic with a keen knowledge of psychology, Jonathan Miller probably knows a thing or two about elixirs and placebos. »
09 Mar 2010
The global credit crunch, with its painful exposure of the moral and literal
bankruptcy of our own age, provides the perfect backdrop for this new
production of Prokofiev’s The Gambler, the first ever staging of
this opera at The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. »
08 Mar 2010
In its current revival of Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’amore Lyric Opera of Chicago’s production showcases the strengths and foibles of humanity, while assuring the ultimate triumph of love. »
08 Mar 2010
Throughout his relatively long and decidedly successful career, Giacomo Puccini returned to those operas of his that had not, immediately or eventually, secured an important place in the standard repertory. »
08 Mar 2010
This second of two recitals of Schubert songs by Matthias Goerne and Helmut Deutsch at the Wigmore Hall, London was superb, the programme created with exceptional intelligence and insight into the inner dynamics of Schubert’s music. »
08 Mar 2010
Handel’s Tamerlano, in the production by Graham Vick, is well
known, but its run at the Royal Opera House is unusual because many of the cast
are creating the roles for the first time. It isn't a live reprise of the DVD,
but more challenging. »
05 Mar 2010
The Baden State Theatre's new mounting of I Masnadieri may not completely be the production of one’s dreams. »
05 Mar 2010
In this, the first of two recitals with pianist Helmut Deutsch, baritone Matthias Goerne continued his very personal journey through the landscape of Schubert’s lieder, a passage which is currently being preserved on an outstanding series of discs by Harmonia Mundi. »
05 Mar 2010
As the first familiar themes of Ariadne came from the pit, I felt
myself sinking — sinking from a tense, dreary, daily world into a sort of
ecstatic fantasy — a place where all was happy, funny, romantic, inane,
fateful and surprising all at once — Sarah Connolly superb, Kathleen Kim
charming, Nina Stemme full-throated, »
04 Mar 2010
Zürich Opera’s poster for their new production of Idomeneo is a knockout. »
13 Feb 2010
Concert opera has a long and glorious tradition in Montpellier. Each year the Orchestra National de Montpellier regales us with one or two during the Festival de Radio France et Montpellier (July). »
11 Feb 2010
Gluck’s Armide, as semi-staged (costumed dancers but no
scenery) at the Rose Theater by the Washington-based Opera Lafayette, was
exactly what Gluck designed the piece to be: a supremely elegant entertainment. »
10 Feb 2010
Michael Hampe seems to have been the director of choice in the 1980s for tastefully traditional Rossini productions. »
07 Feb 2010
Donizetti’s original concept of Lucia di Lammermoor is revealed in its true glory in this ground breaking production by the English National Opera, first heard in 2008. The opera is loved in its familiar form, but the new critical edition reveals the depth of Donizetti’s musical creation. »
07 Feb 2010
If you want Italian opera go to Italy and hope for the best — like conductor Daniel Oren’s Manon Lescaut two years ago in Genoa. »
04 Feb 2010
For those who might be seeking a representational tale of the legendary Roman slave Spartacus, well, Gladiator this ain’t. »
02 Feb 2010
First seen in 1995, and here receiving its seventh revival, Jonathan Miller’s Così fan tutte has lost none of its power to unsettle and discomfort. »
02 Feb 2010
Parsifal had its first performances in Bayreuth in 1882 where it was soon seen by Wagner’s soul mate Friedrich Nietzsche. And there the friendship ended. »
02 Feb 2010
Gil Shohat, now 35 and Israeli’s top classical composer, was 15 when
in the ‘80s he saw Hanoch Levin’s The Child Dream on stage in his native Tel Aviv. Shohat, of course, knew Levin’s work well, for throughout early decades in the history of Israel he — its outstanding dramatist — had served somewhat as the conscience of a nation tormented defining itself within its pain-wrought beginnings. »
01 Feb 2010
The Wigmore Hall was bursting its seams in excited anticipation of this recital by the American mezzo-soprano, Joyce DiDonato. »
29 Jan 2010
Melodic and scenic gaiety predominates in Lyric Opera of Chicago’s new
production of Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow. »
28 Jan 2010
The Times used to have a music critic who seemed to feel that singing,
especially in costume, didn’t count as serious music, though he reviewed
opera anyway. »
25 Jan 2010
Covent Garden has revived director Robert Lepage’s popular and well-traveled version of The Rake’s Progress with often thrilling results. »
25 Jan 2010
We all wish Henry Purcell had written a few more operas like Dido and
Aeneas — simple to cast, simple to stage, offering endless
possibilities for either reserved or outrageous treatment, attractive to every
sort of audience. »
22 Jan 2010
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, around 1777, the Empress Maria
Theresa used to visit Prince Esterhazy’s summer palace at Esterhàza,
where there was an opera house fully equipped with stage machinery, leading
singers, an orchestra, and a guy named Joseph Haydn to compose on cue. »
22 Jan 2010
While Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936) is best known to modern audiences for his colorful programmatic works associated with Italian locations, his vocal music is also engaging. »
19 Jan 2010
Robert Stuart Thomson’s Italian language learning text, Operatic Italian, promises to become an invaluable textbook for aspiring operatic singers, voice teachers, coaches and conductors. »
18 Jan 2010
Stiffelio was composed just after Luisa Miller — an opera that has had little trouble holding its own in the repertory — and just before the magic trio of Rigoletto, Trovatore and Traviata, the first Verdi operas to take their immediate place on the stages of the world and hold them without a break from that day to this. »
18 Jan 2010
Most musical of mourners, weep anew!
Not all to that bright station dared to climb
And happier they their happiness who knew
Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time »
18 Jan 2010
Concert performances of operas are often problematic in that the work tends to be cut or otherwise played around with, or the venue is inappropriate - after all, these were meant to be staged pieces. »
17 Jan 2010
Elina Garanča conceals her gleaming gold tresses beneath a curly black wig to sing Carmen. »
17 Jan 2010
The Opéra National de Montpellier sometimes rises to artistic heights, and even when it fails its attempts are often interesting. »
14 Jan 2010
Are you sitting comfortably? »
08 Jan 2010
Well into the 1960s, ‘provincial theaters’ were the backbone of Italy’s operatic culture. »
07 Jan 2010
Rare repertory but not truly rare, Massenet’s Cendrillon makes an appearance from time to time. »
29 Dec 2009
David Agler must be feeling a trifle unlucky. Having in 2005 taken over the reins of a flourishing, internationally renowned opera festival, with a stylish new opera house in the planning and the Irish economy booming, his hopes must been high; but in the event the Canadian’s first few years as Artistic Director of the Wexford Festival Opera have been far from plain-sailing. »
18 Dec 2009
The roles Richard Strauss composed for his “chorus” of Five Serving Maids in Elektra — all that remains in the opera of the commentator chorus in Sophocles’ tragedy — are short but arduous. »
18 Dec 2009
Productions of Giuseppe Verdi’s early opera Ernani have become relatively infrequent primarily because of the difficulties of casting the work requiring four demanding roles. »
18 Dec 2009
Exchanging the stage of The Royal Opera House — where he is currently
performing the role of His Highness in Tchaikovsky’s fairy-tale opera,
The Tsarina's Slippers — »
18 Dec 2009
Encountering Frankfurt Opera’s staging of Leoni’s L’Oracolo and Puccini’s Le Villi, I was reminded of that old saw about the German weather. »
18 Dec 2009
It is hard to know where to start to adequately laud Netherlands Opera’s witty new La Fanciulla del West. »
18 Dec 2009
The one thing certain about the judgment of history is that history will change its mind. »
15 Dec 2009
Il Corsaro, the Verdi rarity currently on display at Zürich Opera, is the best of both possible worlds. »
11 Dec 2009
This disc faces a marketplace already crowded with similar compilations from major companies who can raid their archives to offer competitive interpretations at bargain prices. »
11 Dec 2009
Emma Matthews is an English born soprano currently resident in Australia where she has sung with the state based opera companies as well as the national company Opera Australia where she is currently a soloist. »
11 Dec 2009
The Tales of Hoffmann is a cruel piece, for all the wit of the macabre tales on which it is based and the sparkle the dying Offenbach put into his last and grandest score. »
11 Dec 2009
Musically, Australia looks to Britain and Europe, especially for its operatic diet and America’s considerable operatic output has been overlooked. »
10 Dec 2009
In dark, damp December we need good cheer, and Der Rosenkavalier at the Royal Opera House, delivers colour and spectacle. in abundance. It's a revival of the John Schlesinger production from 1884, and somewhat antiquated, but that's no disadvantage, for the passage of time haunts Der Rosenkavalier. »
08 Dec 2009
Spearheaded by a stunning design concept for The Tsarina’s Slippers, London’s Covent Garden served up as delectable a production as could be desired, and introduced its lucky patrons to a jewel of an under-performed comic opera in the bargain. »
06 Dec 2009
For its second production of the 2009-10 season Lyric Opera of Chicago staged a revival of Charles Gounod’s Faust, last seen here in 2003-04. »
04 Dec 2009
The best news about the Met’s eleven-year-old Jonathan Miller
production of Le Nozze di Figaro is that it has been restaged by
Gregory Keller, more tautly spun, many elegant jokes or character moments
inserted, several idiocies discarded and with plenty of room remaining for
singers with a flair for it (such as Luca Pisaroni and Isabel Leonard) to
invent comic business of their own. »
02 Dec 2009
Sir Peter Hall created this production of Otello at Chicago Lyric Opera in 2001. »
01 Dec 2009
ENO did not exactly ‘import a choir of Heathens’ to encourage the Shaws of this world to ‘hasten’ to its version of ‘Messiah’ ‘if only to witness the delight of the public and the discomfiture of the critics,’ the contribution of ‘Heathens’ in musical terms being limited to representing the populace of an initially grey Britain (or so I assume) but for every critic who was discomfited — most of us — there were hundreds of audience members who loved it, so it’s fairly safe to predict a considerable hit. »
30 Nov 2009
Mark Padmore and The English Concert took us on a journey from the dark depths of melancholy to the ethereal transcendence of joy, in a display of consummate artistry at the Wigmore Hall. »
27 Nov 2009
The question that puzzled me when attending Esther was Why. »
24 Nov 2009
Ralph Locke’s recent book on Musical Exoticism is both an historical survey of aspects of the exotic in Western musical culture and a discussion of paradigms of the exotic and their relevance for musicological understanding. »
24 Nov 2009
Like most opera companies, the Mozart/da Ponte trifecta of Figaro,
Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte are central to Opera
Australia’s repertoire. »
24 Nov 2009
There was a certain inevitability about the build-up to Iestyn Davies’ recital at the Wigmore Hall in London last Wednesday. »
17 Nov 2009
In the mid-1980s (just before the Riccardo Muti era began), Lorin Maazel often ruled the conductor's roost at La Scala. »
17 Nov 2009
Leoš Janáček’s From the House of the Dead is a
very odd duck to find on the stage of a grand opera house. »
15 Nov 2009
London has long been spoiled in the operatic rarity department, thanks to companies like Opera Rara, Chelsea Opera Group and University College Opera populating various areas of the Venn diagram that is obscure repertoire. »
12 Nov 2009
Hindemith’s Das Marienleben has a formidable reputation, but is rarely heard. Soile Isokoski could change all that. This cycle is a tour de force, but tours de force need singers capable of achieving them. »
11 Nov 2009
The worlds of lieder and opera seem to share the same galaxy, while being countless light years apart. »
11 Nov 2009
Wagner was last on stage in Houston’s Wortham Theater Center in 2001, when the Houston Grand Opera staged Tannhäuser. »
11 Nov 2009
The December opening of the La Scala season requires a notable production, and in 2001 a gorgeous new production of Verdi's Otello fit the bill. »
10 Nov 2009
This grueling production of Bartok’s operatic masterpiece, Duke
Bluebeard’s Castle, clearly did not set out to retain any of the
ambiguity and mystery of the fairytale which inspired it. »
09 Nov 2009
If Herbert von Karajan conducted Madama Butterfly and Maria Callas sang Isolde it follows that Nicola Luisotti should conduct Salome. »
09 Nov 2009
As an interpreter of Benjamin Britten, Philip Langridge has long been
esteemed as the natural successor to Peter Pears; »
04 Nov 2009
Unlike many contemporary composers — who too often derive their operas from full-length novels — William Bolcom (whose first opera, to be fair, was the novel-based McTeague, which I do not know) based his second, »
04 Nov 2009
Rio de Janeiro, which has had a string of winning luck in recent days — not only will it host the 2014 World Cup of soccer, but also the 2016 Olympic Games — continues a laudable and venerable tradition in the arts — the Biannual Festival of Contemporary Brazilian Music, now in its 18th edition. »
03 Nov 2009
In celebration of their 25th birthday and the 250th anniversary of the death of Handel, English Touring Opera has devised Handelfest, an extravaganza of five operas (Flavio, Teseo, Tolomeo, Alcina and Ariodante) and a wide variety of masterclasses and workshops taking in several of the company’s usual touring venues. »
03 Nov 2009
Thomas Arne's masterpiece, Artaxerxes, was a huge hit after its 1762 debut. Yet the work is now a rarity. This spectacular performance at the Linbury Studio Theatre, will certainly raise its public profile. »
03 Nov 2009
The Paris Opera season started with ‘un boum,’ scoring decisive successes with two infrequently performed stage pieces. »
30 Oct 2009
At the time of the premiere of Tancredi in 1813, Rossini, not quite
twenty-one years old, had been composing works for the stage for three years
and was still not world famous. »
30 Oct 2009
For Italy’s opera community, October is Verdi’s month. The composer was born near Busseto (now part of Parma Province) on October 10, 1813. »
29 Oct 2009
Ned Rorem's Evidence of Things Not Seen received its European premiere at the Oxford Lieder Festival. »
26 Oct 2009
Shadows and reflections flicker and dart alarmingly across Tanya McCallin’s dark, gloomy sets for David McVicar’s The Turn of the Screw, first seen in 2007, in a disturbing production that chillingly conveys both infinite mystery and claustrophobic terror. »
26 Oct 2009
Greed, lust and folly … Richard Jones’ comic double bill, first seen in 2007 and faithfully revived here by Elaine Kidd, certainly sharpens the spotlight on those eternal human foibles. »
26 Oct 2009
The Met’s production of Der Rosenkavalier still arouses gasps
from audience members as the curtain rises on each set — and laughter at
appropriate moments — and tears at others. »
26 Oct 2009
Pascal Dusapin (b. 1955) is an engaging composer, and his recent works includes a chamber opera entitled Faustus, the Last Night, a unique setting of the legend and a fine contribution to modern opera. »
25 Oct 2009
Dr. Charles Burney, who in August 1770 heard Galuppi’s singing girls
at the Incurabili, one of Venice’s four competing Ospedali or
musical orphanages, admired both their excellent performing standard
(“indeed all were such as would have merited and received great applause
in the first operas of Europe”), and the quality of the music that the
aging maestro was still able to write for them: “ it is generally allowed
here that his last operas, and his last compositions for the church, abound
with more spirit, taste, and fancy, than those of any other period of his
life”. »
25 Oct 2009
There is a buzz of excitement in the War Memorial Opera House on Friday nights that is akin to the Saturday afternoon buzz at the Met. »
25 Oct 2009
Ruxandra Donose sings Concepción in Ravel's L'heure Espagnoie in a double bill with Gianni Schicchi at the Royal Opera House. Concepción is an unusual personality, so Miss Donose's characterization is interesting. »
25 Oct 2009
Saturday October 17th found the Los Angeles Dodgers out of town for the weekend, but traffic still clogged the freeways leading to their stadium. »
20 Oct 2009
ETO’s production of Tolomeo for one night only at the Britten Theatre, capitalizes brilliantly on the necessary simplicity of this chamber-like opera, written at a time when Handel could no longer call upon fabulous sets and stunning effects, relying only upon great singing - and what singers he wrote it for, in fact the grand trio of Senesino, Cuzzoni and Bordoni. »
19 Oct 2009
For the first production of its 55th season Lyric Opera of Chicago has staged a revival of Puccini’s Tosca with a cast of notable singers led by music director Sir Andrew Davis. »
16 Oct 2009
Vincent d’Indy lived eighty years and, when not composing, spent his time revising the teaching of music in France or simply annoying everybody. »
15 Oct 2009
Noblesse oblige: The Met feels it must present Aida — and
Tosca — and La Bohème — and certain other gaudy spectacles — because it’s the Met and everyone expects the grandest of the grand. »
13 Oct 2009
Some of the more memorable achievements of San Francisco Opera occurred in the brief life-span of its Spring Opera season, 1961-1981. »
13 Oct 2009
A writer goes to dine in an urban Chinese restaurant, where his eye is caught by a distressed young woman among the crowd of diners. »
13 Oct 2009
The Wigmore Hall never stands still: not content with having increased its audience by 300% over the past year, it now seeks both to reward its loyal patrons for their support in acquiring the Lease, and to bring in new audience members, with an innovative series of ten concerts where all the seats are priced at £10. »
13 Oct 2009
Bartlett Sher’s production of Il Barbiere di Siviglia has
proved one of the more admired stagings of the Peter Gelb regime, but
I’ve avoided it due to a surfeit of Barbieres and to fond
memories of the John Cox production on Robin Wagner’s delicious turntable
set, about as ideal a Barbiere as could be imagined. »
11 Oct 2009
In the opera house, stagings can impress by gorgeous sets and costumes. But in semi-staged performances, there's no where to hide behind. Semi-staging tests whether a director understands the music and what its dramatic soul might be. In dramaturgy, less is more. »
11 Oct 2009
The full five-act version of Verdi’s historical epic, Don Carlo, makes for a long evening, but thanks to some fine singing and to the driving sweep of the baton of Semyon Bychkov this four-and-a-half hour performance raced by. »
11 Oct 2009
There is something quote refreshing about the fact that a staging as characterful as Jonathan Miller's 27-year-old “New York Mafia” Rigoletto is the nearest thing to a warhorse that ENO has in its repertoire. »
11 Oct 2009
In the otherwise silent sixteen years between La fanciulla del west (1910) and Turandot (1926) Puccini had a flirtation with operetta, La rondine (1917) and with the quick and easy drama of the short story in his three one-acts, Il trittico (1918), composed as a one-evening cycle. »
11 Oct 2009
A note on the inside back cover of the booklets for these two releases announces that they are part of a new Supraphon series dedicated to “archive recordings of complete operas not yet available on CD.” »
11 Oct 2009
A number of performances from the Sferisterio Opera Festival have been released in recent months. »
11 Oct 2009
Robert Wilson staged Salome at La Scala in 1987, installing a troop of student actors on the stage to enact some sort of abstract action flow that had no discernible relationship to the Salome libretto, meanwhile sung by concert dressed opera stars huddled on a corner of the stage. »
11 Oct 2009
Videos from the Bayreuth Festspiele typically feature the highest quality audio and video of any live performance documents. »
11 Oct 2009
The back cover description of this Medici Arts DVD can fairly be called misleading, though not dishonest. »
11 Oct 2009
Although this DVD comes on the Naxos label, an earlier CD version of the same performance went under the Dynamic label, specialists in rare repertory. »
11 Oct 2009
It’s three down and one to go in the first-ever staging of Richard
Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen at Los Angeles Opera. Following the
premiere of Siegfried, the third installment of this epic work of
music theater, it’s clear that director/designer Achim Freyer is a
hands-down winner. »
11 Oct 2009
Dear non-German speaking Opera Today reader — what's your first guess as to the meaning of the biggest word in the title of this obscure Johann Strauss operetta? »
11 Oct 2009
Will the 22nd century still see the opera-loving world as fascinated by the ongoing saga of the Wagner family as the 20th did and the 21st does? »
09 Oct 2009
In the end the performance does not rescue the dreary new production — still, the reason to visit the Met’s new Tosca is Karita Mattila’s bravura if wrongheaded interpretation of the title role. »
06 Oct 2009
This wasn't an ordinary concert but something very special. The Wigmore Hall was honouring Imogen Cooper on her 60th birthday. She is greatly loved here, both as soloist and as partner in song recitals. The atmosphere was electric. The house was packed, with many famous pianists and singers in the audience. It was a historic occasion, but it felt like a party among friends. »
04 Oct 2009
SFO general director David Gockley has a mania for developing new audiences — last year The Bonesetter’s Daughter was aimed at enticing the Asian American community into the opera house, and Porgy and Bess encouraged the African American community to cross the threshold. »
04 Oct 2009
The only thing truly operatic in this work is the use of the word “opera” in the title. »
04 Oct 2009
Besotted admirers of certain lesser-known operas of debatable merit sometimes include conductors, singers and opera house managers with the power to get their cherished rarity on stage. »
03 Oct 2009
Over 100 years ago, Adolphe Appia sketched designs for Tristan und Isolde that have influenced theatre design from Alfred Roller to Wieland Wagner. Appia's vision came to life on stage at the Royal Opera House this week. This new production has far deeper roots in tradition than its detractors realize.
»
30 Sep 2009
The complexity of staging Puccini's evening of three one-act operas, Il Trittico, has kept this masterpiece from appearing on opera stages as frequently as, say, Turandot or Tosca. »
24 Sep 2009
This programme of mostly solemn, elevated music based around songs on such themes as Evening, Death and Immutability was part of Matthias Goerne’s ‘Journey with Schubert’ during which he is recording the songs on eleven CDs and presenting the series in recitals all over the world. If the singing on this occasion is anything to go by, these recordings are set to become the standard to which other singers should aspire. »
20 Sep 2009
When Matthias Goerne sings, it’s never superficial. Lieder is a genre that needs almost as much engagement from listeners as from performers. “It's like a church in there”, someone said to me about the Wigmore Hall. “They’re really listening”. »
20 Sep 2009
Schubert’s first song-cycle is a perfect choice with which to open a
new concert season, and the Wigmore Hall was packed on Friday evening in
anticipation of this recital by tenor Mark Padmore, much admired for the focus
and concentration of his ‘story-telling’, and Paul Lewis, one of
the most expressive and poetic of pianists today. »
20 Sep 2009
Bampton Classical Opera have two areas of specialism: little-known gems of the late eighteenth-century and ‘opera in adversity’. »
20 Sep 2009
While the cover of this Decca two-DVD set mirrors that of Cecilia Bartoli's 2007 CD, Maria, the contents are not identical. »
20 Sep 2009
A massive female figure fills the whole stage at the ENO for Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre, in this amazing production from La Fura del Bas. (Alex Ollé). This production is so inherently dramatic that it brings Ligeti's "anti-opera" onto a new level as theatre.art. . »
20 Sep 2009
Reading the articles in the booklet for this set, it becomes clear that librettist Colin Graham was the driving force behind this opera's creation. »
15 Sep 2009
Chamber opera is coming back after a period when it appeared to be confined to experimental works. »
15 Sep 2009
The legacy of the late conductor Giuseppe Sinopoli includes a number of fine recordings of Mahler’s music, and among them is his Deutsche Grammophon recording of the composer’s Fourth Symphony with the Philharmonia Orchestra and the soprano Edita Gruberova. »
15 Sep 2009
‘It’s a personal choice’ / ‘Of course he won - he was the only one who sang songs’ / ‘I’ll be happy if anyone but the first one wins’ (he won) / ‘There’s only one possible choice - the third one’ (he came second) »
15 Sep 2009
If, dear reader, a desire has ever swept over you (a desire such as a pregnant woman's craving for vanilla ice cream with pickles) to hear music reminiscent of both Messiah and the Fingal's Cave overture, CPO is just the musical ice cream parlor/deli for you. »
10 Sep 2009
The true opera fan devotes almost as much time, if not more, to the "what might have been" careers as to those of the superstars. »
10 Sep 2009
Archival radio recordings of complete operas seldom have ideal sound, but the audio is usually sharper than that of a live performance while still carrying a comparable dramatic immediacy. »
09 Sep 2009
Among the important recent cycles of Mahler’s symphonies is the one underway by Valery Gergiev with the London Symphony Orchestra. »
09 Sep 2009
Beethoven’s Fidelio is actually several works combined — a rescue opera in the grand style of the French revolution, a sentimental comedy focusing on mistaken identity, and a tragédie bourgeoise involving a husband, a wife, and their efforts to re-unite despite the actions of a relentless and implacable foe. »
09 Sep 2009
After thoroughly enjoying Daneille de Niese’s recording Handel Arias, I jumped at the chance to review her new recording, The Mozart Album. Her Handel interpretation was full of coloratura, clarity and virtuosity, along with an organic fusion of music serving drama. So I was eager to hear her perform Mozart. »
09 Sep 2009
This 4-CD set gathers together solo recital material and extracts from complete opera sets that Franco Corelli recorded between 1959 and 1968, the prime of his career. »
06 Sep 2009
“Opera has so much to give” says Christof Loy, whose new production of Tristan und Isoldeopens at the Royal Opera House on 29th September. This opera is so familiar that everyone assumes they know it. But Loy’s approach involves going straight back to the score, and to the inherent drama in the music. “I don’t like superficial distractions". »
06 Sep 2009
“Can it be?”“It can’t!”“But it is; he looks just like him…” »
06 Sep 2009
On the surface, the theme of this Prom seemed to be Sci Fi movies at the Proms. Both Ligeti's Atmosphères and Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra became huge hits when Stanley Kubrick used them in 2001 : A Space Odyssey. So how did Mahler's *Kindertotenlieder* fit in ? »
06 Sep 2009
The Wagner Festspiel loves to provoke. »
06 Sep 2009
In 2001, when Seattle Opera completed its current production of Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen, it seemed the company had taken a step backward. In appearance the new Ring — the third full SO staging since Glynn Ross set out to make the city the American counterpart to Germany’s Bayreuth — was traditional. »
06 Sep 2009
For the eighteenth program of its seventy-fifth anniversary season the Grant Park Music Festival under the direction of its principal conductor Carlos Kalmar gave two performances of Sir Edward Elgar’s monumental oratorio for soloists, chorus, and orchestra, The Dream of Gerontius. »
30 Aug 2009
Following from the fine collaboration between Stephan Genz and Roger Vignoles on an ambitious collection of various sets of Mahler’s Lieder (Hyperion CD 67392), which includes some of the composer’s early settings of poetry from the anthology Des Knaben Wunderhorn, the present recording contains thirteen later settings from that source. »
30 Aug 2009
This 1958 RAI broadcast of Bellini's early masterpiece requires the accustomed aural compromise for maximum enjoyment. »
30 Aug 2009
Central City stages luminous Lucia
There’s the sextet, the greatest “hit” in all of opera when Caruso was in the cast, and there’s the “Mad Scene,” that exercise in vocal acrobatics that brought new glory to bel canto when the opera was new in Naples in 1835. »
30 Aug 2009
The opera venue at Macerata shares some features with its famous counterpart in Verona: both are outdoors, with huge stages that can accommodate spectacular productions. »
30 Aug 2009
Fidelio is not just any opera. But then, Beethoven is not just any composer. His only opera — unless one counts Leonore as a work in itself — confounds bureaucratic expectations. »
30 Aug 2009
Each year, the tiny Tuscan village Torre del Lago hosts a festival dedicated to its favorite son, Giacomo Puccini. This year’s Puccini Festival (10 July - 30 August) featured a “new” Manon Lescaut (a co-production with Opera del Nice Theater), its premiere garnering standing ovations for Marcello Giordani and Martina Serafin and accolades for Alberto Veronesi, the artistic director of the Festival. »
30 Aug 2009
As the detail-filled booklet essay to this CPO set reminds its readers, Franz Lehär's operettas enjoyed widespread, though rarely lasting, success, with the music theater world of the time eager for each successive work. »
30 Aug 2009
Franz Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten isn't the easiest opera to produce, with its grand effects, but this production comes close to being a perfect union between stage and music. »
30 Aug 2009
De Staat is a seminally important work. So much modern music stems from it, not only “serious” classical music but progressive popular music too. It “is” music theatre, for it’s designed to be experienced live, the visual effect part of the action. »
23 Aug 2009
August is when Italians immerse themselves in the primal soup of all life. Hordes swarm to the Mediterranean shores and multitudes arrive in Pesaro on the Adriatic, where just then crowds of Rossinians from around the world arrive to partake of their primal operatic soup. »
23 Aug 2009
The bravura performance by Ferruccio Furlanetto in the title role is spoiled by the kitschy and incoherent staging of this production. Mefistofele is unique among operas based on the Faust legend in that it rather closely adheres to Goethe’s version. »
23 Aug 2009
Gustav Mahler was not alone in setting verses from Hans Bethge’s collection of Chinese-inspired poetry entitled Die chinesische Flöte, as he did in his symphonic song cycle Das Lied von der Erde. »
23 Aug 2009
Although the cutesy title sounds like something conjured up by a community
college marketing intern working for a mid-sized city orchestra’s ticket
office—where every concert featuring Wagner and Brahms gets the sobriquet
“Teutonic Titans”—don’t be put off by the moniker. This film is a brilliant adaptation of Monteverdi’s Fourth Book of Madrigals that is totally faithful to the composer’s music. »
23 Aug 2009
Good directors don't always create good productions. »
23 Aug 2009
The two one-act operas - operettes? - on this disc play something like mediocre episodes of The Twilight Zone set to music, though without the quirky memorability of that show's opening theme. »
23 Aug 2009
Everyone once in a while, we veteran opera-goers are privileged to see a promising artist give a break-out performance that announces a giant step forward into major stardom.
»
17 Aug 2009
On a good night an opera performance can come across with visceral excitement without a classy production, top-name singers, or the benefit of being of one of the more familiar titles. »
17 Aug 2009
It is never easy to revive a success. Audiences will remember the first run of a show and consciously or not, compare a revival with earlier favorable impressions. »
17 Aug 2009
Those opera lovers prone to rage at the perceived dominance of the director in their beloved art form today may collapse in apoplexy at this first release from the company called SignumVision. »
17 Aug 2009
The word "living" would be a fitting addition to the subtitle of this collection of "Songs by American Composers." »
17 Aug 2009
What drives Harrison Birtwistle to Greek myth? Orpheus is a primal archetype. When he played his lyre he tamed wild beasts and made mountains move. But he suffered. He journeyed into Hades but could not bring Eurydice, his beloved, back to life. In some versions of the myth, his talent enraged the jealous who tore him apart. Yet even then, his head remained intact, still singing. He symbolizes the power of music, and the fate of an artist. »
17 Aug 2009
"An all-American Norma," Roger Pines calls this release in his entertaining booklet essay. »
09 Aug 2009
This excellent production of Monteverdi’s final (premiered in 1643) and most problematic opera features first-rate singing and a very effective (and restrained) staging. »
09 Aug 2009
You need three or, ideally, four top-flight bel canto specialists to do anything like justice to Rossini’s Semiramide, his last and grandest Italian score. Otherwise why go to the expense? »
07 Aug 2009
In the Euroarts series Discovering Masterpieces of Classical Music: Documentary & Performance, the volume devoted to Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra stands out as a particularly accessible and well-executed release. »
07 Aug 2009
For adherents of the prima voce school of opera appreciation, this Laurent Pelly production of Donizetti's comic masterpiece may not hold that much appeal. »
06 Aug 2009
L’inganno is this year’s theme at the Sferisterio Festival in Macerata, Italy. »
05 Aug 2009
Why — they always ask — why — present
Les Huguenots? »
03 Aug 2009
Although Antonio Vivaldi’s instrumental compositions were highly popular in his lifetime, and have been held in high regard throughout the centuries, most of his operas have been — until recently — relegated to obscurity. »
03 Aug 2009
EMI's publicity for this studio recording focuses on soprano Angela Gheorghiu and her portrayal of Cio-Cio-San. »
02 Aug 2009
Paris Opera seems to posit the question: Does anyone completely understand what Karol Szymanowski’s King Roger is about? »
02 Aug 2009
Of Donizetti's 55 operas, four to five hold on to secure places in the repertory, a much greater number are all but unknown, and in the middle come the titles that see occasional revivals, as flawed but fascinating rarities. »
02 Aug 2009
This looks like a winner, with an esteemed conductor (Zubin Mehta), top-rank cast (Violeta Urmana, Marcello Giordani, Carlo Guelfi), and a production directed by Nicholas Joël that originated at the Opernhaus Zürich, a house that takes some chances and scores some successes. »
01 Aug 2009
Can a famously successful movie be made into an effective opera? A
quick answer is: yes! »
29 Jul 2009
The performance of lieder is a partnership between singer and pianist. In May I heard Julius Drake redeem an indifferent recital by the sheer beauty of his playing. I’ve been listening to him for more than 15 years. He’s a favorite. So I was completely taken by surprise by this recital »
29 Jul 2009
The legacy of Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) includes some notable compositions, and among them is his unique setting of the Faust story. »
27 Jul 2009
A fine-sounding Santa Fe Opera orchestra, excellently conducted by Frédéric
Chaslin, was barely into the haunting, delicate prelude to Act I of La
traviata, when a funeral procession, wet umbrellas unfurled, arrived to
wend its way though a stage full of big grey marble rectangular boxes,
handsomely abstracted tomb shapes, soon to be the courtesan Violetta
Valéry’s destination. So much for the Prelude to Act I. »
22 Jul 2009
There she is, in her inch or two of sarong, floating, floating…Oh, excuse me, where was I? »
22 Jul 2009
The strategies of non-traditional opera directors are becoming as predictable and formulaic as the stuffy, static traditional productions that they work so hard not to emulate. »
21 Jul 2009
There are rare times when a critic can just enjoy, and say “Wow!” »
21 Jul 2009
Tosca is the quintessential Roman opera, with a plot located in
three infamous landmarks of Rome, its 1900 premiere in Rome was bound to be
enormously successful. »
20 Jul 2009
If the economic downturn has canceled some opera lovers plans to attend any of the appealing European summer festivals, perhaps a trip online will find a DVD of a production from a recent year. »
20 Jul 2009
Were someone looking to assemble a musical Dream Team to thrill us to the core with Wagner’s Lohengrin, one would need look no further than the assembled forces currently on stage at Munich's Bavarian State Opera. »
19 Jul 2009
The Proms reach people all over the world, bringing them together for a kind of international street party, celebrating a shared love of music. If the arts make us more human and humane, then the BBC Proms are a force for good. »
19 Jul 2009
The Aix Festival imagines itself one of Europe’s great festivals, defining itself as the crossroads of European culture. »
19 Jul 2009
This year’s program at the Aix-en-Provence Festival includes
Götterdämmerung, the much-anticipated final installment of the
Ring co-sponsored by Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and the Osterfestspiele Salzburg. »
19 Jul 2009
At the festival of Aix-en-Provence, now in its sixty-first year, the final installment of Wagner’s “Ring,” with Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic, has hogged the spotlight. »
19 Jul 2009
‘I never left a theatre more contented, and all night I dreamed of The Creation of the world.’ — the view of one of those at the first performance of The Creation in 1799. »
19 Jul 2009
A roster of exciting young artists supported by the Concertgebouw Orchestra
in the pit, ensured that Amsterdam’s Carmen worked its
usual spell. »
15 Jul 2009
Readers may recognize the author of this book, David J. Buch, a specialist on the origins of the libretto to Mozart’s Magic Flute. »
14 Jul 2009
Music-masters, singing lessons and serenading bands all abound in
Rossini’s comic masterpiece, Il Barbiere di Sivilglia, but at
this performance it was the medical rather than the musical puns which drew the
loudest laughs. »
12 Jul 2009
This revival of Jonathan Kent’s 2006 production of Tosca brings to an end the ROH’s ‘Italian Season’ in fine style. »
09 Jul 2009
Like a baseball player with a low batting average but a propensity for home runs, Gaetano Donizetti composed dozens of operas, among which only a very few get frequent performances today. »
09 Jul 2009
Years before Antonin Dvořák composed his most famous opera Rusalka (1900), he completed a series of works in the genre which contributed to his reputation and skill in this genre. »
07 Jul 2009
With its’ title taken from the composer’s Suite of English Folk Tunes, Op. 90, Tony Palmer’s film Benjamin Britten: A Time There Was… is a solid documentary assembled from interviews, rehearsal clips, photographs and other audio-visual materials to create a vivid portrait of the composer. »
07 Jul 2009
Absence of plot is by no means an impediment in opera. »
04 Jul 2009
Ravenna once served as the capital of the Roman Empire in the 5th and 6th centuries C.E. »
03 Jul 2009
For Americans of older generations Porgy and Bess is surely a primal experience, formed by the 1959 Otto Preminger film with Sammy Davis Jr. as Sportin’ Life, the audio recording derived from the 1952 London production with Leontyne Price as Bess, and a first encounter with Porgy and Bess as an opera in the artistically satisfying, and well traveled 1976 Houston production (was it twenty-five performances in the War Memorial Opera House?). »
03 Jul 2009
The success of Opera Theatre of St. Louis’ 2009 festival season reflects the intelligent leadership of both the previous triumvirate (Charles MacKay, Colin Graham, and Stephen Lord) and the new recruits Timothy O’Leary and James Robinson. »
02 Jul 2009
Bizet’s famed heroine Carmen returned this June to the place where it all began, in a critically-heralded new production by Adrian Noble. Frank Cadenhead was on hand to experience the staging held at the opulent newly-renovated Opéra Comique. »
29 Jun 2009
It’s not often that the accompanist is given top billing in a vocal recital, even when he’s the venue’s musical director. »
29 Jun 2009
Glyndebourne is the epitome of British opera festivals. Seventy-five years ago, John Christie founded the tradition of “country house opera”, where opera can be enjoyed in beautiful settings. »
29 Jun 2009
On the whole, I’d prefer the conspirators to be sitting on toilets… »
26 Jun 2009
With Götterdämmerung, a co-production with the Köln Opera House created by Robert Carsen (stage direction), Patrick Kinmonth (sets and costumes) and
Jeffrey Tate (conductor), La Fenice approaches completion of the
Ring cycle. »
26 Jun 2009
Four years have passed since the most celebrated American soprano of recent times, Renée Fleming, graced the stage at Covent Garden, in Elijah Moshinsky’s classic production of Otello. »
25 Jun 2009
Le Grand Macabre is the only opera of György Ligéti, one of the
major composers of the 20th century. »
25 Jun 2009
What is the worst opera with the best music? »
24 Jun 2009
Much ink has been spilled over the failed Marta Domingo production of La
Traviata that San Francisco Opera inexplicably imported for its blatantly
audience baiting summer season (Traviata, Tosca, Porgy and Bess). »
24 Jun 2009
The Gala release of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony from Hamburg performances on 29 and 30 November 1954 serves to document further the composer’s presence in the concerto hall prior to the well-known Mahler-renewal in 1960. »
24 Jun 2009
Amato Opera went to the netherworld of expired extravaganzas this spring, a
one-man operation whose one man was weary. As New York’s oldest
down-the-block and semi-pro company, it’s loss was regrettable —
though it’s many years since Amato gave up doing interesting repertory. »
24 Jun 2009
It is quite possible that Opera Theatre of Saint Louis is the leading summer opera destination in the United States. »
22 Jun 2009
A performance of sublime authority from Goerne and Eschenbach »
21 Jun 2009
Following the death of the American film director Anthony Minghella, ENO were left with a gap in the season vacated by the new production which he had been engaged to direct, and what better way to do so than by bringing back his immensely popular 2005 staging of Madam Butterfly? Minghella’s widow, Carolyn Choa (who has worked on the production from its original conception) was charged with resurrecting the production in tribute. »
21 Jun 2009
Last week (May 27), “without further a-don’t,” as she adorably puts it, Madame Vera Galupe-Borszkh, the world’s reigning traumatic soprano
— lately, she says, more of a soprano “spento” — bade a
last, lingering, loving farewell to her adoring public in a sold-out concert at
the Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. »
21 Jun 2009
The Collegiate Chorale (ably supported by the orchestra of the New York City
Opera under George Manahan) chose Gluck’s Alceste, last heard in
New York at the City Opera in 1982, for its annual spring concert opera —
an excellent choice for a chorus eager to show its stuff. »
21 Jun 2009
Robert Carsen’s production of Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is not new, as the La Scala playbill suggests. »
21 Jun 2009
La Cenerentola runs third in popularity among Rossini’s comic
operas — the Met didn’t get around to it at all until the present
staging was created for Cecilia Bartoli. »
21 Jun 2009
Very little is known about Giovanni Battista Draghi (or Drago, according to certain sources), known as Pergolesi. »
20 Jun 2009
To the sorrow of all lovers of baroque opera, J.S. Bach never composed for
the stage. »
19 Jun 2009
When Matthias Goerne was six, he heard Winterreise and was captivated. »
19 Jun 2009
Although there was considerable theatrical imagination on display, redemption was in critically short supply in Peter Konwitschny's production of The Flying Dutchman at Munich’s estimable Bavarian State Opera. »
18 Jun 2009
“Life is too important to be taken seriously” goes the motto. That could describe this cheerful production, just the right good humored tonic for these difficult times. »
18 Jun 2009
Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s early opera, Punch and Judy, premiered at Aldeburgh in 1968. Benjamin Britten reportedly walked out. Now Birtwistle is himself the pre-eminent British composer, whose work has long since become part of the Aldeburgh tradition. This year’s Festival opened with two Birtwistle premieres, The Corridor and Semper Dowland, simper dolens. »
17 Jun 2009
In a recent Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert featuring twentieth-century
instrumental and vocal compositions Ian Bostridge sang Benjamin Britten’s
Les Illuminations under the direction of principal conductor Bernard
Haitink. »
17 Jun 2009
Bostridge traded his fey haircut for slicked back Kray brothers look, complete with wrap round dark glasses in this Dreigroschenoper at the Barbican, London. »
17 Jun 2009
Strikes on the London Underground system may have made this a particularly exhausting and exasperating week for Londoners, but despite these wearing adversities Friday evening saw an eager crowd flock to the Wigmore Hall, in excited anticipation of an inspiring and invigorating blend of the familiar and the unfamiliar — and they were not disappointed. »
17 Jun 2009
Matthias Goerne and Christoph Eschenbach unite in a Schöne Müllerin of searing intensity. »
17 Jun 2009
“Mozart's first mature masterpiece,” Sophie Becker calls Idomeneo in the booklet essay of this DVD set of a June 2008 Bayerische Staatsoper staging. »
15 Jun 2009
The Austrian Ministry of Culture and the Committee for the Celebrations of
Haydn’s Bicentenary had a brilliant idea: on May 31st , the day of the
composer’s death, 20 symphony orchestras and/or opera houses performed
one of his greatest and best known oratorios Die Schöpfung (The
Creation) . »
15 Jun 2009
From the La Scala series of filmed productions come two excellent DVDs, one an incisive and contemporary staging by Patrice Chereau of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, and the other a rip-roaring, old-fashioned (in the best sense) performance of Donizetti's flawed but entertaining Maria Stuarda.
»
14 Jun 2009
Where else in the world does one have three opera houses, all playing almost nightly for 10 months of the year? It’s one of the things that makes Berlin paradise for opera buffs. »
12 Jun 2009
Like Carmen, Tosca is a constant presence in our operatic lives, frequently revisited like it or not. »
12 Jun 2009
Otto Nicolai's Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor belongs to that somewhat purgatorial group of operas best remembered only for their overtures. »
09 Jun 2009
ENO's latest new production of Così — their third this decade — made the arts headlines from the start of its rehearsal period when director Abbas Kiarostami found himself unable to secure a UK visa and was forced to withdraw his direct involvement, leaving colleague Elaine Tyler-Hall to deputise. »
07 Jun 2009
The buzz was right — this new Lulu at the Royal Opera House, London is shockingly different. Christof Loy's production is what minimalism should be. »
07 Jun 2009
Julius Drake’s Temple song series is almost a cult secret -not known to the mass market but highly regarded among those who know, much like the Lieder genre itself. »
26 May 2009
Joseph Haydn's place in the history of the oratorio has been secured by his masterpieces The Creation (1798) and The Seasons (1801). His first appearance, however, on the Mount Parnassus of oratorio was a good quarter of a century beforehand with Il ritorno di Tobia. »
26 May 2009
The new Franco Zeffirelli’s production of Ruggero Leoncavallo “Pagliacci” reached the Teatro dell’Opera di Rome on May 19 : I will be on stage in the Italian capital every night until May 27th . Then, it will continue a worldwide tour: its debut was in Florence in the 2008 Fall. It has already visited Moscow and Athens. It is rumored to reach the MET next seasons. »
26 May 2009
“Pique Dame” (“Pivokaja Dama” or “The Queen of Spades”) is one of Pyotr I. Tchaikovsky most difficult, and most expensive, operas to produce. »
22 May 2009
English Touring Opera continued its 30th anniversary celebrations with six concert performances of Norma, sung — unusually for ETO — in Italian, in a touring footprint which has some common ground with the ongoing staged tour of Katya Kabanova and The Magic Flute, but which is effectively an entirely separate tour. »
22 May 2009
Tim Albery’s production was first seen at Opera North in 1993 and has not been revived since 1998, when it was the first production of this opera I ever saw — an English-sung version of the four-act Italian version. »
21 May 2009
Lieder and opera are different worlds. But understanding the differences helps us appreciate what makes each form distinct. Hugo Wolf’s songs come close to bridging the genres. They’ve been described as “miniature operas” where dramas are distilled into compact form. »
21 May 2009
In its recent collection Mozart Lieder, Salzburg 1958-1984 in its series entitled “Festspiel Dokumente,” Orfeo pays homage to the tradition of Liederabend at the Salzburg Festival with selections from a quarter century of performances. »
17 May 2009
Bringing Andrei Şerban’s Turandot to the Washington National Opera as a season finale really means finishing the year with a bang. »
17 May 2009
You won’t get much argument nowadays — you won’t get any from me — if you call Handel’s dramatic oratorios operas in all but name. »
14 May 2009
On any list of great but seldom-performed operas, Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischütz must rank high. »
14 May 2009
L’elisir d’amore is perhaps Donizetti’s silliest opera — but also one of his most charming.
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14 May 2009
Recorded live in concert on 19 August 2007, this performance of Gustav Mahler's Third Symphony by Claudio Abbado is part of the conductor's cycle involving the Lucerne Festival. »
13 May 2009
In David Alden’s extraordinary new staging of Britten’s
masterpiece, with sets by Paul Steinberg, the Borough is populated by stylised
grotesques, a clever twist on the opera’s existing ‘Little
England’ character stereotypes. »
13 May 2009
The Scottish Play’s ability to conduit bad luck is apparently not limited to the spoken stage, witness the new Paris Opéra production of Verdi’s Macbeth. »
12 May 2009
It’s the Ring — not just an ordinary evening (or four evenings) of opera — indeed, if you accept its creator’s words on the matter, it’s a music-drama, not an opera at all. »
12 May 2009
How often does one experience an opera in which everything works — in which there is not one flaw either in the staging or in its musical dimensions? »
12 May 2009
As far as world premieres go, Houston Grand Opera is in elite company in the United States, having performed thirty-eight new works prior to opening night of André Previn’s new opera Brief Encounter. »
12 May 2009
By sheer coincidence, the Academy of Santa Cecilia — one of the most authoritative symphonic orchestras in Europe — planned a rather unusual concert in the same days (May 3-7) when just in the very same auditorium there was the world première of a movie expected to be a Hollywood blockbuster — the thriller titled “Angels & Demons”. »
12 May 2009
For two years following its premiere Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsesnk was one of the most often performed contemporary operas. »
12 May 2009
Soprano Kate Royal is reported to have said that singing at the Wigmore Hall is “like a religious experience”. »
12 May 2009
Recorded four years apart, these two classic recordings of Leos Janáček's dramatic masterpieces now reappear in Decca's The Originals series, thankfully still with full librettos and excellent booklet essays. »
12 May 2009
Christine Brewer Commands Performance in Last Minute Appearance »
07 May 2009
Doris Sennefelder's booklet essay for this CPO recording of Lehar's Das Land des Lächelns details how close the composer was to Puccini. »
05 May 2009
It’s an odd day in opera when the bad girl wins, but that is only one thing that makes the Opera Atelier production of Monteverdi’s Coronation of Poppea remarkable — and admirable. »
03 May 2009
April 29th is Zubin Mehta’s birthday. As a gift to its most beloved musical director, Florence unveiled a new production of Götterdämmerung, a joint Ring Cycle venture with the Valencia Opera started two years ago. »
29 Apr 2009
From the word “go”, the audience feels that this “Maria Stuarda” is quite different from the standard fare offered by Italian theatres. »
29 Apr 2009
I first saw this production in Manchester in 1981: I loved it then and love it now, despite the present hero’s un-Heldentenor qualities when compared to the glorious Peter Hoffman of yore. »
26 Apr 2009
One of the five operas Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (1876-1948) based on plays by Carlo Goldoni, La vedova scaltra (1748) is a comedy about a widow’s decision to use deception to choose among her suitors. »
26 Apr 2009
I returned to Don Giovanni firstly because I had never heard Peter Mattei sing, and friends had called him the greatest Don G since Siepi. »
26 Apr 2009
The Recovered Voices series at Los Angeles Opera, in its second season, springs from James Conlon’s fascination and love for the operas of composers whose lives and/or careers came to an end under the Nazi regime. »
26 Apr 2009
Razor-wielding rascals involve themselves in romantic complications in the two sets considered here, with a fine performance of a rarity and an even finer performance of a classic.
»
26 Apr 2009
In 2008 the Salzburg Festival intended to bring back the two stars of their triumphant 2005 La Traviata, Rolando Villazón and Anna Netrebko, for Gounod's Roméo et Juliette. »
26 Apr 2009
Try to imagine the scenario: You’re an opera company, giving concert
performances of neglected, indeed forgotten, hundred-year-old scores (no sets, no costumes, at least you don’t have those headaches), and you give young singers a chance to do their stuff once a year before a paying New York crowd actually eager to hear music they do not know, and you’ve lit on a genuine obscurity, even in the ranks of the obscure; Mascagni’s penultimate stage work, a huge success at the premiere (as his operas usually were), utterly forgotten nowadays (as, but for Cavalleria Rusticana and, on rare occasion, L’Amico Fritz, they pretty much are), and it’s never been performed in North America ever. »
24 Apr 2009
The Teatro Lirico di Cagliari is a sparkling comparatively new building in what used to be a blighted area near to the city center. »
22 Apr 2009
The Bavarian State Opera’s new production of Leos Janacek’s Jenufa is a feather in the cap of intendant Nikolaus Bachler. »
19 Apr 2009
In the continuing series of releases to document the recorded legacy of the Staatskapelle Dresden, vol. 13 collects music by Hans Pfitzner and Richard Strauss with performances from 1939 through 1944. »
19 Apr 2009
In its new production of Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio) Lyric Opera of Chicago has achieved a fusion of eighteenth-century sensibilities with a modern adaptation of traditional dramatic and stage techniques. »
19 Apr 2009
Perhaps I’d better just describe what I experienced, Captain. »
19 Apr 2009
The Los Angeles Opera audiences seem to have decided that no matter how they may really feel about Achim Freyer’s “performance art” staging of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, the singers and musicians are giving them at long last a chance to hear these monumental works at the Dorothy Chandler. »
19 Apr 2009
Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s music drama Die tote Stadt has had a rather erratic life in major opera houses. »
19 Apr 2009
On a stormy evening in Houston (both in and outside of the house), Houston Grand Opera’s opening night production of Verdi’s Rigoletto went off with a thunderous bang. »
19 Apr 2009
Schubert’s music ‘suggests a rippling movement and by the side of the rippling a flowering: it has the variety and unsurprising naturalness of moving water and springing herb’ (Capell) and this same naturalness and sense of flowing ease are the very qualities which make John Mark Ainsley such a special interpreter of this composer. »
19 Apr 2009
Rome’s opera house was built in 1880, in the explosion of building that followed the unification of Italy with Rome as its capital. »
10 Apr 2009
Rigoletto is the ideal first opera: a taut tale, comprehensible characters, terrific tunes, and not an ounce of fat anywhere. »
10 Apr 2009
Was Tony Kushner’s monumental play Angels in America in need of being musicalized? »
08 Apr 2009
This two-CD budget series collection brings together two Placido Domingo Wagner recitals, the first from 2000, with Deborah Voigt receiving co-billing, and the second from 2002. »
07 Apr 2009
Originally directed by Brooks Riley for German television, this updated staging of Engelbert Humperdinck’s familiar opera Hänsel und Gretel is based on a production created by Johannes Felsenstein, the son of the well-known director of the Komische Oper Berlin, Walter Felsenstein. »
07 Apr 2009
The current revival of Cav and Pag at the Met went off like clockwork, with all the comfort and reliability that implies for a repertory house and all the success these tried and true verismo stalwarts merit. »
07 Apr 2009
London: Sue Loder reviews Alessandro and the Handel Singing Final »
06 Apr 2009
I cursed myself for not having turned on the television sooner. »
06 Apr 2009
In the parlance of a Hollywood film pitch, Britten's penultimate opera might be described as "War Requiem" meets "Turn of the Screw." »
06 Apr 2009
Like Violetta Urmana, Nadja Michael had a substantial career as a mezzo before deciding to venture into soprano territory. »
02 Apr 2009
William Kentridge is a South African artist who works in charcoal and eraser (smudges) on paper, in small animated film and video segments (black and white), in theater, and now in opera. Monteverdi’s The Return of Ulysses was his first operatic project that took place in 1998 in collaboration with South Africa’s Handspring Puppet Theater. »
01 Apr 2009
In the current weak economy many an opera company has retrenched its programming to present primarily the most popular operas. »
01 Apr 2009
If combining the anniversaries of both Purcell and Handel in one production at the Royal Opera was something of a master-stroke, then getting the Royal Ballet in on the act must have seemed to be verging on the brilliant from a commercial point of view. »
31 Mar 2009
When considering his next recording project, notes Rolando Villazón, the idea of working on a set of Handel arias with Paul McCreesh was “not an obvious choice.” »
30 Mar 2009
Mention Macbeth — The Opera and most think of Verdi. Ernest Bloch took on the subject more than half a century later, in Paris in 1910, when Verdi’s version was almost as obscure as Bloch’s is today. »
30 Mar 2009
Many works by Martinů will be performed in this year’s commemoration of the anniversary of his death, but it would be hard to equal the impact of this performance. Much of its success was due to Kožená, whose presence illuminated the whole opera, even though her moments on stage were fleeting. »
29 Mar 2009
Naïve re-releases the soundtrack to the film Farinelli here in a handsome “book” casing, appending a second disc of highlights from the discography of Christophe Rousset’s recordings with Les Talens Lyriques, the artists also responsible for the soundtrack. »
27 Mar 2009
In the world of opera it’s now the director who is the top banana. »
25 Mar 2009
Janáček enthusiasts in London have been spoiled this month: opening the day before English Touring Opera’s Katya Kabanova, David Alden’s staging of Jenůfa made a welcome return to the Coliseum following its original double Olivier Award-winning run in 2006. »
25 Mar 2009
Seven discs, of 170 tracks, amounting to over eight hours of music - this EMI set somehow manages to be both voluminous and narrow in its portrait of Paul Robeson. »
25 Mar 2009
I had been looking forward to it for weeks — really, for years. »
25 Mar 2009
In 1831, when Vincenzo Bellini composed this pastorale full of characters who never express any but sincere emotions (with the exception of Lisa, the calculating flirt), he certainly intended them, and their feelings, and therefore their story, to be taken seriously – or he would not have given them such seriously lovely music. »
25 Mar 2009
For nearly a decade after its premiere, in 1853, Il Trovatore was the most popular opera, perhaps the most popular stage work on the planet — even more than Rigoletto or Ernani, and far more than Traviata, which had its premiere the following autumn. »
24 Mar 2009
Schubert was desperate to be an opera composer — or so one might surmise from the many (at least 18) attempts he made to make a name for himself as a man of the theatre. »
24 Mar 2009
English Touring Opera is 30 years old this year, and has never been more adventurous. »
22 Mar 2009
Among the impressive contributions to the American song literature of the twentieth century are works by Samuel Barber (1910-81), whose efforts in this genre reflect his own musical training as a singer, as well as the influence of his aunt, Louise Homer, whose professional relationships put her nephew in contact with other vocalists of the day. »
19 Mar 2009
Heinrich Brockes’s famous poetic setting of the Passion, Der für die Sünden der Welt gemarterte und sterbende Jesus (1712), was one of the most significant devotional texts of its day in Germany. »
15 Mar 2009
Each Australia state maintains its own opera company. The dominant company is Opera Australia, a permanent ensemble based at the Sydney Opera House but which originated in the Melbourne based National Theatre Opera Company in the 1940s. »
15 Mar 2009
LOS ANGELES: On February 21 the capacity audience in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion was overwhelmed by the staging of Das Rheingold that launched the Los Angeles Opera’s new production of Der Ring des Nibelungen. So was Wagner. »
15 Mar 2009
Had a misunderstanding with your truelove lately? Tough job straightening things out? »
15 Mar 2009
This DVD contains the contents of four televised recitals of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, with no way of telling from the information provided whether the recitals are presented complete or not. »
15 Mar 2009
Hey man, you wanna take a trip? Groovy!
»
15 Mar 2009
The birth and death dates of Domenico Sarro (1679 and 1744) are very close to those of his more illustrious contemporary, Antonio Vivaldi. »
15 Mar 2009
Apparently Opera Rara “discovered” Giovanni Simone Mayr some years ago when it included several excerpts from his operas in their multi-volume series, “A Hundred Years of Italian Opera.” »
15 Mar 2009
Although an ineffable aura of the 1960s emanates from Michael Tippett’s oratorio A Child of Our Time, its composition came at the start of WWII in Europe. »
15 Mar 2009
A Decca recording artist for most of his career, Luciano Pavarotti did do a very few items with EMI, probably as part of those “artist-swapping” arrangements recording labels sometime arrange. »
15 Mar 2009
There is some slim irony to an opera company pursuing the complicated business of staging Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen in the current economy — it entails the very sort of dubious compromises that get Wotan and crew into such hot water (if one assumes the cataclysmic fire at the end of Götterdämmerung heated the Rhine). »
08 Mar 2009
By the close of the first act of Richard Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde in its current production at Lyric Opera of Chicago the audience has been given a strong impression of the multi-faceted characters bound up in the musical drama unfolding on stage. »
08 Mar 2009
After a problematic debut last Autumn with Der fliegende Holländer at the Barbican, London’s newest opera-in-concert outfit returned this month with Fidelio at the smaller Cadogan Hall. »
08 Mar 2009
A medieval tale of ill-starred love, in three very long acts, with questions of loyalty to a king and one title character urging another to drink from a cup of poison... »
08 Mar 2009
It is not often that the team of stage director, set and costume designer get the biggest, most boisterously rowdy roar of approval at opera's end. »
05 Mar 2009
To say that Dr Atomic landed in London with a bang is shocking, but the subject it deals with is meant to be disturbing. Unlike the scientists at Los Alamos, we can’t live in denial of the wider implications. This isn’t history. It’s a universal dilemma, utterly relevant today. »
05 Mar 2009
Jonathan Miller's new production of Puccini's wintry opera was denied its planned opening night on Monday 2nd February by a bout of unusually heavy snow which brought most of London's transport services to a halt and turned it into a virtual ghost town (thus, up the road at Covent Garden, the cancellation of a performance of Korngold's 'Die tote Stadt' was equally ironic). »
05 Mar 2009
Recorded on 9 November 1959 at Symphony Hall (now Symphony Center), this recent issue of a classic performed of Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde translates the then state-of-the-art RCA “Living Stereo” sound for the LP vinyl medium to the enhanced sound currently available in SACD format. »
05 Mar 2009
There is a visceral pleasure in hearing so many healthy sets of young lungs tearing into this music, and they do sing, they do not bellow. »
27 Feb 2009
This Der fliegende Holländer was eagerly awaited as it hasn’t been heard at the Royal Opera House, London, since 2000. With Bryn Terfel’s return to Covent Garden as the Dutchman guaranteed a full house. »
27 Feb 2009
Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia, his 30th opera, is based on Victor Hugo’s play of the same name, and had its premiere at La Scala in 1833. »
25 Feb 2009
The Plague of Beautiful Sounds: Has Bel Canto gone too far? »
25 Feb 2009
Jérôme Savary, director of this December 2007 Semperoper Dresden production of Lehár's Die Lustige Witwe, expresses a view in the booklet essay that many others will probably share: "What I like most of all about The Merry Widow is its music, which is literally bursting with colours, gyrating movements and sensuality..." »
25 Feb 2009
There come nights in the opera season where gesamtkunstwerke won’t do — enough of epic masterpieces and supreme lyric outpourings of the human spirit! »
25 Feb 2009
My heart didn't exactly leap in joyful anticipation as I entered the Frankfurt Opera and saw the Arabella pre-set on stage: a big, shallow, white box. »
24 Feb 2009
Handel operas are like London buses — you wait for ages and then 3 come along together. »
22 Feb 2009
Ferrucio Furlanetto apparently loves the temperate climes of San Diego in California's equivalent of late winter. »
15 Feb 2009
The Kurt Weill-composed operetta Arms and the Cow premiered in 1935 under the title A Kingdom for a Cow, according to Erwin Berger’s booklet essay for this DVD of a 2007 VolksOper Vien staging of David Pountney’s production. »
13 Feb 2009
Some opera aficionados who take a look at the contents of this two-CD Fritz Wunderlich collection from Profil might shake their heads in bemused wonder: the German lyric tenor as Turridu, let alone Pinkerton and Rodolfo? »
13 Feb 2009
The CEO of the Ravenna Festival, one Cristina Mazzavillano Muti, understandably takes top billing at the top of this DVD booklet's three - count 'em, 3! - pages of credits for the Festival, not counting the single page of credits for the production of Donizetti's Don Pasquale itself. »
10 Feb 2009
Superlatives were in short supply when the curtain fell on Tristan und Isolde at Chicago Lyric Opera on January 27. »
08 Feb 2009
‘Back by popular demand’ claimed ENO’s publicity material for the
21-year-old production which had its supposed swan-song last season – though it remains questionable whether the company ever really intended to get rid of it. »
08 Feb 2009
Die tote Stadt is Korngold’s masterpiece in the old sense of the word, when a craftsman would produce a dazzling work to show the world what he could do. This is Korngold’s manifesto, so to speak. »
08 Feb 2009
Entering the Linbury Studio for this production of The Beggar’s Opera, one might have been forgiven for thinking that one had wandered into the main house by mistake. »
08 Feb 2009
The emergence of a standardized western liturgy with a uniform chant repertory, while to a significant degree realized, neither completely silenced regional liturgies nor extinguished the additions to liturgical practice that comprise much medieval creativity. »
08 Feb 2009
Pushkin’s poem Eugene Onegin is the first of the great line of Russian novels, passionately loved by all the literate of that most literary nation. »
08 Feb 2009
One definition of “poach” is “to take or appropriate something unfairly.” »
08 Feb 2009
Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie / De Munt started 2009 by serving up a real New Year's treat for the Belgian capital's opera enthusiasts: a near-perfect staging of Benjamin Britten's Death in Venice. »
01 Feb 2009
The Greek princes Arsace (alto) and Armindo (alto) are seeking handsome Queen Partenope (soprano), who has just founded the city of Naples, in marriage. »
27 Jan 2009
I had never personally imagined mythical Hercules as a WWF Wrestler-cum-Caveman but damn if Dutch National Opera's staging of Francesco Cavalli's Ercole Amante didn't almost persuade me it could be so. »
27 Jan 2009
A sticker on the cover of the Decca DVD Jessye Norman a portrait describes the contents as "An intimate new film portrait of the great soprano." »
26 Jan 2009
I am an ardent fan of Stephanie Blythe, and if you revel in sheer sound, she will delight you, too. »
26 Jan 2009
Writer Jens F. Laurson reports from Munich, where a new staging of Hans Pfitzner's Palestrina opened Jan. 19 at the National Theater. The rarely-performed 1917 three-act opera stars Christopher Ventris in the title role. »
26 Jan 2009
The first solo operatic recital from the great German bass René Pape bears a title that serves as an homage to an esteemed predecessor, George London. »
26 Jan 2009
A traditional production of Mozart and Schikaneder's singspiel Die Zauberflöte can go for charm, fantasy, and enjoyable camp. It can also turn trite and cloying. »
26 Jan 2009
The title of Anna Netrebko's most recent recital disc apparently springs from the musical selections' ability to prompt memories in the singer. »
26 Jan 2009
On this 1955 recording of Dvořák's folk-tale based comic romp Kate and the Devil, conductor Zdenĕk Chalaba offers a lighter, faster approach than that heard on the modern studio version Supraphon released in 1981, under conductor Jiří Pinkas. »
19 Jan 2009
The two performances of Samuel Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra given at Carnegie Hall — the New York City Opera’s only performances this year while the State Theater is in rehab and the company is in flux — may or may not prove to be swan song of New York’s gallant number two company, whose succession of identity crises have been so fascinating to observe — and hear — over the decades. »
14 Jan 2009
More than just three letters distinguishes "rarity" from "oddity." In opera, a rarity would be an admired work seldom performed. »
14 Jan 2009
“Mary Lewis, the golden haired soprano” — does that name mean much to today’s lovers of singing and good music? »
14 Jan 2009
Some of the more ingenious opera productions of the twentieth century are the work of Walter Felsenstein, who renowned internationally for his efforts in the genre. »
14 Jan 2009
Unjustly neglected, Dvorák’s Lieder are among his most engaging works, and this selection of some of his most important contributions to the genre demonstrate the range of emotions and the breadth of expression the composer used in these works. »
07 Jan 2009
This performance of Le Nozze di Figaro, recorded live at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in June 2004, prompts much admiration for René Jacobs, its conductor. »
07 Jan 2009
The first thing that hits you about the Met’s production of La Rondine is the beauty of the sets and costumes (from the classy team of Ezio Frigerio and Franca Squarciapino, respectively) — especially in contrast to the tawdry glitz of the recent Thaïs. »
26 Dec 2008
Everyone who likes Massenet’s Thaïs seems to feel obliged to apologize for it, or to become defensive: it’s not that bad, they all seem to say. »
23 Dec 2008
Can we call The Play of Daniel an opera, or “music drama” (as this performance put it), when such terms did not exist, and would not exist for centuries to come when the piece was devised, around 1200, by the cathedral chapter of Beauvais? »
22 Dec 2008
Dynamic offers devotees of classical era opera a rare and quite rewarding opportunity to hear I Giuochi d'Agrigento, a little-known opera by Giovanni Paisiello, best known as the man who composed a popular Barbiere di Siviglia before Rossini came along and eclipsed his predecessor. »
22 Dec 2008
An annual event televised around the world, the Vienna Philharmonic's Neujahrskonzert has become a classical music institution, and as such is impervious to criticism. But not beyond it. »
22 Dec 2008
Ondine provides a treasure of a booklet for Fever, Karita Mattila's traversal of some standards from the so-called "Great American Songbook," plus two Brazilian numbers. »
22 Dec 2008
In its new production this fall season of Alban Berg’s Lulu, Lyric Opera of Chicago has achieved a near ideal synthesis of music and drama. »
22 Dec 2008
Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel is titled a Märchenspiel — a Fairytale: and as twentieth-century psychologists and psychoanalysts have been eager to inform us, lurking beneath those familiar saccharine stories of sleeping princesses, defeated tyrants, love fulfilled and harmony restored, lie the dark shadows of the human heart — passionate, violent, unpredictable and unredeemed. »
22 Dec 2008
The Metropolitan Opera’s high-definition broadcast on radio and by satellite to movie theatres around the Nation, December 20 was Jules Massent’s 1894 star vehicle, Thaïs — the sadly ironic tale of a 4th Century Egyptian courtesan who grows tired of the long hours and demanding nature of her work, and is thinking of a career change. »
18 Dec 2008
It almost seems as if every composer was entitled to have at least one unfinished work. »
14 Dec 2008
Back in June, in my review of The Pilgrim’s Progress at Sadler’s
Wells, I wrote about the valuable and unsurpassed work being done by Richard Hickox to champion the works of Ralph Vaughan Williams in the composer’s centenary year, a project of which this rare staging of Riders to the Sea for ENO was to be the culmination. »
12 Dec 2008
Much has been promised of London Lyric Opera. The newest company on the capital’s opera scene, it will collaborate with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra to specialise in full-scale concert performances with high-profile soloists. »
11 Dec 2008
Brussels’ reliably excellent De Munt/La Monnaie Opera served up a Rusalka that was theatrically vivid, musically resplendent, and cheered to the rafters at its premiere. »
08 Dec 2008
Elektra begins with an explosion and remains, with a few lyric interludes, on that extreme pitch throughout its two hours. »
07 Dec 2008
Glyndebourne Touring Opera has long been bringing its wares to the further reaches of the southern United Kingdom and its current package of Hansel und Gretel, Carmen and The Magic Flute has been drawing good crowds from Norwich in the east to Plymouth in the south-west. »
05 Dec 2008
The bad luck of last season’s Tristans seems to be edging into the present one — but the curse now finds the house better prepared for trouble. »
05 Dec 2008
Released to commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the three multi-disc sets of recordings makes available recordings that document the triumphs of the ensemble since its founding in 1932 by Sir Thomas Beecham. »
05 Dec 2008
Like Seville’s peripatetic barber, Gran Teatro del Liceu's new Marriage of Figaro is rather all over the place. »
02 Dec 2008
It was, of course, coincidence. When the Chicago Lyric Opera scheduled George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess for the current season, not even the preludes to the 2008 presidential election had begun. »
02 Dec 2008
Not all of Munich's holiday delights are to be found at the just-opened annual Christmas Market filling the Marienplatz and environs. »
01 Dec 2008
From the director’s point of view, there are two ways to approach staging an opera. »
01 Dec 2008
Can this truly be the production of Verdi's Aida that earned world-wide headlines in December 2007? »
01 Dec 2008
Alberto Cantù's booklet essay for the Dynamic release of Umberto Giordano's rare one-act opera Marcella quotes a review from the day after the 1907 premiere, which indicates that the premiere's audience's expectations of "greater originality of melodic invention" went unmet. »
28 Nov 2008
The opening performance of the ROH’s seventh revival of John Schlesinger’s 1980 production of The Tales of Hoffmann was
dedicated to the memory of Richard Hickox. »
25 Nov 2008
Pelléas et Mélisande in a 200 seat theatre, with just 35 musicians and no pit? »
25 Nov 2008
There are two things which, in recent history, English National Opera has consistently done extremely well. »
25 Nov 2008
The show curtain was an illustration of the typical Parisian skyline. »
25 Nov 2008
Marlis Petersen, the much lauded "Lulu-du-jour," brought her well-traveled portrayal of Berg's complex heroine to Chicago Lyric Opera and she alone was almost worth the price of admission. »
21 Nov 2008
This 2001 Zürich performance of Rossini's masterpiece Il Barbiere di Siviglia boasts one of the final performances of the great bass Nicolai Ghiaurov, who passed away in 2004. »
20 Nov 2008
Naxos, in conjunction with SWR, has been releasing recordings from the Rossini in Wildbad Festival, which focuses not just on the titular composer but also on his contemporaries. »
19 Nov 2008
The rare Rossini opera which brought Juan Diego Flórez to international attention in Pesaro in 1996 was thrown together by the composer at the last minute to meet a deadline in February 1821, with a plot from one source and characters from another, and bits of the score filled in by Pacini. »
18 Nov 2008
As Tom Stoppard put it, “There is an art to the building up of suspense.” »
17 Nov 2008
Following a recent visit to Germany, Wes Blomster surveys the vibrant opera scene in Berlin and Magdeburg. »
17 Nov 2008
The Met has not staged La Damnation de Faust in a hundred years, since 1906, when it clocked a mere five performances. »
16 Nov 2008
When La Traviata had its first performance, in Venice in 1853, it was a scandal. »
16 Nov 2008
After a somewhat shaky start to the season, as my recently posted review of La traviata attests, Washington National Opera has added considerable luster to its roster this November with the infusion of spectacle and star power in two new productions. »
16 Nov 2008
Wozzeck stands ankle deep in water on the flooded stage of the Bavarian State Opera, above him hovers a huge, movable box – the dingy apartment he shares with Marie and their adolescent bastard – and he is surrounded by a freak-show worthy of a George Groszian nightmare and worse. »
16 Nov 2008
The "2" in this disc's title indicates that this is the second Chandos recital for Sir Thomas Allen. »
13 Nov 2008
At a time when it is the fashion for stage direction, sets, and costumes to have little, if anything to do with the ouvre presented on stage, this production of Jean-Baptiste Lully's Persée (1682) is candy for the eyes and ears, with adherence to what is known of the French Baroque operatic standards.1 »
13 Nov 2008
“This won’t be a total Schlacht of sound” said the director, Charles Edwards, of this production. Instead, it’s a strikingly intelligent interpretation, focusing on the deeper aspects of the drama. »
13 Nov 2008
It is incredibly unfashionable nowadays to stage opera straightforwardly. Welsh National Opera’s recent lavish staging of Otello prompted a dismissive reception from the critics. »
09 Nov 2008
There are remnants of snobbery in San Francisco that are happiest when San Francisco Opera
associates itself with the likes of Vienna State Opera and Covent Garden, and left positively
frightened at the idea of a production from Opera Colorado/Fort Worth Opera/et al. on the War
Memorial Opera House stage. »
09 Nov 2008
EMI owns this recording, so if pride dictates they repackage it in the "Great Recordings of the Century" series, a dissenter shouldn't moralize. »
09 Nov 2008
Both these performances come from mid-2005. Teatro Regio di Parma presented the Ernani in May of that year; August saw I Capuletti e I Montecchi on stage at the Festival della Valle d'Itria di Martina Franca. »
09 Nov 2008
Countless must be the number of true opera fans who have heard well-meaning acquaintances say, "Oh I just love opera! Especially Phantom of the Opera." »
07 Nov 2008
The current revival of Georges Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers at Lyric Opera of Chicago (seen 25 October) brings together an exceptionally strong cast. »
07 Nov 2008
In 1830, three years after the death of Beethoven and two after Schubert’s untimely demise, Berlioz, 27, dazzled the world with his phantasmagoric — perhaps drug-inspired — Symphonie fantastique. »
04 Nov 2008
As performed just now by the San Francisco Opera Mussorgsky’s initial (1869), seven scene version of Boris Godunov revealed itself a finished masterpiece. »
04 Nov 2008
Of their two tours per year, English Touring Opera tends to channel the majority of the budget into the Spring season, and the Autumn tour – despite a focus in recent years on some high-quality Baroque chamber works, which lend themselves well to the size of the venues around the UK which the company visits – can be rather noticeably the poor relation. »
04 Nov 2008
“Opera directing is very different to theatre directing”, says Charles Edwards, director of Elektra at the Royal Opera House this season. “It has to be the music that motivates you”. For this production, he works with Mark Elder, “an extraordinarily theatrically-minded conductor who sees theatre in everything he hears”. »
02 Nov 2008
A few years ago EMI released a recording of Wagner duets with Placido Domingo and Deborah Voigt. »
02 Nov 2008
What opera contains a terrific overture, a wedding sextet, two murderous magical potions, a mad scene for coloratura soprano, a magnificent a cappella aria for contralto, dozens of glorious melodies and lots of nifty choral writing? »
02 Nov 2008
I was just itching to experience the new Oslo Opera House ever since I saw the pictures of its grand opening (ahead of schedule, thank-you-very-much) last April. »
02 Nov 2008
Is Boston Baroque period performance’s best kept secret? »
31 Oct 2008
Mary Zimmerman’s unmusical production of Lucia certainly improves if you give it a cast of singers who know what Donizetti is about. »
31 Oct 2008
The fascination of Don Giovanni lies not only in the bejeweled score but in the interplay of its eight intriguing characters, each based on an ancient type, yet each somehow cut loose from the formula da Ponte molded so well. »
30 Oct 2008
While the tributes and retrospectives continue to appear for the late Luciano Pavarotti, his sometime-colleague (if not rival) Plácido Domingo maintains a top-rank career, even including a contract with Deutsche Grammophon for new studio work. »
30 Oct 2008
Gala may be a budget label, but more opera sets of vintage live performances deserve a booklet essay as concise yet comprehensive, critically honest and yet fair, as Andrew Palmer's for this set, which preserves a 1980 performance of Richard Strauss and Joseph Grigor's Die Liebe der Danae. »
24 Oct 2008
Pimlico Opera is based at the Grange in Hampshire, home of the Grange Park opera festival, but pre-dates its sister company by a decade and has been giving national tours of popular operas since the 1980s as well as doing some pioneering opera and music theatre projects in UK prisons. »
24 Oct 2008
Bach’s monumental Mass in b minor exists in an abundant quantity of period performances to the point where one might ponder the wisdom of adding yet another to the shelf. »
24 Oct 2008
The good news (make that “great news”) is that conductor Dennis Russell Davies had total command over this ever-shifting composition, one minute lyrical and introspective, the next soaring and rhapsodic, the next percussive and agitated. »
23 Oct 2008
In recent years it’s the headgear of the ice-hearted princess that is often the major source of awe and excitement in productions of Puccini’s incomplete final opera. »
23 Oct 2008
Joanot Martorell’s 1490 “Tirant lo Blanc” isn’t on anyone’s reading list these days, and that’s rather a shame, for it — the first Catalan novel — was a favorite book of Miguel de Cervantes. »
21 Oct 2008
Munich in 1781 was hardly the big city, not an enlightened Paris where Gluck had recently turned the opera world on its ear, not a European capital like Vienna where Italian operatic imperialism was unassailable. »
21 Oct 2008
“One can easily imagine -- Berkeley professor Donald J. Grout wrote in 1979 -- a Scarlatti oratorio occasionally being sung in church or in concert […], but it is more difficult (though perhaps not quite impossible) to imagine a Scarlatti opera being staged at a modern opera house”. »
21 Oct 2008
In this new staging of Handel's comic rarity for English National Opera, director Christopher Alden has chosen to tell the classical tale of amorous and political intrigue through the world of the artistic elite of the 1920s/30s. »
21 Oct 2008
Staging La traviata for an opera company these days is an experience akin to that of a symphony’s orchestra programming Mozart: a great idea fraught with disaster. »
21 Oct 2008
We ought to consider – as opera’s current reigning soprano, Karita Mattila, has certainly considered, though I’m not so sure about director Jürgen Flimm – who, what, and how old Salome is. »
21 Oct 2008
It probably wasn’t intended as a symbol of anything in particular, but at the end of Act II, midway through the October 6 performance of La Gioconda, Enzo’s ship failed to burst into flames, thereby letting the curtain down most unsatisfactorily on what is usually one of the liveliest act finales in grand opera. »
21 Oct 2008
By the time he completed Le Roi d’Ys, in 1888, Edouard Lalo was sixty-five, approaching the end of a successful career as a chamber violinist. »
21 Oct 2008
A funny thing happened on the way to the convent. Manon Lescaut, a pretty little girl with a taste for pretty things, became sidetracked by a pretty young man. »
20 Oct 2008
There is much to admire in Masaaki Suzuki’s Bach performances with the Bach Collegium Japan, and this recording of excerpts from the St. Matthew Passion will remind the listener of the diverse ways in which this is so. »
20 Oct 2008
Among the recent releases on DVD of Rolf Liebermann's productions of operas from the Hamburg Opera conceived for television in the late 1960s, Beethoven's Fidelio is impressive for the use of the medium of film to bring out the personal aspects of this intensive opera. »
08 Oct 2008
For the opening of the 2008/09 season at ENO, Richard Jones has teamed up with two separate theatrical writers, Sean O'Brien and Lee Hall, to create unique new versions of the repertoire's most famous double bill. »
06 Oct 2008
Presented in its fine line of “Originals,” Decca’s reissue of Solti’s famous 1967 recording of Verdi’s Requiem is actually offered with another fine recording, the same conductor’s 1977/78 performance of the Quattro pezzi sacri. »
06 Oct 2008
In recent years, Emmanuelle Haïm has achieved prominence at the helm of several baroque operas, including Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo and Handel’s Rodelinda and Giulio Cesare. »
06 Oct 2008
It can be difficult to inject life into a production which has been a staple of a company’s repertoire for over twenty years. »
06 Oct 2008
If Munich’s new Macbeth production does anything, it stirs emotions and draws heated response. »
06 Oct 2008
Decades ago a New Yorker cartoon showed a very little girl standing on tip-toe to return a book to a matronly librarian. »
03 Oct 2008
Korngold’s third opera Die tote Stadt premiered in 1920 in Cologne, the composer a mere 23 years old. Back then, opera remained a living art form, with the likes of Strauss and Puccini keeping the public excited about new works. »
29 Sep 2008
The second offering of the current WNO season is a San Diego Opera production of Georges Bizet’s Pearl Fishers (1863). »
28 Sep 2008
Planet Earth laid waste by forces beyond our control, hunger and drought squeezing humanity out of existence whilst those in charge look on, laughing, lusting and concerned only with their own power struggles – does this sound familiar? »
22 Sep 2008
Musically and dramatically Ferdinando Paer’s Leonora and Beethoven’s Fidelio might be said to belong respectively to pre- and post-revolutionary ages. »
22 Sep 2008
A few seasons back, Los Angeles Opera invited William Friedkin to direct a double-bill of Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle and Puccini's Gianni Schicchi. »
22 Sep 2008
Although Jacobus Vaet, Antonius Galli and Pieter Maessens are little-known composers today, this impressive recording featuring their music, the debut recording by the ensemble Cinquecento, may serve as a cautionary reminder that modern familiarity is often the fruit of circumstance and not necessarily a reliable measure of artistic achievement. »
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. »
13 Jul 2008
Bernd Alois Zimmermann was a sensitive, none too healthy 21-year-old music prodigy in 1939, when he was drafted into the German army. »
13 Jul 2008
For Sir William Walton, the protracted genesis of Troilus and Cressida must have seemed more akin to the agonies of Sisyphus than to the composition of an opera. »
13 Jul 2008
Originating at the Châtelet, where the narration was given in French, Robert Carsen's staging of Bernstein's unique satire worked rather well in its television broadcast from the Parisian house late in 2006. »
13 Jul 2008
The disastrous 1904 La Scala premiere of Giacomo Puccini’s Madame Butterfly is one of those famous annals of opera which tend to leave today’s audiences perplexed about all the uproar. »
13 Jul 2008
At the Rossini Festival held in Pesaro, Italy, Dynamic recorded two Rossini rarities in August 2006. »
13 Jul 2008
The concert “20th-Century Masters,” presented by the Grant Park Music Festival, Chicago on 27 and 28 June 2008 featured several pieces performed for the first time under the auspices of the Festival. »
13 Jul 2008
The late Guiseppe Sinopoli (1946-2001) became established as an estimable conductor of nineteenth-century music, and his legacy includes a number of fine recordings. »
06 Jul 2008
David Gockley heard the cries of many an opera fan that Pamela Rosenberg had denied them their 'stars,' so for his summer season, 2008, he brought them Natalie Dessay, Susan Graham, Ruth Ann Swenson, and Stefan Margita. »
06 Jul 2008
The best thing about this set, a Norma recorded live at the Teatro delle Muse di Ancona in late 2004, is the booklet essay by Marco Beghelli, offered in both English and Italian (no credit to any translator). »
06 Jul 2008
My visit to two rarely mounted pieces at the Opera Festival of St. Louis brought to mind the little girl with the curl, for when it was good, it was very very good and when it was bad, it was, um. . .er. . . »
06 Jul 2008
At one time, Verdi’s Aida figured as the most performed opera. »
23 Jun 2008
In the latter part of last year, the casting for Nicholas Hytner’s new production of Don Carlo — in the five-act Italian version — looked to be on shaky ground. »
23 Jun 2008
No one has ever called Gazzaniga’s Don Giovanni an overlooked masterpiece. »
22 Jun 2008
This Dynamic recording of Meyerbeer's Semiramide, an opera title more familiar with Rossini's name appended, mixes the pleasure of a modestly appealing surprise with regret at key aspects of the performance. »
22 Jun 2008
Pink flamingos, sheep on wheels, and a queen crowned with giant antlers all inhabit the zany world of Opera Theatre of Saint Louis’s Una cosa rara, where the artificial 18th century pastoral commingles with cutesy country colors and 1950s yard art. »
22 Jun 2008
Among the choral music of Anton [Antonin] Dvorak, the familiar Stabat Mater, Op. 58, is known to modern audiences through various live performances and recordings. »
19 Jun 2008
A nostalgic charm permeates these filmed productions from the early 1970s of Lortzing's Zar und Zimmerman and Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, collaborations between the Hamburg State Opera and German TV director Joachim Hess. »
19 Jun 2008
The opera highlights series from Classics for Pleasure continues its recycling of the EMI catalogue with selections from two of Herbert von Karajan's recordings. »
15 Jun 2008
On the barren stage: a few chairs, a dark-gold hectoplasm projected on the wood panels of the acoustic chamber - nothing more. »
15 Jun 2008
For the belated Spanish premiere of Britten’s Death in Venice, 35 years after its creation in Aldeburgh, Barcelona seems a felicitous choice. »
09 Jun 2008
With this recording of songs by Henry & William Lawes, musical brothers who flourished in Caroline England, countertenor Robin Blaze with lutenist Elizabeth Kenny continue their exploration of early English song for Hyperion, and the results are stunning. »
09 Jun 2008
For Bellini’s “I Capuleti e i Montecchi,” Paris Opera peopled its revival with plenty of star power. »
09 Jun 2008
When the Ringling Brothers folded their tents, opera took over. Aïda with elephants, and Walküre with real horses. »
09 Jun 2008
It is a bit hard to know what to make of Olivier Messiaen’s colossal piece “Saint François d’Assise,” beautifully mounted by Netherlands Opera. »
08 Jun 2008
If you are going to produce Jacques Fromental Halevy’s forgotten opera “Clari,” I urge you to first make sure you have a signature on the contact from a superstar with the firepower of Cecilia Bartoli. »
04 Jun 2008
The title of this recording “Joy: the Laments of Gilles Binchois” introduces a seeming contradiction, one that plays on a contemporaneous description of the composer as "pére de joyeusetè"—the father of joy—in tension with an affinity for melancholy in his works. »
04 Jun 2008
Even though it is one of the important operas of the twentieth century, Arnold Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron is, perhaps, more esteemed than performed. »
04 Jun 2008
It is worth remembering that prior to the première of Strauss’s opera in 1911, the working title was ‘Ochs auf Lerchenau’. »
04 Jun 2008
Opera producers in quest of headlines, unable to make them from the limited number of Mozart operas available (all of them far too familiar) but equipped with the flood of attractive young singers trained to sing Mozart in conservatories (because singing Mozart does not harm young voices, and
singing Verdi and Wagner before 30 — better yet, 40 — often will), sometimes turn to Mozart’s contemporary, Cimarosa, and his Il Matrimonio Segreto, to get attention. »
04 Jun 2008
Handel’s Rodrigo, subtitled ‘Vincer se stesso è la maggior vittoria’ (Self-conquest is the greater victory) is one of the composer’s earliest operatic works, and rarely heard. »
28 May 2008
Chicago Opera Theater scored a resounding success with its area premiere of John Adams’ newest stage piece, “A Flowering Tree.” »
28 May 2008
Upon its premiere at Chicago’s Lyric Opera in 1997 Anthony Davis’ Amistad found little critical favor. Its undisciplined excesses led one writer to compare it to a high-school pageant. »
27 May 2008
Two excellent books on opera have come to hand, providing many hours of entertaining reading. I combine notice of them with a few thoughts about composer Paul Moravec’s CDs, and his forthcoming opera premiere at Santa Fe Opera in 2009. »
27 May 2008
In these days of 'concept' productions, it is rare that the curtain goes up on the first act of an opera and it looks exactly as one might reasonably expect it to. »
27 May 2008
I can still remember my first ever “Pelleas et Melisande” in my first ever outing at San Francisco Opera during my first ever visit to that beautiful town. »
25 May 2008
A recent visit to Berlin’s three opera houses yielded decidedly, nay wildly varying outcomes. »
25 May 2008
Premiered in 1926, Paul Hindemith’s opera Cardillac is a three-act work based on E. T. A. Hoffmann’s short story Das Fräulein von Scuderi. »
25 May 2008
In the 1983 production designed, staged, and directed by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, this recording of Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde is a solid and well-thought performance that has much to offer. »
15 May 2008
Recorded between 1938 and 1942, the excerpts from performances of Der Rosenkavalier, Die Frau ohne Schatten, Arabella, and Daphne at the Dresden Staatsoper are all conducted by Karl Böhm. »
15 May 2008
The Gotham Chamber Opera has been delighting opera fans on the Lower East Side for seven years now, one small audience at a time. »
13 May 2008
Thirty-six years after Sarah Caldwell and the Opera Company of Boston presented the first complete staged performances in the United States, Hector Berlioz’ Les Troyens returned to Boston in triumph in a series of concert performances presented by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the baton of James Levine to close the BSO’s 2007-2008 season. »
13 May 2008
Opera companies should practice historic preservation, keeping certain productions forever in the repertory because of their quality and aesthetic value. »
13 May 2008
Prometeo is so radically different that it’s almost incomprehensible heard from preconceived assumptions of what music “ought” to be. »
13 May 2008
Claudio Monteverdi. Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in patria. Edited by Rinaldo Alessandrini. Urtext. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2007. BA 8791. A vocal score is available as 8791a. »
12 May 2008
John Brown might have been a’mouldering in his grave since he was hanged in 1859, but he was resurrected — in body and spirit — on May 3, when the Lyric Opera of Kansas City staged the world premiere of Kirke Mechem’s John Brown. »
09 May 2008
When Toronto’s Opera Atelier asked her to sing Elettra in Mozart’s Idomeneo Measha Brueggergosman hesitated. »
09 May 2008
In 2007 it was an experiment; now it’s a new summer festival firmly rooted in fertile Texas turf with a bright view of its second season and of the more distant future as well. »
09 May 2008
Operas do not often get a second chance. A new work is premiered and — if it’s a co-commission — it moves on to another company or two. »
07 May 2008
Die Entführung aus dem Serail is too light to be a grand opera, but it makes rather grander demands of its singers than operetta could possibly bear. »
06 May 2008
At the centenary of the birth of the conductor Herbert von Karajan various commemorations are occurring, an among them is the concise CD and DVD release by Deutsche Grammophon, with both discs bound into a booklet that includes a short prose tribute to the man illustrated with some well-chosen photographs from various parts of his career. »
06 May 2008
English National Opera’s production of Harrison Birtwistle’s ‘Punch and Judy’ is the company’s second collaboration with the Young Vic Theatre — following the premiere of Neuwirth’s ‘Lost Highway’ a few weeks earlier — and remarkably, also the second London production of this early Birtwistle work within a month, the previous one having been at the Linbury Studio Theatre, a collaboration between Music Theatre Wales and the Royal Opera. »
06 May 2008
Over the years, one tried and true method of packing audiences in to the concerts of Robert Bass’s Collegiate Chorale has been to present concert opera with impressive soloists. »
06 May 2008
Consumers might opt for a highlights set instead of a full recording of an opera for many reasons. »
06 May 2008
Naxos's DVD division has already released the performances on this disc of Virgil Thomson's scores for The Plow that Broke the Plains and The River, as soundtracks for a re-release of the original films. That DVD (Naxos 2.110521) contained, as... »
04 May 2008
Martha Graham used to say, “In order for there to be dance, there must be something that needs to be danced.” »
04 May 2008
When the Met presented La Fille du Régiment for Lily Pons during World War II, she sought permission to wave the Cross of Lorraine, symbol of Charles de Gaulle’s Free French, during the Salut à la France in Act II. »
04 May 2008
Why does one so seldom encounter Dvořák’s Rusalka on stage? »
27 Apr 2008
As difficult as it is to identify a single score as representative of its composer, Symphony no. 8 in C minor by Anton Bruckner is an essential work that may be regarded as the quintessence of his accomplishments in the form. »
25 Apr 2008
Satyagraha is an odd duck to encounter if you are seeking a traditional opera-going experience or anything like it. »
23 Apr 2008
Victor DeRenzi is a man of convictions — and of courage. Given his commitment to tradition, you might call DeRenzi, artistic director of Sarasota Opera since 1982, conservative. »
22 Apr 2008
With what might (if one were risking facetiousness) be termed a “false-set” of four countertenors in the cast, this was always going to be an intriguing production of Handel’s Giulio Cesare for aficionados of a voice type which has revolutionised the perception (and popularity) of baroque opera over the past 15 years. »
21 Apr 2008
Harrison Birtwistle’s new full-scale opera, commissioned by the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, is a study of isolation and imprisonment. »
21 Apr 2008
It was one of Queler’s good nights. »
21 Apr 2008
This production offers a different view of Norma. As Stage Director Guy Joosten explains in the introduction on the first of a 2-disc set, he wanted to give the audience “more” of what he believes the modern audience expects. »
21 Apr 2008
It is, you might say, the little opera that can. True, if it’s size of the budget, the price of tickets and the number of seats that concerns you, the Komische Oper is clearly the third of Berlin’s opera houses. »
21 Apr 2008
What to make of "Lucrezia Borgia"? I have always felt that, some lovely arias notwithstanding, this Donizetti work never really gets going until the slam-bang soprano-baritone duet in Act II. »
09 Apr 2008
That Fed Dostoevsky – sure plays a mean pinball! »
08 Apr 2008
If Friedrich August Kummer is not a household word in your home, no reason for concern — he is one of the prolific Kleinmeistern of the post-Beethoven generation, a generation for which the cost of printing had dropped so much that it was financially possible for a composer to produce hundreds of published opuses. »
08 Apr 2008
Plainly put, Frankfurt Opera’s “The Rape of Lucretia” could be offered as a textbook example of just how great a performance can be when everything goes right. »
07 Apr 2008
BERLIN — Which car-rental agency was it that was once No. 2 and “trying harder?” »
06 Apr 2008
In a climate in which bel canto opera seems to be enjoying a steady and welcome revival, ETO opened their current season with a welcome production of Donizetti's historically dubious account of the latter days of Anne Boleyn. The company's... »
06 Apr 2008
The most interesting opera on ETO's Spring 2008 tour was Carlisle Floyd's 1950s tale of religious hypocrisy in the rural Deep South, based on the Apocryphal tale of Susannah and the Elders. »
06 Apr 2008
The last of the three operas on ETO's Spring 2008 tour was sung in English, and updated to a Spain of the mid-twentieth century under Franco. »
06 Apr 2008
This installment of John Eliot Gardiner’s impressive Bach Cantata Pilgrimage comes from close to the end of his millennial Wanderjahr, presenting cantatas for Christmas week. »
06 Apr 2008
Opera companies often tout new productions as a major attraction of their seasons. »
06 Apr 2008
Timeless values of great opera conducting fill this disc of overtures and preludes, all conducted by Tullio Serafin. »
30 Mar 2008
William Byrd’s affinity for the Latin motet found various outlets. »
30 Mar 2008
A frequent complaint about contemporary operas — or most any after Puccini's Turandot — is the lack of that memorable lyricism found in the standard repertory. »
30 Mar 2008
From a relatively obscure label — Osteria — comes this 1962 live recording of Verdi's La Forza del Destino, featuring a relatively obscure soprano, Gré Brouwenstijn. »
30 Mar 2008
With single CD versions of full-length operas, isn't the term "highlights" presumptuous? »
23 Mar 2008
UC Opera's reputation for showcasing rare large-scale works has been boosted this year with the UK premiere of this 1846 opera by Edouard Lalo after a Schiller play. »
17 Mar 2008
As Anna Russell might say: "The three operas of Puccini's 'Il Trittico' take place on a luxury cruise liner. . . . . On it." »
17 Mar 2008
Let me say up front that I like Jake Heggie's work. I feel he has a true gift for soaring and meaningful melody, a great ear for orchestral effects, a talent for picking good source material, and a knack for crafting affecting melodrama (in the best sense of that word) that can move an audience to tears. »
17 Mar 2008
Do dysfunctional families outnumber the ones that move through life untroubled, or is it — to paraphrase Tolstoy — that every dysfunctional family is dysfunctional in its own way and thus of greater interest to writers and composers? »
16 Mar 2008
I bet this doesn't happen at the movies: »
16 Mar 2008
Published in 2007, Riccardo primo, Re d’Inghilterra (HWV 23) and Tolomeo, Re d’Egitto (HWV 25) mark two of the latest installments of vocal-score editions of Handel’s operas based upon Bärenreiter’s Urtext editions. »
16 Mar 2008
Let us, for one example among many, take the capstan song in Act I. »
16 Mar 2008
This an intriguing two-disc DVD set. The primary disc is the opera itself, while the other disc is a film called “Adieu Mozart” that tells us about the unique relationship Mozart had with the City of Prague. »
16 Mar 2008
The Spanish comical lyric genre of the zarzuela has long been considered the stepchild of opera. »
16 Mar 2008
The BBC Proms webcasts all of its performances, and many are available for extended periods through BBC Radio's archives. »
16 Mar 2008
As evidence of Deutsche Grammophon's proud status as a classical record label of the "old school," there appears this CD document of a typical opera gala affair, from July of 2007 in Baden-Baden. »
16 Mar 2008
While a number of fine recordings of Gustav Mahler’s Eighth Symphony have been released in recent years, the prospect of a performance conducted by Pierre Boulez is attractive for many reasons. »
03 Mar 2008
James Conlon has become the artistic heart and soul of Los Angeles Opera in his second season as music director. »
02 Mar 2008
The large number of recordings of Bach’s Mass in B minor predispose one to look for distinctions between them. »
02 Mar 2008
The Opera Company of Philadelphia’s February production is the second staging of David DiChiera’s new opera Cyrano, a co-production with Michigan Opera Theater and Florida Grand Opera. »
02 Mar 2008
Opera North is one of the most innovative opera companies in Britain. »
02 Mar 2008
It is a measure of the classic status that the music of Miles Davis has acquired in American culture that a single LP produced for Columbia in the 1960s (Miles Smiles) is the focus of a short monograph from Indiana University Press. »
02 Mar 2008
Perhaps the most beloved comic opera, Rossini’s Il barbière di Siviglia has never left the repertoire. »
02 Mar 2008
A typical film soundtrack today might not fill the length of a CD, while being padded with any pop music hits for which the producers would cough up the money for the rights. As often as not the scoring would... »
02 Mar 2008
The handsome face of tenor Juan Diego Florez naturally gets the cover of his latest CD, and his arguably unusually slim physique is on view too: on the inside cover of the booklet, on both the interior and rear of the jewel case, and on the back of the booklet. »
02 Mar 2008
San Diego Opera apparently has raided the vaults of Lincoln Center opera companies, circa the 1970s. »
25 Feb 2008
Many an anthology of Puccini's "greatest hits" has found its way to market, and many more will follow this latest from Decca, Puccini Gold. »
25 Feb 2008
The Royal Opera's new Salome is set roughly in the 1930s, in surroundings which refer overtly to Pasolini's Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom, populated by uniformed soldiers and naked whores. »
22 Feb 2008
Dread and disgruntle are the emotions natural to the fan of any special singer when he arrives at the opera house to learn she has withdrawn from the performance and been replaced by an unknown. »
22 Feb 2008
With the tenth anniversary of her death approaching, Orfeo has released a double-CD box set tribute to Leonie Rysanek in their Wiener Staatsoper Live series. »
20 Feb 2008
ENO doesn’t really go in for bel canto opera. Other than a Maria Stuarda back in the mid 1990s, the only Donizetti opera in the company’s repertoire in the recent past has been the popular L’elisir d’amore. »
19 Feb 2008
In 1786, Habsburg Emperor Joseph II commissioned a pair of short operas from two of the biggest names in Viennese musical theater: Salieri and Mozart. »
18 Feb 2008
Jonas Kaufmann’s debut album is a treat to the ears of opera lovers. »
17 Feb 2008
Director Jonathan Miller was there at the curtain call to greet the first night of this latest revival of a production which has now been in ENO's repertoire for twenty years. »
17 Feb 2008
My Valentine’s Day gift came a bit early courtesy of Los Angeles Opera. Of course, it is to be hoped that your own celebration has a happier outcome than that of opera’s most famous Love Couple, “Tristan und Isolde.” »
17 Feb 2008
Valentine’s Day may not quite be in the same major holiday league with the Fourth of July or New Year’s Eve, but you wouldn’t have known it from the fireworks emanating from the stage of Portland Opera, in the form of some dazzling Valentine’s night vocalizing in quite a fine production of Handel’s “Rodelinda.” »
17 Feb 2008
A sound designer? Isn’t that merely a euphemistic upgrade of “sound engineer?” »
17 Feb 2008
An air of anticipation filled the Four Seasons Centre as the announcer walked across the stage to say that soprano Ester Sümegi was ill and would not be performing. »
17 Feb 2008
To open its 2008 season, San Diego Opera restored the production of Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser that Günther Schneider-Siemsson created for the Metropolitan Opera three decades ago. »
10 Feb 2008
Anthony Minghella's visually-arresting staging, a co-production with New York's Metropolitan Opera and the Lithuanian National Opera, returned this month to its original home at the London Coliseum after a gap of two years. »
10 Feb 2008
The Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, after suffering a calamitous fire in the early 1990s, reopened in 1999, lovingly restored. TDK has released a series of DVDs from the Liceu since that date, providing ample evidence of the world... »
06 Feb 2008
Premiered posthumously, the symphonic song-cycle Das Lied von der Erde by Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) remains one of his defining works because of its synthesis of song and symphony, two genres he pursued throughout his career. »
04 Feb 2008
While I eagerly seized upon an opportunity to hear Angelika Kirschlager live for the first time, having written in very recent weeks about not one but two of the star mezzo’s current CD releases, I ventured to Frankfurt’s Alte Oper feeling a little bit like her stalker. »
03 Feb 2008
When I worked in the Archives of the Met, I was custodian of several hundred costumes, many from the days when divas traveled with steamer trunks full of things run up just for them, by the finest designers, with the most glamorous materials, in the colors and styles that suited the ladies themselves. »
03 Feb 2008
In 1851 during his first season as music director in Düsseldorf, Robert Schumann presented a performance of Bach’s St. John Passion, and unsurprisingly adapted the score both to nineteenth-century taste and nineteenth-century practicalities. »
03 Feb 2008
The centrality of dance at the French court helped bring grace, order, and political allegory into the characteristic prominence they enjoyed during the reigns of Louis XIV and Louis XV; theatre presentations of all stripes were infused with choreographic diversions. »
03 Feb 2008
In tandem with the recently released set of Sir Simon Rattle’s recordings of Mahler’s symphonies on EMI Classics, the set of the complete symphonies by Jean Sibelius merits attention. »
03 Feb 2008
There is nothing redeeming about Sir John Falstaff, one of Shakespeare’s most lively comic characters and the subject of Verdi’s final opera, and yet, inexplicably, we love him. »
28 Jan 2008
What constitutes an “international opera star” these days, anyway? »
24 Jan 2008
As much as Richard Wagner espoused opera reform in his theoretical writings by bringing to his works for the stage a closer unity between music and text, his actual means of doing so at times involved the use of orchestral forces that sometimes overwhelmed the sung word. »
24 Jan 2008
The budget label Gala purveys live performances both historic and relatively recent; of the three discussed here, the La Scala Fedora dates back to 1931, while the Attila comes from a 1987 La Fenice performance. »
22 Jan 2008
National styles of music in the seventeenth century were often distinctive, and in the case of French and Italian music, famously so. »
21 Jan 2008
With its recent release of Mahler’s symphonies conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, EMI Classics makes available in a single place an outstanding contribution to the composer’s discography. »
21 Jan 2008
This DVD records and commemorates a 1981 production of Parsifal in its Bayreuth lair, and the singers of 1981 are as fine as recollection might paint them. »
20 Jan 2008
Once the custom of the world's opera houses was to translate great operas into the language of each respective country. »
20 Jan 2008
Repackaging older recordings having become the primary focus of a classical recording company's business, Deutsche Grammophon budgeted some funds for art direction for its budget series called "Opera House" (although that appellation only appears in a link found on the back inside cover of the sets' booklets). »
20 Jan 2008
Of Rosenkavaliers on DVD, the classics tend to be lovingly detailed productions, going back to the film of Herbert von Karajan leading an exemplary cast, with Elizabeth Schwarzkopf's iconic Marschallin. »
20 Jan 2008
The Metropolitan Opera audience loves its Wagner, and the management for the last several decades has, alas, made sure we aren’t spoiled: it’s a rare season that gets more than two production revivals of Wagner, and some years there have been none. »
20 Jan 2008
Despite an unsurprising degree of conservatism in liturgical music, devotional life in Rome often found ways of taking advantage of modern musical style. »
20 Jan 2008
With her performance of the “Four Last Songs,” ably partnered by Michael Tilson Thomas and his San Francisco Symphony, Deborah Voigt emphatically confirmed her place as one of the glories of the current roster of Strauss interpreters. »
20 Jan 2008
John Adams, whose opera Nixon in China set the bar for post-minimalism in the lyric theatre, has once again scored a success with his latest work. »
16 Jan 2008
“Her fioritura is priceless, breathtaking, and effortless.” »
16 Jan 2008
Wagner’s all-conquering chic made apocalyptic music-dramas drawn from folklore the ideal of the nationalistic era; every serious opera composer of the time felt obliged to attempt something in that line. »
13 Jan 2008
The English composer Nicholas Maw has been a major voice since the 1960's, with a wide range of works that include the 2002 opera, "Sophie’s Choice," a violin concerto for Joshua Bell (1993), and the monumentally-scaled orchestral work, "Odyssey" (1972-87). »
13 Jan 2008
As is often the case, last works that remain incomplete at the time of a composer’s death, are quick to invoke controversy and conspiracy theories. »
07 Jan 2008
This is a valuable new recording of a work that is only rarely heard, but was widely influential and wildly popular during the eighteenth century. Philosophe Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote both the libretto and the music, with mixed success. »
07 Jan 2008
This disc is well worth the price for the first track alone: the opening measures of Jean-Féry Rebel’s “Cahos,” (Chaos), written in 1737 or 1738, may cause you to wonder if you accidentally left a Stockhausen or Ligeti disc in the changer. »
03 Jan 2008
In this country art and politics are rarely bedfellows — strange or otherwise; indeed, it’s seldom that the two meet under the same roof. »
30 Dec 2007
Regarded, until the modern vogue for earlier masters, as the senior surviving grand master of opera, Gluck never quite becomes fashionable and never quite vanishes. »
30 Dec 2007
There is no middle ground in War and Peace — or, rather, it’s all middle ground, like a battlefield, and you may feel as if every soldier in Russia (and in France) has marched over you. »
30 Dec 2007
Once upon a time, we used to only dream about a stellar pairing like Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu has fielded for their current offering on display: “La Cenerentola.” »
30 Dec 2007
Enough ink was spilled last year gushing over Valencia’s new Calatrava-designed opera house and Arts and Science park that I had been chomping at the bit for the opportunity to take in a performance there as soon as my availability and, more important, the availability of a still-very-hard-to-find ticket coincided. »
30 Dec 2007
Do we too easily take Richard Strauss for granted? The question is prompted by the superlative production of “Frau ohne Schatten” that was the highlight of the fall season at the Chicago Lyric Opera. »
30 Dec 2007
This recording made half a century ago will not be anyone’s first choice unless one is a die-hard fan of one of the principal singers; neither of them belonging to the absolute top in their profession. »
27 Dec 2007
The glorious universe of the Baroque has been receiving tribute from the wonderful talent of countertenor and early music guru René Jacobs for more than thirty years now. »
27 Dec 2007
Although considered among Ravel’s finest works, Daphnis et Chloé may be known best through excerpts, particularly the second suite that the composer derived from his score. »
27 Dec 2007
There’s still a hint of jest in the comparison, but it’s not without reason that Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally are mentioned now and then in opera circles as “the Strauss and Hofmannsthal of the 21st century.” »
27 Dec 2007
Watching The Queen of Spades staged by a Russian company is often an unforgettable experience. »
26 Dec 2007
A 1979 recording originally released on LP in 1985, the CD reissue of this classic performance of Schoenberg’s 1913 cantata Gurrelieder as part of its series entitled Originals makes this fine account of this magnificent work available to another generation of listeners. »
18 Dec 2007
If Belfast in Northern Ireland isn’t a city that immediately springs to mind as a centre of musical excellence then it’s not for want of talent, initiative and professionalism within its cultural community. »
16 Dec 2007
After the triumph of his fifth opera, Ernani, Verdi could have gone on writing howling melodramas and made a mint. »
14 Dec 2007
You will wonder what designer Rosalie could have been thinking when she put Brunnhilde in trousers twice as wide at the waist as the soprano wearing them, with a nippled plastic bustier above. »
11 Dec 2007
Not long ago, English National Opera declared an intention to capitalise on its name and history by placing greater emphasis on English works. »
11 Dec 2007
Despite 19th-century Russia’s reputation as an Italian opera haven, Verdi’s late masterpiece Otello found acceptance there only with great difficulty, even though in its 1889 premiere the title role acquired a great local interpreter in the Mariinsky Theater primo uomo, Nikolai Figner. »
04 Dec 2007
Imagine a mild December night, with some three hundred people queueing for a concert ticket on Siena’s horseshoe-shaped Piazza del Campo. »
04 Dec 2007
Johanna Kinkel (1810-1858) was a talented contemporary of Fanny Hensel, and other fine musicians of the first half of the nineteenth century. Her legacy includes some fine Lieder, which are collected as An Imaginary Voyage through Europe in an arrangement that represents the various themes she explored in her music. »
04 Dec 2007
Peter Schickele, channeling P.D.Q. Bach, was wont to say, “Most classical scholars were
unaware Iphigenia was ever in Brooklyn … and I think the cantata, Iphigenia in Brooklyn, does for Iphigenia what the Vinland Map did for Leif Ericsson.” »
04 Dec 2007
The American Dream and the tragic vision of ancient Greece are miles and millennia apart; yet they merge seamlessly in William Bolcom’s “View from the Bridge,” on stage in November at the Washington National Opera. »
04 Dec 2007
Die Frau ohne Schatten is the story of a being of purely sensual spirit who defies the temptation to do evil, thereby demonstrating a moral soul and achieving humanity. »
28 Nov 2007
The little heard “Adelia, o la figlia dell’arciere” (Adelia, or the Archer’s Daughter) stands between Donizetti’s Parisian successes “La fille du regiment” and “La favorite” in the prolific composer’s oeuvre. »
28 Nov 2007
San Francisco Opera makes it possible for opera-lovers who have stuffed themselves with turkey on the fourth Thursday of November to indulge in a feast of opera on the following three days. »
27 Nov 2007
Although few composers have been so closely associated with a single work, Johann Pachelbel, whose canon for three violins has achieved canonical ubiquity, was a prolific composer with a number of vocal works to his credit. »
19 Nov 2007
Part of the fun of visiting the many companies that specialize in unearthing forgotten operas lies precisely in not knowing what you’re going to get. »
19 Nov 2007
The bel canto era, insofar as the contemporary public considers it at all, is usually thought of as the golden age of vocal beauty for its own sake. »
19 Nov 2007
Mozart made it easy for the Philistines. They see Don Giovanni thrown into the flaming jaws of Hell and hiss: “Two thousand women seduced and abandoned! “ »
18 Nov 2007
Released as part of Orfeo’s series entitled Festspiel Dokumente, this recording makes available on CD the concert performance at the Salzburg Festival of Anton Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony by the Vienna Philharmonic that Hans Knappertsbusch conducted on 30 August 1949. »
18 Nov 2007
The first opera performance I consciously attended while being definitely hooked to the genre due to records, was Guillaume Tell more than 40 years ago. »
18 Nov 2007
Released in celebration of the recent Mozart year, Tutto Mozart! is a collection of nineteen arias, duets and other ensembles from the composer’s operas that feature the baritone Bryn Terfel. »
18 Nov 2007
Founded in Oxford in the early 1990’s, the ensemble Charivari Agréable looks to seventeenth-century composers with Oxford connections as the basis for their recent recording, “The Oxford Psalms.” »
18 Nov 2007
The Badisches Staatstheater seems to have borrowed with a vengeance the catch-phrase from John Waters’ recent “A Dirty Shame,” namely: “Let’s go sexin’!” I can’t recall ever seeing a “Don Giovanni”
with more lip-locks, grinding torsos, leg-wraps, and groping embraces. »
16 Nov 2007
Edita Gruberova’s North American fans, who can only hold onto dim hopes that someday the
European superstar will return to these shores, can always seek to sate their desire for her artistry by picking up the latest CD from Nightingale Classics. »
14 Nov 2007
"They are boys, and they sing, but don't call them choirboys. 'Libera' prefer to be called a vocal group — a real boy band, if you like." »
14 Nov 2007
Between the efforts of recording companies Naxos and Opera Rara, Rossini-philes have been living in a golden age. »
14 Nov 2007
Philips decided some time ago that it no longer needed to be the audio representative for two fine contemporary singers of Russian origin, mezzo Olga Borodina and baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky. »
14 Nov 2007
After the marketing gimmickry of Sally Potter’s production of Carmen, and a dance-based Poppea set at the bottom of the sea, it did not bode well when the advertising for ENO’s latest
production included an interactive dress-up doll circulated by email. »
14 Nov 2007
Attending the opera may not be the first thing you think of when visiting Istanbul, but opera is to be found (if less well advertised than the local Bach Festival) at the Ataturk Cultural Center on Taksim Square, the heart of modern Istanbul. »
14 Nov 2007
Welsh National Opera’s new opera “The Sacrifice”, composed by James MacMillan with libretto by Michael Symmons Roberts, and directed by Katie Mitchell, is an emotionally raw and compelling study of the nature of conflict, and how humans are changed by it. »
13 Nov 2007
Verdi, a born skeptic where the supernatural is concerned, did not seem to know quite what to do with the witches in Macbeth and was far too loyal to Shakespeare to reduce their role – he knew how closely the play was bound to them, famous for them. »
12 Nov 2007
Le Nozze di Figaro, in 1786, was the longest and most elaborate opera buffa ever composed and (though it is seldom given complete) is still the longest you are likely to see in the regular repertory. »
12 Nov 2007
As its name suggests, the selections on this wonderful new CD are all excerpted from five different versions of the tale of the beautiful enchantress “Armida.” »
11 Nov 2007
Recorded on 29 January 1978, this performance preserves a classic production of Beethoven’s Fidelio, which involved a gifted cast. »
11 Nov 2007
Although seriously ill, Beverly Sills and Luciano Pavarotti were still very much alive when general director Anthony Freud in his second year in this position planned the 53rd season of the Houston Grand Opera. »
11 Nov 2007
Since his appointment as general manager of Parma’s Teatro Regio in August 2005, Mauro Meli didn’t conceal his ambitious plans for growth. »
11 Nov 2007
A notice for organizers: it’s relatively easy to produce a vocal recital and sell out a large house
for two nights in a row. »
11 Nov 2007
It’s somewhat of a mystery why Puccini’s 1917 “La Rondine” is such a neglected, rarely-performed opera. »
31 Oct 2007
This book is in German, which may make it of limited interest to people who are not sufficiently familiar with the language. »
31 Oct 2007
The 17th Bienal of Contemporary Brazilian Music [XVII Bienal de Música Brasileira Contemporânea] began on Sunday, Oct. 21, 2007 at the Sala Cecilia Meireles, Rio's leading concert hall, with a lengthy program divided between six orchestral works, entrusted to the National Symphony Orchestra of the Universidade Federal Fluminense, based in Niteroi, RJ and three works for percussion, interpreted by the Dynamo Percussion Quartet. »
30 Oct 2007
When performances remain in the aural memory of the audience long after the final wave of applause, the event merits attention. »
30 Oct 2007
I recently made a special trip to Hamburg with one real goal in mind: to hear one of my most favorite young singers, bass Kyle Ketelsen in the Staatsoper’s new production of “Tales of Hoffmann.” »
29 Oct 2007
The two short films about the composer Jean Sibelius (1865-1957), The Early Years and Maturity & Silence comprise a video biography of Finnish artist. »
28 Oct 2007
For the final HD moviecast of the 2007-08 season, the Metropolitan Opera will present two stars in a production that has already earned rave reviews at Covent Garden: Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Florez starring in Donizetti’s La Fille du Regiment. »
28 Oct 2007
Despite rumours to the contrary, English National Opera’s advertising material claims that this 12th revival of Nicholas Hytner’s popular production of ‘ The Magic Flute’ will be the last. Though it’s arguably better to get rid of a production in... »
28 Oct 2007
Someone once called Handel’s Italian cantata Apollo e Dafne a “proto-opera” and it’s easy to see why. »
28 Oct 2007
Among the signal operas of the twentieth century, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (1934) by Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) is a powerful transformation of Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth, based on the 1865 short story by Nicolai Leskov. »
28 Oct 2007
For some seasons now, ENO has expressed a commitment to reinforce the role of dance within opera. »
24 Oct 2007
Do you remember a moment when a piece, new to you, so engaged you that you immediately wanted to know more. . .or all about it? »
24 Oct 2007
I doubt many admirers of Leontyne Price will be tempted to buy this issue. »
22 Oct 2007
Birgit Nilsson probably never heard of “the Protestant work ethic,” but she didn’t need to know it. »
22 Oct 2007
The Roman composer Mazzocchi is one of those figures known only to musicologists, and it is a pity, for this disc contains first-rate music. »
22 Oct 2007
An expedition against the famed warring women, the Amazons, ranking as Hercules’ ninth labor out the canonic twelve, provided the subject for the libretto by Antonio Salvi (not Giacomo Francesco Bussani, as hitherto misattributed) that Vivaldi set to music in 1723 as his own sixteenth operatic labor. »
22 Oct 2007
Glyndebourne Festival Opera’s guest appearance is an annual fixture at the Proms, and this year the work of choice was Verdi’s Macbeth, in a semi-staged performance on July 24th based on Richard Jones’s new production for this year’s Festival. »
16 Oct 2007
At this point in his career David Gockley has no need to prove himself. He did that with awesome success as general director of Houston Grand Opera for 33 years, during which he made that company a front runner both on the American and international opera scenes. »
16 Oct 2007
Mirella Freni’s 1993 triumph in the lead of Umberto Giordani’s Fedora at La Scala has made it to DVD. In his booklet essay, Werner Pfister (translated by Stewart Spencer) admits the opera “does not enjoy the best of reputations.” »
16 Oct 2007
Okay, okay, I freely admit this up front: I am not inordinately fond of operetta. Just thought you should know. All the more remarkable then that I found myself listening to this new recording several times over. »
15 Oct 2007
Whatever you do, don't give this DVD as a gift to people you don't want to alienate. »
15 Oct 2007
SAN FRANCISCO — “My subject is war and the pity of war, and the poetry is in the pity.” »
15 Oct 2007
A remarkably quick turnaround from only last May when the first run of Handel’s “Radamisto” was blessed with a consistently high level of vocal performance may have been the reason for sparser houses this time round at the Hamburg Staatsoper (October 6th). »
09 Oct 2007
Of Donizetti’s fifty or so “serious” operas, Lucia di Lammermoor was the only one to survive his heyday almost unscathed by change of fashion; today, when a dozen of his other worthy works have been restored to the repertory, Lucia easily hangs on. »
09 Oct 2007
Recorded in August 2001 at the Salzburg Festival, less than a month before the tragic events of 11 September, the presentation of songs and readings of music by American composers and texts by American authors seems aimed at a different world. Without venturing into political or social dimensions of the event, the concept of America in August 2001 suggested at times a sense of being impermeable, if not invincible. »
09 Oct 2007
Thomas Stoltzer represents German composition in the wake of the Reformation yet still immersed in the contrapuntal richness of the Josquin tradition. »
09 Oct 2007
With its fine engineering, the rich score of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony and the superb playing of the Philadelpha Orchestra conducted by Christoph Eschenbach emerge well in this recently released recording. »
09 Oct 2007
This must be one of the most interesting collectors’ collections to have appeared in many a year. Personally I’ve always liked any singer from Fernando De Lucia to Rolando Villazon but I never was tempted to collect shellac and therefore didn’t have to contact Yves Becko. »
08 Oct 2007
René Jacobs’s beautiful 1996 production of Francesco Cavalli’s Calisto has garnered many enthusiastic fans over the years. »
04 Oct 2007
Once upon a time, there was something known as early music. This was not so much a repertoire, a musico-historical epoch, as an attitude, a counter-cultural group. »
02 Oct 2007
There is a certain onerous responsibility in developing a new production of Carmen at a major house. »
01 Oct 2007
Across the country from Los Angeles, the Metropolitan Opera has opened its 2007-08 season with big stars (Netrebko, Alagna, Dessay, Giordani) in juicy, melodic operas by Donizetti and Gounod. »
28 Sep 2007
This is a recording that glories in iconicity. »
28 Sep 2007
Masterpiece? The term rather depends on whether the artist in question was indeed a master and it might come as a surprise to learn that this little-known composer of the brief, but significant, German Baroque Opera period is regarded by many as just that. »
26 Sep 2007
The New York City Opera’s production of Richard Danielpour’s and Toni Morrison’s opera, Margaret Garner, boldly faces the ugly history of slavery in the United States, and the racism inherent in the institution of opera. »
23 Sep 2007
There are a number of signs of the popularity of the King’s Singers—their longevity as an ensemble, the huge success of their public concerts, and their sizable discography all come immediately to mind. »
23 Sep 2007
Westminster Abbey is surely many things to many people. »
23 Sep 2007
The 2004 DVD "Playing Elizabeth’s Tune," originating in a BBC television production, features concert performances of Byrd’s sacred music sung by the Tallis Scholars along with documentary material treating the composer and his time. »
23 Sep 2007
It is not surprising that it was Beethoven’s Fidelio that was chosen to reconsecrate rebuilt opera houses in Vienna and Berlin in the years after World War Two. »
23 Sep 2007
If the swift downpour that hit Pesaro, moments before the Prima of G. Rossini’s Otello on August 8th, seemed like a bad omen, that was nothing compared to the two major cast changes that could have weakened the foundation of the Rossini Opera Festival’s new production of the opera and washed it away. »
23 Sep 2007
Of the operas composed in the latter half of the twentieth century, Krzysztof Penderecki’s Die Teufel von Loudon is a significant contribution to the repertoire. »
19 Sep 2007
For those who can’t (or won’t) see the forest of an opera for the trees of performance minutiae, here’s the word about the San Francisco Opera’s new production of Wagner’s “Tannhauser” that opened tonight: »
19 Sep 2007
The liturgy of Compline marks the end of the monastic day, as the community seeks peaceful repose for the night ahead. »
19 Sep 2007
Psalmody, be it in the form of chanted recitations or anthem settings, lies close to the heart of liturgical singing, and this collection, “Psalms for the Spirit” brings together an engaging variety of both long familiar and recent psalms that celebrates the traditions and explores new directions. »
19 Sep 2007
What’s outstanding about this Lohengrin is the orchestral playing. »
18 Sep 2007
Name this stage piece if you can: »
18 Sep 2007
Before the age of computers, CDs. DVDs and Apple i-Phones, there was television. »
18 Sep 2007
Los Angeles Opera opened its 2007 season with Fidelio on September 8th, and on the following day held a gala performance of Verdi’s Requiem. »
16 Sep 2007
One of the glories of a well-executed performance of Richard Wagner's Ring cycle is the sonic dimension of the work, with the dramatic contrasts between the larger musical canvasses and the more intimate ensembles that occur between several voices and within the orchestra itself. »
16 Sep 2007
Often overshadowed by its composer's Requiem, the Te Deum, Op. 22 (1849) by Hector Berlioz deserves attention for its own merits, and this recent release by Hänssler in its series of live recordings of the Staatskapelle Dresden is a solid reading of this work. »
16 Sep 2007
The courtly instrumental music of the Halle composer, Samuel Scheidt, is preserved in the printed collection "Ludi musici" (1620), giving congenial suggestion of both the richness of the court practice and the virtuosic abilities of the ensemble players there, including the cornettist, Zacharias Härtel. »
16 Sep 2007
The quarter century of work by the French medieval ensemble, Ensemble Organum, and their director, Marcel Pérès has positioned them as leading interpreters of early liturgical repertories; among interpreters, their renditions assert a high degree of distinctiveness and character. »
12 Sep 2007
On stages all over the world, most any night of the year, poor Parisian Mimi hacks her way into oblivion, while her sometime lover cries out her name in hysterical despair. »
11 Sep 2007
In 2005 the Australian musicologist Janice Stockigt made the case that several works attributed to Baldassare Galuppi in the Saxon State and University Library (Dresden) were really the works of Antonio Vivaldi. »
10 Sep 2007
This installment in the ongoing series of Monteverdi madrigal recordings from Marco Longhini and Naxos presents distinctive performances of works that lie close to the heart of the early baroque style. »
10 Sep 2007
There is much to admire in Masaaki Suzuki’s Bach performances with the Bach Collegium Japan, and this recording of excerpts from the St. Matthew Passion will remind the listener of the diverse ways in which this is so. »
07 Sep 2007
As an audio-recording, Supraphon's set of Bedrich Smetana's The Bartered Bride conducted by Zdeněk Košler deserves the highest recommendation. »
07 Sep 2007
A series of historic recordings comes from Profil/Edition: Günter Hänssler, and from those a subset of Staatskapelle Dresden performances brings opera fans a remarkable document. »
07 Sep 2007
Here's another in a series of televised recitals from Lugano, Switzerland to have appeared on DVD. »
07 Sep 2007
Alban Berg's Wozzeck takes almost two hours to induce a sense of soul-crushing nausea and despondency. Kiri Sings Karl achieved that for your reviewer in a couple minutes, and then went on with terrifying, torturous efficiency for almost another hour. »
07 Sep 2007
Director Willy Decker's outstanding Traviata from Salzburg, with Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazon, is one of the great contemporary opera DVDs. »
07 Sep 2007
A husky baritone in Speedos on a motor scooter and a buxom, purple-wigged Dame Edna drag clone — the Aspen Opera Theater Company’s staging of Francesco Cavalli’s 1667 “Eliogabalo” was off to a start that promised to equal the program’s over-the-top staging of the composer’s 1649 “Giasone” two summers ago. (AOTC director Edward Berkeley raised the curtain on that Baroque potboiler to a biker Amor on a Harley.) »
06 Sep 2007
Among the available videos of Richard Strauss’s Elektra, the recently released DVD of the live broadcast from 16 February 1980 stands out for capturing the exciting of an all-star international cast that included the famous Birgit Nilsson in the title role. »
05 Sep 2007
The unmistakable fanfare that opens Monteverdi’s seminal L’Orfeo rang out from the top of the crowded foyer of the Netherlands Opera in Amsterdam last Friday night to signal not only the start of the opera, but also the opening night of their celebratory 2007 Monteverdi Cycle. »
02 Sep 2007
In the long ago, when the best source of music reproduction in the home was a handsome piece of furniture, fitted with hidden audio components, and usually called radio-phonographs, my family had one — from Avery Fisher I believe — that had among its controls a switch labeled ‘presence.’ »
28 Aug 2007
A career-making smash for Donizetti at its 1830 premiere, Anna Bolena eventually faded from the standard repertory. »
28 Aug 2007
Recorded live at the Stiftsbasilika, St. Florian (Austrian) on 12 and 13 September 2006, this DVD offers a special performance of the famous Cleveland Orchestra outside its home at Severance Hall. »
28 Aug 2007
Among the available DVDs of Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck, the recent release of the production Rolf Liebermann made into a film i the late 1960s stands out for various reasons. »
28 Aug 2007
Written in 1900, Elgar’s Gerontius expresses the universal and existentialist struggle of death and rebirth. The allegorical significance of the piece touches on a need for faith, self-discovery, and acceptance of the world around us. »
28 Aug 2007
Opera singers today have become almost as famous and publicly worshipped as movie-stars; yet this has always been the case in operatic history. »
27 Aug 2007
CENTRAL CITY, Colo. — A year ago, when the Central City Opera announced plans to conclude its 2007 75th anniversary season with Gian Carlo Menotti’s “Saint of Bleecker Street,” the composer was aged but alive. »
27 Aug 2007
It’s clear today that China’s Cultural Revolution has led to a cultural revolution that — in music at least — has made the country’s artists frontrunners on the international scene. »
27 Aug 2007
Glimmerglass Opera is in a watershed year. With the departure of Paul Kellogg, who had considerable success developing that annual festival, General and Artistic Director Michael Macleod has chosen to begin his tenure with a variation on the usual four-opera-season, namely a thematic collection
of pieces based on the “Orpheus” legend. “Don’t look
back” is the marketing catch phrase. »
27 Aug 2007
In an evening brimming with sublime performances, Anja Siljja took grasp of her dramatic prowess and left us breathless, yearning for more. At the most sacred opera house in Italy, and perhaps the world, Janáček’s opera was thrillingly presented and is an example of our beloved genre at its finest. »
27 Aug 2007
Carlos Cogul is a London vocal coach and an appreciated baritone giving many a recital ……in the London Tube while commuters hastily pass by to catch their trains. Judging from the photo on this CD he is not a young man any more. »
27 Aug 2007
The choice between this recording made at the Pesaro Festival in August 2005 and the Opera Rara recording of 2000 will partly be made for non-musical reasons. »
27 Aug 2007
Almost thirty years ago a century old tradition ended with the last performance of I Maestri Cantatori. »
20 Aug 2007
“Who in the world am I?” proclaimed the posters all over Munich, reducing Lewis Carroll’s famous conundrum to a sound-bite. »
16 Aug 2007
If you are in need of a Romantic, Alt-Nuernberg, Beloved-Old-Vaterland-As-It-(Never)-Was sort of production of “Die Meistersinger,” you would probably do well to wait for the Met revival, and stay far far away (actually, add another “far” to that) from the Bayreuth Festpiel’s latest “Skandal”-ripe interpretation. »
16 Aug 2007
For twenty-eight years now the Ohio Light Opera Festival (OLO) has held forth in Wooster in the summertime, presenting no less than 99 different works (their big 100th comes next year), familiar and forgotten, by the likes of Gilbert and Sullivan, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Offenbach, Sigmund Romberg, Carl Zeller and Emmerich Kálmán — to refer only to the authors of the seven undertaken this year. »
16 Aug 2007
“Tea: Mirror of the Soul” with book by Xu Ying and music by Tan Dun, revised from an earlier version first produced in Japan in 2002, was to have been the novelty of the present Santa Fe Opera season. Instead, it was dead on arrival. »
16 Aug 2007
On a cold winter’s day in Vienna, just before Christmas 1790, Mr. Haydn dined with Mr. Mozart for the last time. »
16 Aug 2007
The legend of Orpheus and Eurydice has come down through the centuries to us, on the way inspiring some sixty-four other known operas. »
16 Aug 2007
The first masterpiece in the history of opera. That’s a tall order to live up to for any company and for any band of singers, especially those at the beginning of their careers. »
16 Aug 2007
Over the past decade, there have been a plethora of works trying to identify the historical models for characters in Puccini’s famous opera Madama Butterfly. »
13 Aug 2007
W. A. Mozart’s Così fan tutte, heard on a stormy night July 11, proved a sorry exercise in deconstruction, something I never expected to endure at Santa Fe Opera. »
12 Aug 2007
Staatsoper Stuttgart presented its new production of The Girl of the Golden West, directed by Calixto Bieito. And, well, it began with an added dialogue scene to establish the “concept.” »
07 Jul 2007
In 2003, at Cagli’s Accademia del Teatro, Elisabetta Courir directed a compelling Così fan tutte, minimalist, sophisticated and low-budget; quite unlike Daniele Abbado, whose Lohengrin for Bologna’s Teatro Comunale integrated “hard” scenery, video projections and historically informed costumes into a dream-like pageant. »
04 Jul 2007
An ingenious and handsome staging, in the proper period and full of delicious color, fashion and furnishings, a production that honors the compatibility of tradition with good fun, and four singers who look their parts, play the farce, and are as easy on the ears as on the eyes — what more could you want from a Don Pasquale? »
04 Jul 2007
The Polish composer Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937) is one of more engaging composers of the early twentieth century. »
04 Jul 2007
When hearing the final work of a composer whose life was cut short, one can not help but wonder, “What if?” »
27 Jun 2007
Established in 1985 by the United Nations, the World Philharmonic Orchestra gave its inaugural concert on 12 December 1985 under the auspices of UNICEF and the Konserthus, Sweden. »
27 Jun 2007
La Scala di Seta, composed in Venice in 1812 (Rossini was 20; Tancredi and fame were a year off; Barbiere and immortality were four years down the road), shares the fortune of La Gazza Ladra: that is, until recently, the public knew the overture quite well but nothing else from the opera which, indeed, lacks the spectacular arias and hilarious ensembles that might have kept it on the boards. »
25 Jun 2007
Produced by Rolf Lieberman and directed for television by Joachim Hess, this 1968 studio recording of Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz has much to recommend as a traditional production of the opera. »
25 Jun 2007
Just whose opera is “Der Rosenkavalier” anyway? The title — to begin with the obvious — says it’s youthful Octavian, pinpointing his role as the bearer of the rose that is to seal the marriage contract of Ochs and child-like Sophie. »
24 Jun 2007
Il Viaggio a Reims was a pièce d’occasion, part of the official tributes to Charles X of France on his coronation in 1825, but unlike most such creations – which tend to dreary platitudes of the Oscar speech variety – Viaggio has a cheeky personality and delicious music from Rossini at the top of his game, music he planned to recycle in subsequent operas – which he did. »
24 Jun 2007
As indicated in the copy on the CD, itself this is indeed a “unique collection of mostly short works” by Igor Stravinsky. »
24 Jun 2007
In charting the history of music in the West, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in Paris loom large as a golden age of innovative polyphony, a golden age that is much the fruits of two composers, Leoninus and Perotinus. »
22 Jun 2007
This live concert recording assembles a trio of late eighteenth-century Viennese composers; the program is strong in evocation of time and place, but admittedly less so in substance. »
21 Jun 2007
There’s not much point in presenting Lully’s Psyché (in its North American premiere no less) unless you’re going to give it something vaguely like the grandeur Louis XIV could command in 1678. »
19 Jun 2007
An increasing lack of substance and imagination behind ENO’s season scheduling means that a revival of a theatrically impressive recent production of a repertoire piece is to be welcomed, especially when that production comes with a cast of superior calibre. »
18 Jun 2007
When opera is the subject, there’s an uneasy embarrassment at Leipzig’s annual 10-day Bach Festival, for opera is a genre that the city’s most famous musical son never embraced. »
17 Jun 2007
Two productions of Death in Venice within a month : one high budget and glamorous at the ENO and the other at Aldeburgh with a much more humble pedigree. »
17 Jun 2007
Among Lasso’s vast output there are few works more imposing than his collected settings of the seven penitential psalms. »
17 Jun 2007
Franz Waxman was working with librettist James Forsyth on an opera, Dr. Jekyll, when the composer’s wife died. »
17 Jun 2007
Mahler: Urlicht is a recording of selected songs for voice and piano from various collections of
the composer’s Lieder, including his early settings from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, the later Wunderhorn Lieder that Mahler set in the 1890s in versions with both orchestral and keyboard accompaniment, and also his Rűckert-Lieder, performed by the young mezzo soprano Christianne Stotijn accompanied by Julius Drake. »
11 Jun 2007
In 2001 the recording company Naïve and the Istituto per beni musicali in Piemonte began a large-scale undertaking of recording the vast holdings of Vivaldi’s musical library. »
11 Jun 2007
Vicenza’s Teatro Olimpico, a jewel of Renaissance architecture inaugurated in 1585 and seating around 500, hosted in early June a run of three performances of Rossini’s Italiana in Algeri. »
05 Jun 2007
The June 2 world premiere of “Frau Margot” at the Fort Worth Opera might be regarded as “an historic return,” for this is Thomas Pasitieri’s first opera in 18 years. »
05 Jun 2007
Doktor Faust eclipses most of Ferrucio’s Busoni’s other work in terms of popularity. Surprisingly, though, he wrote little song. Only 40 pieces remain, many written in his youth. »
04 Jun 2007
“We’ll discuss the greatest tenor in history, Jussi Björling, and his astounding voice.” »
04 Jun 2007
I was never much impressed by the Russian performances of this most famous of Rubinstein’s
many operas. »
04 Jun 2007
In Verdi’s beloved opera, love does not conquer all but the sweet-taste of what “might have been” lingers on our lips forever when we think of the beautiful Violetta. »
03 Jun 2007
Arizona Opera ended its 2006/07 season with a tightly-knit, well-tuned presentation of Carlisle Floyd's Susannah, his best known opera that has enjoyed numerous productions since its New York City Opera debut in 1956. »
31 May 2007
Naxos’s DVD venture has produced a fascinating document, the original documentary shorts The Plow that Broke the Plains and The River, filmed by Pare Lorentz, with the Virgil Thomson scores re-recorded by the post-Classical Ensemble, led by Angel Gil-Ordóñez. »
31 May 2007
Given the fine recent recordings of Mahler’s Second Symphony on both CD and DVD, the release of Pierre Boulez’s performances from 26 and 27 March 2005 at the Philharmonie, Berlin, is a further contribution to the interpretations of this important work. »
31 May 2007
Deborah Warner’s new production of Death in Venice is ravishingly beautiful, with stunning lighting designs by Jean Kalman who manages to capture the spirit of every facet of Venice and of the drama’s more general themes, from the misty eeriness of Aschenbach’s first gondola ride through to ominous darkening skies and blazing sunsets. »
30 May 2007
Serpents, abduction, magic flutes, a sacred priesthood and, of course….love, are a few of the elements Mozart used to comprise his mason-influenced collaboration with Emanuel von Schikaneder. »
30 May 2007
Just as sausage can be best enjoyed without any extensive knowledge of its preparation and
contents, one should slide slowly into the luxuriant bath that is Massenet’s Esclarmonde and leave the libretto far to the side. »
30 May 2007
Released in early 2007, Marin Alsop’s performance of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana is an exciting, new recording of this familiar and durable scenic cantata, based on medieval lyrics in Latin and German. »
30 May 2007
Verboten und verbannt — forbidden and banned — a phrase used with Jewish composers whose music was proscribed by the Nazis brings to mind more than musical censorship, but also the atrocities that culminated in the Holocaust. »
30 May 2007
Curmudgeons and aesthetes may have to fight their gag reflex to enjoy some luscious music-making on the latest disc, Angel Dances, from that hot studio band, The Twelve Berlin Philharmonic Cellists. »
29 May 2007
The interpretive reception of medieval music begins, as John Haines lays forth in the present investigation, already during the latter period of the Middle Ages. »
29 May 2007
Towards the end of his life Britten became interested in the idea of developing the opera experience beyond the technical confines of the stage. He would have, I think, loved this film because it’s so intelligently sensitive to his fundamental ideas. It is, no less, a work of art built around a work of art. »
25 May 2007
Norfork - It’s America’s biggest birthday since the 1976 bicentennial celebration of the Declaration of Independence: »
20 May 2007
This recording is a souvenir in more than one sense. »
20 May 2007
Chief attraction of the Paris Opera’s new production of Simon Boccanegra was Dmitri Hvorostovsky in the title role. »
20 May 2007
The quality packaging of Anonymous 4’s latest recording indicates the group’s importance to their label, Harmonia Mundi. »
09 May 2007
In the countless performances of Leoncavallo’s masterpiece Pagliacci since its 1892 premiere, there must have been times when the light tenor singing Beppe watched the other tenor, of heavier voice, in the lead role of Canio and wondered if someday he (the Beppe) would take on the dramatic role of the homicidal clown. »
09 May 2007
Audrey Stottler’s Wagner recital provides ample evidence of a voice with the range and heft for
the challenging roles of Brünnhilde and Isolde, as well as Sieglinde, a role often sung by a vocalist with less firepower. »
09 May 2007
Dare one assume that with this disc, Alison Balsom becomes the first artist to bring her lung power to both Norma’s “Casta Diva” and Die Zauberflöte’s “Der hölle rache” in the same recital? »
09 May 2007
Premiered at Washington National Opera, director Francesca Zambello’s Porgy and Bess arrived in Los Angeles May 4th, for a run of 12 performances in just 17 days. »
09 May 2007
In a season that will conclude with a new production of Kismet, ENO has once again
come under criticism for the number of non-operatic works on the bill. »
03 May 2007
I often wonder who decides what records will be used to produce historical vocal issues. »
03 May 2007
For those who didn’t long ago purchased or exchanged this Salzburg recital via the pirate
connections, this is a fine opportunity to get maybe the best testimonial of this artist. »
03 May 2007
The commitment of Naxos to American music is substantial and admirable. »
02 May 2007
Filmed for television in 1971, this performance of the German translation of Orphée aux enfers (1858) as Orpheus in der Unterwelt breaks the conventional wisdom that some espouse about the weaknesses of opera or opera when conceived for the small screen. »
02 May 2007
Among the virtues of hearing Bach cantatas performed in liturgical order—one of the hallmarks
of John Eliot Gardiner’s stunning Cantata Pilgrimage of 2000—is the chance to savor Bach’s range of approach to unified text themes. »
02 May 2007
Who says an organ recital cannot be jolly good fun? »
01 May 2007
Dynamic brought its cameras to the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, Italy, in August 2005 to
record Bianca e Falliero, one of Rossini's so-called “serious” operas, and one that had only been rescued from many decades of neglect by the festival itself, in 1986. »
01 May 2007
Colin Graham’s dream of an opera based on Tolstoi’s “Anna Karenina” extends far into the past. »
01 May 2007
At Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu, a sold-out house marked, for two nights in a row, the
weekend introducing la diada de Sant Jordi, the big fiesta celebrated on April 23 in honor of the city’s patron St George. »
01 May 2007
The Los Angeles Philharmonic in April and May brought back its Tristan Project for the benefit of audiences in California and New York City. »
25 Apr 2007
Over a century after its premiere, Mahler's Second Symphony continues to be a compelling work and is as relevant now as it was when the work was conceived. »
25 Apr 2007
More than ever, compilations of previously released material fill the shelves of those stores still
selling classical music. »
25 Apr 2007
Once again, George Frederick Handel’s old stamping ground of St. George’s Hanover Square, London, resounded last night to the sound of his music as aspiring young singers from all over
the world fought out the Final of the London Handel Singing Competition. »
23 Apr 2007
“What drives a man to insanity and murder?” asks the poster for San Diego Opera’s new production of Wozzeck, which closed this Sunday after a run of four performances. »
22 Apr 2007
Philip Glass’s 1980 work, new to the London stage, gives an illustrated account of Mahatma
Gandhi’s early years in South Africa, viewed through the eyes of his satyagraha philosophy of peaceful resistance. »
19 Apr 2007
Krzyzstof Penderecki (b. 1933) has contributed a body of works to the modern repertoire, and his Symphony no. 7, which he composed 1996 (premiere 1997 in Jerusalem), is an impressive composition. »
16 Apr 2007
The orchestral songs of Gustav Mahler remain an important contribution to the genre, and stand
well alongside similar works by Berlioz, Wolf, and Strauss. »
16 Apr 2007
The New York City Opera continued its tradition of championing works that are less frequently
performed with this season’s production of La Donna del Lago. »
15 Apr 2007
This sumptuous 2006 release was recorded live in the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg in late
1993 for European TV broadcast the following year. »
15 Apr 2007
Incongruity was the rule of the day in the New York City Opera’s production of Handel’s Flavio, which opened on Wednesday, April 4. »
12 Apr 2007
It was, of course, a coincidence; on the other hand, on Berlin’s vital, vibrant and
all-encompassing arts scene one is continually overwhelmed by new perspectives on the creative
process and its product. »
11 Apr 2007
“Linvitation au voyage” is an appropriate title for this collection of French song, which makes available a number of fine performances of both familiar and rare works. »
11 Apr 2007
With a label such as Gala, a purveyor of live recordings of various provenance, some adjustment to compromised sound quality can be expected. »
07 Apr 2007
The latest offering from the Baltimore Lyric Opera was Bedrich Smetana’s sparkling comedy Prodana Nevesta (“Bartered Bride”), a little gem of Czech Romantic nationalism that one does not see live very often these days. »
07 Apr 2007
This excellent disc brings together two ballet scores from the far ends of Leonard Bernstein’s compositional career. »
06 Apr 2007
Kurt Weill’s perennial appeal can be attributed to various factors, not the least of which is the genuine craft of his stage works. »
06 Apr 2007
Film music has become a sort of refuge for some music lovers turned off by the work of those serious music composers who have turned increasingly away from attempting an encounter with a broader public, retreating into an insular word of academic composition. »
04 Apr 2007
With some deliberation the Metropolitan Opera releases DVD versions of live television broadcasts from its heyday as a PBS mainstay. »
02 Apr 2007
Verdi's magnificent melodrama Il Trovatore may be the most masculine of his creations, but the production that San Diego Opera presented as the third opera of its 2007 season was a triumph for the ladies. »
30 Mar 2007
A classic Seinfeld episode revolved around a brush with the “third” of the Three Tenors - the one whom no one could quite put a name to. »
30 Mar 2007
Let’s face it, Handel’s “Poro, Re dell’Indie” (in English “Porus, King of India”) isn’t exactly a household name in any but the most dedicated baroque opera circles. »
28 Mar 2007
UC Opera now have a half-century’s reputation to live up to; they were responsible for the UK premieres of such works as Das Liebesverbot, The Maid of Orleans, Alzira, Oberto and the 1847 version of Macbeth. »
27 Mar 2007
Known almost iconically for his symphonies, Anton Bruckner devoted a great deal of his compositional output to vocal music, including choral works in both German and Latin. »
26 Mar 2007
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, French instrumental music was closely identified with dance and dance suites. »
26 Mar 2007
Although milestones in the history of opéra-comique, Grétry’s operas are infrequently revived and rarely recorded. »
25 Mar 2007
With the trials and tribulations of a multicultural society currently at the forefront of the British media, Gavin Quinn’s production placed a light-hearted focus on the bizarreness of a group of foreigners being thrown together in an unfamiliar situation. »
25 Mar 2007
This 2005 production of the Mozart-Da Ponte masterpiece Don Giovanni makes for a frustrating experience. »
25 Mar 2007
London is fortunate to have played host to several productions of Tchaikovsky’s best-known opera in the last three years alone, most recently British Youth Opera’s heartbreakingly fresh account last September – so it was a risky decision on ETO’s part to stage yet another. »
21 Mar 2007
When Matilde di Shabran was premiered in Rome on Feb. 24, 1821, it was billed as a
“melodrama giocoso” (which is the equivalent of an opera semiseria), somewhere between an opera buffa and an opera seria in character. »
21 Mar 2007
Asked in an interview by Opera News on his opinion on updating, James Levine replied that it often intensified one or another aspect of the story but that in general it was not possible to update without distorting the story and the equilibrium in the whole opera. »
21 Mar 2007
Our modern sense of the eighteenth-century Lutheran cantata derives in large part from the works of J. S. Bach—works that have been foundational in the early music movement, works that have much shaped our understanding of Bach, and works that we now know in an impressive array of different recordings. »
21 Mar 2007
I am surely not the only one who doesn’t understand why this sparkling score is not performed
more often. »
21 Mar 2007
In setting the scene or furthering the action on stage, the opera chorus often provides some
memorable aural scenery in works by composers from Claudio Monteverdi to Arnold
Schoenberg, and this collection offers a representative selection of examples from both those
composers, and well as a number of others. Recorded on 14 January 2004, this concert of the
Stuttgart Staatsopernchor and Staatsorchester offered a program devoted to memorable choruses. »
21 Mar 2007
Based from concerts given on 22 August, 7 September, and 8 September 2005, this recording of
Mahler’s Sixth Symphony is the latest release of the Concertgebouw’s own RCO Live label. »
20 Mar 2007
Nice Opera, on the French Cote d’Azur, seemed a most suitable place for this early work by
Handel. »
20 Mar 2007
In their attempt to recreate a combination of musical styles typical of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Nürnberg, Schola Hungarica and its directors László Dobszay & Janka Szendrei have chosen selections from the Gänsebuch, described as the “only complete extant source for the pre-Reformation liturgy of the mass in Nürnberg.” [CD liner-notes, p. 3] »
20 Mar 2007
I never heard the 1966 live recording with Margherita Rinaldi and Paolo Montarsolo and I don’t
have a clue what the sound picture is like. »
19 Mar 2007
A near-capacity audience, expectant and enthusiastic, streamed into the Dorothy Chandler for an old-fashioned evening of operatic glamour, as Angela Gheorghiu, with the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra in support, flew into town for a one night concert. »
19 Mar 2007
This year is Thomas Adés’ annus mirabilis. He’s the subject of a major, six-week retrospective at the Barbican, and, of course, will be a major presence at the Aldeburgh Festival. »
13 Mar 2007
Speaking to a trusted chorus-member friend after this performance, I was told that I had benefited from not having seen this production when new three months ago. »
13 Mar 2007
Just about halfway though his first season as music director of Los Angeles Opera, James Conlon has already made himself an endearing and appreciated figure. »
13 Mar 2007
Perhaps the gestation period for “Wakonda’s Dream,” premiered by Opera Omaha on March 7, was too long. »
13 Mar 2007
Two weeks before viewing these DVD’s, I attended a performance of the same opera at De Vlaamse Opera in a new production by Ivo van Hove; Flemish boss of the most important Amsterdam theatre company. »
08 Mar 2007
With the distance of time, is it allowable to feel affection for Herbert von Karajan, beyond any respect — grudging or otherwise — for his long, starry career? »
08 Mar 2007
Recorded between 18 and 29 June 1984 at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, this production of Richard Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nűrnberg makes a classic presentation of the opera available in a two-DVD set issued in 2006 by Deutsche Grammophon. »
08 Mar 2007
This concert was given on New Year’s eve in the year 2000, and the frail Claudio Abbado who
comes out to conduct makes for an alarming sight. »
08 Mar 2007
It was in the “Orwell year” 1984 that Götz Friedrich, general manager — Intendant — of the Deutsche Oper Berlin (DOB) from 1983 until his death in 2000, staged the first half of Wagner’s “Ring des Nibelungen” in the 1900-seat house on Berlin’s Bismarckstrasse. »
06 Mar 2007
It is well known that the Opera Orchestra of New York’s performances are required events for
opera aficionados to hear the the most exciting performances of the season. »
06 Mar 2007
Compared with Pamina and Tamino, Kumudha and her Prince, the central figures in “A Flowering Tree,” the John Adams and Peter Sellars collaboration given its American premiere on March 1 by the San Francisco Symphony, walk a rock-strewn road. »
28 Feb 2007
The death this month of director Stephen Pimlott could have cast a shadow over this revival of his 1993 production, but a hugely affectionate pre-show tribute by colleague Nicholas Hytner ensured that the performance only served to do great honour to the memory of a man who was clearly loved and cherished by many. »
28 Feb 2007
The booklet essay writer effuses passionately about this filmed Kalman operetta, Die Csárdásfürstin. Jürgen Otten gushes over the "immortal melodies," Anna Moffo's "precious jewel" of a voice, and Rene Kollo's "innate nobility." »
28 Feb 2007
The Rosenblatt Recital Series, which presents concerts around London from artists ranging from the well-known to the brand-new, last week showcased Nicole Cabell, the glamorous 29-year-old winner of the 2005 Cardiff Singer of the World competition. »
27 Feb 2007
Originally released by Deutsche Grammophon in 1976, this recording of selected songs by Sergei
Rachmaninov (1873-1943) and Mikhail Glinka (1804-57) make available some fine examples of
Russian art song to Western audiences. »
27 Feb 2007
Why should anyone buy a German language broadcast of a delicious French opéra-comique? »
27 Feb 2007
John Eliot Gardiner’s Bach Cantata Pilgrimage continues to echo with the release of concert
recordings of this historic millennial tour. »
27 Feb 2007
As familiar Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser is, the opera benefits from solid performances that bring together fine singing, exquisite orchestral playing, and effective staging, and the Metropolitan Opera’s 1982 production conducted by James Levine gave audiences an exemplary performance that remains a touchstone for this work. »
27 Feb 2007
This wasn’t an “easy” program for dilettantes. »
26 Feb 2007
If there ever was a moment where architecture and music became passionately tied to one another, it would be when the polychoral music of the 16th century was tied to St. Mark’s
cathedral in Venice. »
22 Feb 2007
At the curtain call for the first night of WNO’s new production of the infrequently performed Khovanshchina director David Pountney wore a simple Russian shirt. »
21 Feb 2007
Carmen was one of Victoria de los Angeles’ favorite roles and she brought to it much that we
hear on this recording of French songs: a winsome voice without heavy vibrato, a close attention to musical detail, and an evident understanding of the French words that she conveys, if not with an impeccable accent, at least with a convincingly understandable pronunciation. »
20 Feb 2007
Yes, the German title must be employed for this filmed Nozze en Deutsch from 1967. »
20 Feb 2007
Recorded on 28 March 1970 in Rome, this recording of Parsifal makes available a live
performance conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch, one of the foremost interpreters of Wagner’s works in his day. »
18 Feb 2007
Franz Joseph Haydn’s Seven Last Words is well known, both as a familiar part of modern Lenten devotions and also as something of a stylistic oddity, I suspect. »
18 Feb 2007
From the 2005 season of the “reborn” La Fenice comes this Dynamic DVD of Wagner’s Parsifal. »
18 Feb 2007
Friday night in Leeds, in the North of England, at the city’s marvellously restored Grand Theatre, with the pavements outside shining wet and a tidal wave of umbrellas surging past, was an
exciting place to be. »
16 Feb 2007
In dedicating much of his creative life to the Thomaskirche, the German musician Günther
Ramin left his mark on the musical life of Leipzig, and his legacy includes a fine recording of
Johannes Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem, op. 45. »
16 Feb 2007
Perhaps the best-known of Anton Bruckner’s symphonies, the Fourth also benefits from a
number of fine recordings. »
16 Feb 2007
The Opera Lafayette of Washington DC has been engaged in a new project this season – the Armide Project, as the group dubbed its ambitious plan, in collaboration with the University of Maryland Opera Studio, to present two great operas set to the same celebrated Philippe Quinault libretto. »
14 Feb 2007
Giovanni Battista Sammartini (c.1700-1775) belongs to that shadowy generation of Italian composers who no longer composed in the high Baroque style, but had adopted the clarity, simplicity and regularity that would serve as the building blocks for the Viennese masters of the late eighteenth century, and thus were tagged with the rather pejorative label “pre-classic” (a plague on all those music historians who can only see musical style in terms of progress leading to their particular figure of veneration!). »
13 Feb 2007
The great American opera? Ricky Ian Gordon’s “Grapes of Wrath” might be it. »
09 Feb 2007
An expressionist portrait of the Roman she-wolf was the first, striking image of this production, originally devised for Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, by the fashionable British director David McVicar. »
09 Feb 2007
The duo of gambist Vittorio Ghielmi and lutenist Luca Pianca even has its own domain name
(www.pianca-ghielmi.com), as well as several previous releases, of which the first has perhaps my favorite CD title ever (Bagpipes from Hell). »
09 Feb 2007
The English, though fundamental to the early music revival of the last half-century, have been rather remiss in exploring their native music dating from after the death of Purcell, and particularly that produced after the death of Handel. »
08 Feb 2007
Sorry my friends, but this rich-looking DVD has a feature that disqualifies it for me. »
08 Feb 2007
A literary critic once recalled the day when a German could not clear his throat “without finding pithy precedent in Goethe.” »
08 Feb 2007
In opera, Rossini, born in 1892- the year after Mozart died, is the successor of the great master
and, when performed as perceptively as in the “Cenerentola” that debuted at the Houston Grand Opera on January 27, his rightful heir. »
07 Feb 2007
During any recital by an aging divo there comes a moment of truth when he sings an operatic aria
(usually E lucevan le stelle , as the highest note is an A). That is the defining moment when he no longer can hide behind idiosyncratic interpretation, expressive breathing and a lot of clever transpositions. »
07 Feb 2007
This disc is a reissue of a 1993 recording made at Skywalker Sound in Marin County, California, but new to me. »
06 Feb 2007
I suppose you will find this quite an addition to the Melchior legacy if you are a collector of every sound Melchior ever uttered. »
06 Feb 2007
The Kirov Opera and Orchestra concluded their annual residency at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC last week with a Sunday matinee concert performance of Dmitri Shostakovich’s 1932 Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District. »
06 Feb 2007
Neither of these late works (the Judicium Salomonis is from 1702) is new to disc – the former
has two recent recordings, from ten and from twenty years ago, and the latter one, by Herreweghe, released in 1985. »
06 Feb 2007
The title Walewska i przjaciele, “Walewska and friends,” reflects the intention of the mezzo soprano Małgorzata Walewska, one of the foremost contemporary Polish singers to present herself and some of her colleagues in recording of various kinds of music. »
05 Feb 2007
Why do some conductors make it and others don’t? »
28 Jan 2007
Rossini’s last Italian opera, staged in 1825 as a part of Charles X’s coronation festivities, is a bizarre creation — a sassy little farce capped with a coronation cantata in the best traditions of staged court entertainment, from 16th-century Italian intermedi through their Baroque and Classic operatic progeny. »
28 Jan 2007
While many associate it with traditional music, the Salzburg Festival is also a venue for new
productions and, to a degree, new compositions. »
28 Jan 2007
The reason for being of this set is Gruberova’s wish to record as much as possible of her repertory (on her own label as most of the majors were either not interested in recording belcanto operas or had their own stars like Decca’s Joan Sutherland). »
28 Jan 2007
Who is the potential consumer for this DVD release of a 1953 Italian film version of Verdi's Aida, featuring Sophia Loren's stunning physical presence and Renata Tebaldi's stunning vocalism in the title role? »
24 Jan 2007
Let it be said at the outset that, at least to my eyes, the packaging and marketing of this DVD is
somewhat misleading. »
24 Jan 2007
A welcome addition to the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s own line of releases, this CD is a compilation of two works by Gustav Mahler that the late Klaus Tennstedt performed with the ensemble and which have not been issued previously. »
24 Jan 2007
I saw my first Káťa 37 years ago during the Flanders Festival. At the time it was still an almost complete novelty on the scene and the Czech company performed it according to the composer’s intentions. »
23 Jan 2007
Sébastien de Brossard (1655-1730) was, until recently, known to the musical world (if he was known at all) as a lexicographer (he prepared the first French musical dictionary, published in 1703) and collector, whose collection went entire, together with a catalogue he prepared, to the National Library in Paris, something which must have been almost unheard of in early eighteenth-century Europe, though commonplace today (imagine if Bach had managed to do the same with his scores!). »
23 Jan 2007
There are three reasons often cited for the paucity of performances of Rossini’s Otello: the horrible hack job of the Shakespearean drama by librettist Francesco Maria Berio, the difficulties in casting an opera requiring at least three top-rate tenor voices, and comparisons with Verdi’s popular opera of the same title. »
23 Jan 2007
True to the title of this collection, the present volume of correspondence edited by Henry-Louis de La Grange and Günther Weiss — here translated, revised , and supplemented by Antony Beaumont — offers, to date, the most complete body of letters of Gustav Mahler to his wife Alma. »
21 Jan 2007
The sleeve notes of this interesting issue state that “ any comparison between La Fattucchiera and Italian bel canto models by Bellini or Donizetti would be too easy though it became commonplace to describe him (= Cuyàs) as the continuator of the school of Bellini. »
21 Jan 2007
Although the name of Vicente Martin y Soler is no longer obscure, most opera lovers still know him best due to Mozart quoting his opera ‘Una cosa rara’ during the Don’s last meal in Don Giovanni. »
21 Jan 2007
I was impressed by Karajan’s intense conducting, which seems so right in the wake of the unavoidable tragedy that is going to happen. »
21 Jan 2007
Record companies are dominated by accountants and short term cost structure seems to be more important than artistic results or even sale figures. This is a prime example. »
21 Jan 2007
For those OperaToday readers prone to fantasies about being a member of royalty with one's own cozy opera house tucked away on the hereditary estate, this Hungaroton DVD will enable that desire. Filmed in August 2005 at the royal palace at Gödölló, Il barone di rocca antica, an operetta giocosa from Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf, requires only four singers. »
21 Jan 2007
There is a (no doubt apocryphal) story that if one listens carefully to Caballé’s recordings there is a slight sshhh-sound in the background; the sound of the knife she uses to cut open her scores while recording. »
21 Jan 2007
This issue from DG’s own classic recital series is a copy of the 1963 LP. »
21 Jan 2007
Serge Jaroff and his Don Cossacks Choir were for many decades legendary performers of Russian choral music, ranging from the liturgical works of Orthodoxy to beloved regional folk melodies. »
21 Jan 2007
This Sellars production had its origins at the 1985 Pepsico Summerfare Festival in Purchase NY. »
19 Jan 2007
These recordings prove decisively a well-known thesis: more or less realistic productions always age better than so called innovative modern productions which often only aggrandize the clichés of the time of their conception if one views them a few decades after their première. »
17 Jan 2007
If the audience for new American art music seems small and is (supposedly) shrinking, then the
audience for new American operas is even more exclusive. »
17 Jan 2007
Some interesting repertory choices and the participation of some of today's most attractive singers make this particular "gala" evening of "walk on-sing-walk off" entertainment more consistently enjoyable than these affairs often are. »
16 Jan 2007
The ever-busy Brian Large directed the 1989 filming (for TV) of a Wolfgang Wagner Tannhäuser production which had debuted at Bayreuth in 1985. »
16 Jan 2007
Recording a Shostakovich cycle has become de rigueur in recent years — a conductor’s mandatory right of passage, like recording a Beethoven or a Mahler cycle. »
15 Jan 2007
“Era la notte” presents four highly emotional, seventeenth-century Italian works, sung with commanding theatricality by Anna Caterina Antonacci. »
12 Jan 2007
It is a mystery as complex as the Kirov’s Ring Cycle staging and equally inexplicable. »
12 Jan 2007
Most heroes in costume drama movies speak lines directly from our own time. I’ve yet to see a cinematic Roman general, being a serious hero, look at an animal’s liver and says: “ this smells bad; no battle today”. »
12 Jan 2007
The recording date is given as November the 12th 1994. Since recording sessions usually last more than one day, and as a radio orchestra is playing, we may safely assume this CD to be derived from a public broadcasted concert by the ‘4 sopranos’ capitalizing on the concept made popular by Domingo, Carreras, and Pavarotti. »
10 Jan 2007
The booklet essay by Gottfried Kraus (translated from the German by Stewart Spencer) for this TDK release of the 1983 Salzburg Così fan tutte presents an intriguing history of the opera, with the Austrian festival taking in a central role in the work’s return to the standard repertory. »
10 Jan 2007
The artsong in the twentieth century benefits from the efforts of national composers, like Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959), who stimulated the genre by incorporating regional folk elements into their music. »
07 Jan 2007
Decca loves to repackage this set. Your reviewer first acquired it as a low-price "Double Decca" release, with no libretto. Just a couple years ago saw another incarnation, with a great cover pic of Price and Karajan locked in an embrace - Karajan as Scarpia? Or Cavaradossi - take one's pick. »
07 Jan 2007
The cover art for the Opus Arts DVD of Wagner's Siegfried, from the Nederlandse Opera in 1999, features Mime, as impersonated by Graham Clark, in amazing make-up and costume: a bald, bulging head almost split down the middle by a furrow of anxiety, and clad in a ghastly green insect-like carapace, including wire-like hair and a bobbing tail-sack. »
07 Jan 2007
Notable among recent releases, the set of the Complete Symphonies by Carl Nielsen (1865-1931) on DVD makes available some fine performances of the composer’s important contributions to the genre. »
29 Dec 2006
A luminous blue backdrop, sliding columns, a solitary iconic prop (an over-sized falcon head in the opening scene, for example), singers frozen in stiff, awkward poses — yes, it's a Robert Wilson spectacular! »
28 Dec 2006
What kind of opera lovers will appreciate this big DVD box the most? »
28 Dec 2006
One of the best opera DVDs released in 2006 was the Salzburg La Traviata, with Rolando Villazon and Anna Netrebko able to make full use of their vocal charisma and acting skills in Willy Decker's sharp, sexy production. »
28 Dec 2006
Rio de Janeiro, as the capital of the Empire and later the Republic of Brazil, had an extensive history of opera during the 19th century, well-documented by newspapers and magazines of the day, which included the conducting debut of Arturo Toscanini in a local performance of Aida in 1888, described in the memoirs of Brazilian composer and entrepreneur Artur Napoleão. »
23 Dec 2006
Rossini’s comic masterpiece premiered in 1816, which means a big anniversary lies just a few years ahead. »
22 Dec 2006
This disc presents the first recording of a work newly ascribed to the Red Priest (by musicologist Janice Stockigt), the Dixit Dominus held at the State Library of Saxony in Dresden, where it was ascribed to Vivaldi’s
younger Venetian colleague, Baldassare Galuppi (who is experiencing a renaissance of late, with various new discs of operas and sacred works). »
21 Dec 2006
The collection of sacred compositions published by Claudio Monteverdi in Venice in 1610 with a Latin title of jaw-breaking length (in which vesperae is only the tenth word) has attained the sort of elevated status granted to but a few works, which stand so high that the rest of the landscape is almost invisible from their peaks, or to put it in plainer language, a music-lover may have heard or heard of the Vespers without knowing any of the composer’s other works, nor those of his contemporaries (rather like the Four Seasons, or The Sorcerer’s Apprentice). There are over two dozen recordings of the work on the market at this writing. »
16 Dec 2006
Undoubtedly the appearance of Handel’s Messiah in late December means different things to different people. »
13 Dec 2006
Previously unreleased, this collection of Spirituals never received the approval of the Canadian-born bass-baritone George London (1920-85) for release when it was prepared in 1963. »
13 Dec 2006
Of the nineteenth-century composers of music for solo voice, Carl Loewe (1796-1869) is one of the most voluminous, with his songs, with his works in this genre filling seventeen volumes in the uniform edition. »
08 Dec 2006
“In choosing the program for a debut recital disc, perhaps an artist should be overwhelmed by the enormity of the task: how in the world do I begin to sort through the wealth of masterpieces at my fingertips, daring to stamp a select few with my voice?” »
06 Dec 2006
Who is the most annoying character in opera? Preziosilla from Verdi’s Forza del Destino drives some to distraction, while others wish the conspirators in Ballo would assassinate Oscar in act one. »
06 Dec 2006
Walt Disney has colored our perception of fairy tales, turning them, whatever their source, into egalitarian morality plays: »
06 Dec 2006
Frederica von Stade was just about 30 years old in 1975, when she recorded these Mozart and Rossini arias with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra under Edo de Waart. »
06 Dec 2006
After the successful première of Monteverdi’s “L’Incoronazione di Poppea” (Saturday, November 25th) at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles, General Director Placido Domingo spoke warmly and cogently about this early Italian masterpiece, about its free-flowing music and the perfect relevance of the text to today’s world with all its greed, ambition and self-seeking. »
05 Dec 2006
HOUSTON — “Hansel and Gretel” has taken a beating in recent seasons, as over-zealous directors — aping the excesses of Eurotrash Regieoper — have made Humperdink’s largely innocent retelling of the Grimms’ tale the victim of hyper-active imaginations. »
01 Dec 2006
I doubt that this recital disc, recorded in 2004, could have been intended as a memorial to Arne Dorumsgaard, who died in March of 2006, but the composer’s centrality to the program, and the poetic themes of death, sleep, and mortality that recur in the Elizabethan texts, enable such an interpretation. »
29 Nov 2006
On the 10th February 1673, only a few months after their first collaboration, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, better known as Molière (1622-1673), and Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643-1704) presented at the Palais Royal’s theater Le Malade Imaginaire, a comédie ballet (a comedy with incidental music in the form of interludes built around a secondary plot). »
29 Nov 2006
There is an often compelling relationship between early and contemporary music. The relationship grows out of many different things. »
29 Nov 2006
Conceived by Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643-1704) to serve as musical interludes for a revival at the Jesuit college of Harcourt in 1680 of Pierre Corneille’s play, Polyeucte Martyr (originally written in 1642), the ballet Le combat de l'amour divin was composed for string orchestra with trumpets, kettledrums and continuo. »
20 Nov 2006
I can remember a time when Amy Beach was primarily known as a favorite among performers (largely female) whose mission was to present the work of neglected women composers. »
20 Nov 2006
Lassus’s long tenure in Munich in the employ of Duke Albrecht V resulted in an unusually prolific and diverse output. »
20 Nov 2006
Originally recorded in Carnegie Hall on 15 April 1956, Dimitri Mitropoulos’s performance of Mahler’s Third Symphony dates from a time when this particular score was rarely heard in concert. »
19 Nov 2006
While undated, this performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio is a solid performance of the opera that has all the earmarks of a radio broadcast. »
16 Nov 2006
After an apparently successful premiere in 1781, Mozart’s Idomeneo fell out of favor, not being revived in the composer’s lifetime and staying dormant in the 19th century and first half of the 20th. »
15 Nov 2006
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (the “New Grove”) stands as the definitive encyclopedia on music in the English language.1 »
15 Nov 2006
A socially conscious artist, caught in the violent gyrations of a country in revolution and war, awaits execution. »
15 Nov 2006
On a cold, wet and dark Glasgow evening in November, some 500 brave souls received what was possibly their first taste of baroque opera. »
14 Nov 2006
It only takes a few moments for the overture to Vincenzo Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi to establish that this opera takes a very different approach to the classic story than does Shakespeare's play. »
12 Nov 2006
This beautiful production premièred in 1980 and was the first live-telecast from the Met internationally relayed. »
12 Nov 2006
Conductor Steven Mercurio appears to have made a highly favorable impression on singers in his career so far (some of the following info comes from his website, http://stevenmercurio.com/). »
12 Nov 2006
I’m surprised that such an eminent musicologist as Julian Budden, in his interesting essay accompanying the recording, still lays the blame for the relative failure of Edgar at the librettist’s feet. »
12 Nov 2006
Putting the “grim” into a classic fairy tale (whether the Brothers Grimm's or not), this Glyndebourne La Cenerentola from the 2005 festival season establishes a drab, dark mood in its first scenes. »
11 Nov 2006
LONDON – the fledgling Independent Opera Company takes on Orlando. »
10 Nov 2006
A recording of the complete sacred music of Antonio Vivaldi is a welcome prospect, not least because it offers an opportunity to go beyond the fame and familiarity of Vivaldi’s concertos and the ubiquitous “Gloria.” »
09 Nov 2006
A friend who bought this issue grumbled that Dynamic had swindled him out off his money as the whitewashed, less than sharp picture quality is not much better than the pirate issue he once received from a correspondent. »
09 Nov 2006
The back of this DG set relates that the company made the recording "in Modena in conjunction with a series of performances in Italy and Germany." »
29 Oct 2006
Decca/London was somewhat earlier with their series ‘Classic Recitals’ and now Deutsche Gramophon is following without that title. »
29 Oct 2006
Though this La Vestale is sung in its original French, it strikes me as rather odd that the contents in the sleeve notes nevertheless still employs the Italian names Licinio and Giulia. »
29 Oct 2006
As rare as it may be to hear Gounod’s Faust in Bulgarian, the language differences soon pass in a good performance, especially one that includes a live performance of the bass Nicolai Ghiaurov from the prime of his performing career. »
28 Oct 2006
My father was a small bit player in an amateur operetta company from 1947 till 1963 when the company folded. »
28 Oct 2006
SAN FRANCISCO — Christine Brewer took her time mastering Isolde before making her stage debut in the role with the San Francisco Opera in October. »
26 Oct 2006
Those familiar with Antoni Wit’s fine recording of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony will have encountered some Polish singers in the solo parts, and among them is the baritone Wojtek Drabowicz. »
26 Oct 2006
Two of the most famous Wagner interpreters of the twentieth century, Hans Hotter and Birgit Nilsson, are always worth hearing in their studio recordings, and the live recordings capture the spontaneity of an actual performance with such accomplished singers. »
26 Oct 2006
The demise of Tower Records adds another hurdle to the collector's challenge in acquiring rare performances on obscure labels. »
22 Oct 2006
“Cecilia, cast a glance upon the land of Britain, and you will see that in sonorous strains it renews on this day the pleasing memory of your name so dear. . . .” »
21 Oct 2006
As the careers of the “three tenors” drew to a close, it became more and more obvious that replacements would have to be found, if not for all of them, then certainly for one or two. »
19 Oct 2006
A yellow banner in the lower right hand corner of the slip case cover (identical to that of the jewel box and booklet) proclaims this CD as the "first world recording" of Gaetano Donizetti's Alahor in Granata. »
19 Oct 2006
The Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, Italy, had as many surprises on the stage inside as the weather had outside. »
17 Oct 2006
Virtuosic, expressive, subtle evocative – these words can be used to describe various aspects of the Lieder of Richard Strauss. »
16 Oct 2006
From the 2004 Aix en Provence Festival comes this Luc Bondy staging of Handel's oratorio Hercules, an achingly serious and sober portrayal of Olympian rage and jealousy. »
16 Oct 2006
In the 1890s, the term “diva” was first used in print to refer to an opera singer or stage star. »
08 Oct 2006
Among the exciting new releases in Naxos’s series of 21st Century Classics is a compilation of four works by Wojciech Kilar (b. 1932), which include two symphonic compositions and two vocal pieces. »
08 Oct 2006
This is a recital disc notable for the compelling presence and intimacy of the vocal performance. »
08 Oct 2006
Introduction: Philip Gossett is one of those rarities in academia: a scholar of the first order and a consummate teacher. »
05 Oct 2006
Among the outstanding interpreters of Mahler’s music, Pierre Boulez stands out for his recent recordings of the composer’s symphonies. Having worked with various international orchestras, Boulez has been preserving on CD some finely shaped performances, and if he intends to create a cycle akin to those of other conductors, he is wisely recording the works one by one and not necessarily in the order in which they were composed. »
02 Oct 2006
The daily Anglican liturgies of Morning and Evening Prayer feature the recitation of the complete Psalter (apportioned in a monthly cycle), and in cathedrals and collegiate chapels, the chanting of the psalms has been cultivated to a degree of great refinement and beauty. »
29 Sep 2006
Of late opera stagings often seem to be slotted into one of two categories: the "traditional," with sets as the original libretto detailed and singers in period costumes; and "non-traditional," "regie theater," or "Eurotrash," what you will. »
29 Sep 2006
Having spent the better part of its life at full-price, the Solti/Nilsson Salome now appears as a mid-priced re-issue. »
29 Sep 2006
This 250th anniversary year of Mozart's birth must be heaven not only Amadeus lovers but also for those with a general inclination toward classical era music. »
29 Sep 2006
While most of the familiar Lieder repertoire stems from the nineteenth century, the powerful attraction the artform spurred composition in this genre through the mid-twentieth century. »
28 Sep 2006
Vanity publishing is not for the print world only, as a release from a company called Jeremiah Productions, called "That's Amore," proves. »
27 Sep 2006
According to Giancarlo Landini, author of the very interesting and detailed sleeve notes, Labo “has been sorely neglected, if not totally forgotten”. »
26 Sep 2006
CPO has recently given us a lot of wonderful Lehar recordings like Eva, Der Rastelbinder or Der Sterngucker (admired by Hofmannsthal who exclaimed after a performance: ‘I wish, Lehar had composed Rosenkavalier’). »
25 Sep 2006
In the 1930s, Poulenc’s turn to writing sacred choral music such as the Litanies à la vierge noire and the Mass in G was closely linked to his new embrace of Roman Catholicism following the death of a close friend, the composer Pierre-Octave Ferroud. »
25 Sep 2006
The Bach Passions combine drama, sublimity of expression, and deeply devotional reflection in such a powerful way that we invariably tend to set them apart from other liturgical works. »
25 Sep 2006
Maybe a looking glass will help you to decipher the reprint in this CD’s inside cover of a small article on the soprano by Terry McEwen, who was Manager of the Classical Divison of London Records at the time of recording. »
25 Sep 2006
Deutsche Grammophon was one of the many labels for which Nilsson recorded and the company decided to commemorate her passing by offering us most of her not so very large catalogue. »
25 Sep 2006
We are reasonably sensitive, I suspect, to the number of ways in which venue can shape the nature and success of musical performance. »
24 Sep 2006
The best Norma on DVD treats the viewer to a blurry picture of washed-out colors and remote, compressed sound. »
24 Sep 2006
The better can be the enemy of the good and this recording proves it. »
24 Sep 2006
In her debut recording the young Roumanian soprano Katarina Jovanic demonstrates her talent in performing an intriguing selection of Lieder by Schubert, Brahms, and Strauss. »
24 Sep 2006
Myto does many an opera-lover a service by offering this enjoyable recording of Rossini's French grand opera, here called Moïse. »
24 Sep 2006
For a period of close to half a century, French grand opera, as exemplified by the works of Giacomo Meyerbeer and his school, was the preferred form of music for the theatre (i.e. opera) in most of the civilized world. »
22 Sep 2006
It is somewhat ironic that until recent years Italy has generally been slow to take a leading role in the historical performance movement: ironic in that historically Italy both dominates and defines the early baroque style and ironic in that that style enshrines the primacy of text— the Italian text. »
22 Sep 2006
I should probably preface my reaction to this release by confessing to the heretical belief, at least from a Wagnerian perspective, that Tristan und Isolde is not really a stageworthy opera. »
20 Sep 2006
The first thing I noticed in the liner notes was the bold print claiming Cimarosa was born in 1797 and died in 1848, which correspond exactly with Donizetti’s lifespan. »
19 Sep 2006
In his introduction to the Welsh National Opera’s celebratory 60th anniversary season programme Carlo Rizzi, their Music Director, declares that “we are bringing the best of Wales to the rest of the world — and the best of the world to Wales”. »
16 Sep 2006
This is a very attractive book, which, in addition to the expected text, has many striking photos, a list of the operas performed in Chicago, indicating all the seasons in which each work was given, and a season by season chronology, limited to professional companies. »
12 Sep 2006
Robert Ashley has the uncanny ability to sprinkle diamonds amidst great swaths of apparently trivial and quotidian detritus–diamonds that trigger the nervous system in an intensely stimulating fashion. »
12 Sep 2006
The later Günter Wand was a remarkable interpreter of Bruckner’s music, as is demonstrated in this live recording from the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival. »
09 Sep 2006
Sony Records occasionally still sends the odd CD to reviewers hoping they will give it notice. »
08 Sep 2006
Callas fans better skip this review, as they won’t like the tone, the words, or whatever slights real or imagined they may perceive. »
08 Sep 2006
At the expense of stating a truism, the music of Gustav Mahler, like that of other composers, is best experienced live in the concert hall. »
08 Sep 2006
This Fanciulla is such a wonderful issue because, for once, none of the three protagonists ever recorded their role commercially, so that one is spared the many doublings often met in live recordings. »
07 Sep 2006
During the last few years Antoni Wit has recorded Mahler’s symphonies one by one, such that he is building a fine cycle for the Naxos label. »
31 Aug 2006
The program for this recent recording from the choir of Westminster Cathedral presents sacred choral works by Brahms and Rheinberger, anchored at one end by Brahms’s youthful Missa Canonica and at the other by Rheinberger’s Mass for Double Choir in E-flat, Op. 109. with a handful of motets by Brahms in between. »
29 Aug 2006
This cast looks quite promising on paper. However, I cannot honestly say these big names keep their promise, except for the comprimario-singers. »
29 Aug 2006
I can readily understand why Bayreuth refuses to perform Richard Wagner’s third opera. »
29 Aug 2006
Verdi responded to the death of Rossini in 1868 by planning a collaborative Requiem Mass, drawing on the contributions of thirteen “distinguished” composers. »
28 Aug 2006
Francis Poulenc is well known for the religious works that comprise much of his oeuvre after he was traumatized by the accidental and premature death of his friend Pierre-Octave Ferroud in 1936. »
28 Aug 2006
The music of John Dunstable embodies many of the characteristics that so dramatically set the music of the emerging Renaissance apart from its Medieval forebears. »
28 Aug 2006
Sometimes an invidious comparison cannot be avoided, and such is the case with two recent DVD versions of Georg Frederic Handel's masterpiece, Giulio Cesare. »
25 Aug 2006
The English “Oxbridge” choral tradition tends to be a cohesive one, most often with choirs of men and boys receiving similar training, singing a largely shared repertory in similar venues and in similar contexts. »
25 Aug 2006
Harry Christophers and The Sixteen have a particular affinity for pre-modern polyphony, as their long discography, teeming with the music of the Eton Choirbook, assorted Renaissance masters, Handel, Bach, and others, amply shows. »
25 Aug 2006
Some argue that Bayreuth ushered in the modern era of regietheatre in opera productions with its now-legendary centennial Der Ring des Nibelungen, directed by Patrice Chereau. »
25 Aug 2006
In Turkey recently, we visited a second-grade classroom, where our guide invited the children to sing songs for us. »
25 Aug 2006
It seems only natural that the quality of radiance should quickly come to mind in contemplating the twelfth-century Basilica of Saint Denis, where luminous stained glass creates colored walls of mystical light. »
25 Aug 2006
Pentatone Classics joins some smaller recording companies staking out niche markets as the biggest labels continue their enforced retreat from the classical marketplace. »
25 Aug 2006
In recent European reviews, Teatro Regio di Parma’s DVD of their 2004 Verdi Gala was generally labeled as worthless. »
25 Aug 2006
Tower Records online DVD page shows eleven available incarnations of Verdi's classic La Traviata, four of which have appeared in the last year, including one filmed at the reopening of La Fenice in Venice, and a Zurich production reviewed recently for Opera Today by yours truly. »
25 Aug 2006
This installment of the estimable Bach Cantata Pilgrimage recordings brings together cantatas from the middle of the Epiphany season, along with a “refugee” from Trinity XXIV), and the well-known motet, “Jesu, meine Freude.” »
25 Aug 2006
This is a most sympathetic performance, though perhaps being a Fleming helps. In my small country on the frontier of Northern and Southern European influences, many musical styles made their entrance and became popular. »
25 Aug 2006
Internationally acclaimed soprano, Solveig Kringelborn, now has recorded a delightful selection of late nineteenth-century German Lieder on the NMA label. »
25 Aug 2006
In making words sing, to use a phrase from a recent study of the poetics of vocal composition, Aribert Reimann (b. 1936) does not emulate another composer as much as he makes fashions his own lines and punctuates them with accompaniments that serve as a means of accentuating the text. »
25 Aug 2006
We can easily imagine the pleasure that Bach must have taken in presiding over a household that was both large and talented enough to form its own complete ensemble. »
25 Aug 2006
Had Plato been a 19th century opera fan, would the philosopher have been so sure that there exists an ideal version of each and every opera, in the way that all chairs come from one immutable concept of "chair"? »
13 Aug 2006
Myto is always generous with its timings, usually producing very full CD’s and thus of necessity offering a bonus if a performance doesn’t fill the whole of the record. »
13 Aug 2006
Most of us who listen to opera often chose a work to relax us on a quiet evening; perhaps lighting some candles, and opening that bottle of good vino you’ve been saving for a special occasion. »
10 Aug 2006
When the Ring theater burned in Vienna, on December 8, 1881,1 Richard Wagner commented that it left him “cold” to know that a number of patrons should die while at a performance of Jacques Offenbach’s music. »
09 Aug 2006
Carmen and The Magic Flute have finally made it onto my calendar, a nice way to end the summer opera festival at Santa Fe. »
03 Aug 2006
The Waldbühne in Berlin is a large copy of ancient Greek theatres. Originally it was the ‘Reichssportfeld’, built for the Olympic Games of 1936. »
02 Aug 2006
In summer doldrums? Spend a delightful hour with two great artists in a rare joint appearance, as Fabula Classics has resurrected for DVD a 1985 Cesare Siepi and Mirelle Freni televised recital. »
02 Aug 2006
Commemorating some of its outstanding concerts of the 1980s and Bernard Haitink, its principal conductor (from 1967-1979), the London Philharmonic Orchestra has released on its own label a single CD that includes several
pieces that brought notice to the ensemble. »
02 Aug 2006
Recorded in early May 2005 at Crear, an artists’ community in Argyll, Scotland, this CD contains selections of Lieder and songs that fit well the supple voice of the mezzo-soprano Ann Murray, who is accompanied facilely by the Scottish pianist Malcolm Martineau. »
01 Aug 2006
Connoisseurs of pretentious booklet essay verbiage will delight in the prose style of Matthias Kellerin his musings for this EuroArts DVD of Ennio Morricone conducting his film scores with the Munich radio orchestra. »
31 Jul 2006
The news from Santa Fe Opera last week-end is good, unexpectedly so. The British composer Thomas Ades’ new (2004) opera, a riff on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, has been rumored hard to perform and harder to hear. »
27 Jul 2006
Dietrich Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu nostri is a large-scale Passion work dedicated to the Swedish chapelmaster, Gustav Dübin, in whose notable collection, now at Uppsala, it holds a prominent place. »
27 Jul 2006
Was it so many years ago that lovers of Wagner's titanic multi-part opus, Der Ring Des Nibelung, focused their passion principally on audio versions? »
24 Jul 2006
“These probably unique documents may well owe their existence to the presence of Joan Sutherland in the cast and represent the earliest recordings of the great diva. »
24 Jul 2006
Naxos reinforces its status as the classical recording world's bargain leader by releasing a single CD highlights disc from its complete Don Giovanni, recorded in 2000 and originally released in 2001. »
24 Jul 2006
This is a highly impressive coffee-table table book, loaded with stunning photographs of productions, singers, composers, and even our nation’s glorious capital. »
24 Jul 2006
Richard Strauss’ 1905 neurotic shocker Salome has long been a favorite Santa Fe Opera repertory piece, having enjoyed ten productions over the years. »
24 Jul 2006
This new Naxos recording offers a rare opportunity to hear three little-known works by one of the 20th century's greatest composers - The Execution of Stepan Razin op. 119, October op. 131, and Five Fragments for orchestra op. 42, by Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-75). »
24 Jul 2006
Is this the application of Peter’s Principle on Ruperto Chapi’s music as Chris Webber, editor of www.zarzuela.net preaches, or is this proof of Chapi being “undoubtedly the most important Spanish
composer of stage music of all time” as the sleeve notes tell us? »
24 Jul 2006
Its foundational interest in affective response made the early Baroque era a time rich in the nurture of highly impassioned music and text. Little surprise then that laments, with their characteristic emotional intensity, were particularly at home on the early seventeenth-century stage and in the chambers of the nobility. »
24 Jul 2006
Whatever its flaws - and it has them - this Zurich Opera production of Debussy's Pelléas and Mélisande boasts qualities that carry it very far from the standard view of those opera goers who considers the work dry, dull, and depressingly long. »
24 Jul 2006
Recorded approximately 35 years ago in September 1971, Bernard Haitink’s performance of Gustav Mahler’s Eighth Symphony remains a classic account of the composer’s demanding score. »
24 Jul 2006
Refreshingly modern and familiar at the same time, the Lieder of Willy Burkhard (1900-55) are better known in his native Switzerland than anywhere else. »
23 Jul 2006
Most Opera Today readers are probably familiar with Gian Carlo Menotti largely through his operas (The Medium, The Consul, Amahl and the Night Visitors, The Telephone, and others), and, if they teach or coach voice, may be more familiar than they’d like to be with pieces like “This is my box” and “Monica’s Waltz”, which have long been mainstays of the
“American aria” branch of repertoire for young singers. »
19 Jul 2006
There are lieder-recitals and there are lieder-recitals. In my experience Lucia Popp, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Margaret Price stuck to their Lieder-guns till the last item, sometimes offering Strauss’ Zueignung as an encore. »
19 Jul 2006
This excellent performance of Beethoven's mammoth sacred work, Missa Solemnis, served as part of the
celebration of the reopening (after reconstruction) of the Dresden Frauenkirche, which suffered devastating damage in the same bombing raid that destroyed much of the city and so many of its inhabitants near the end of WWII. »
19 Jul 2006
The composers Morales, Guerrero, and Victoria form a holy trinity of sorts, dominating Spanish church music in what we have come to see as a “Golden Age,” a time in which sixteenth-century liturgical polyphony assumed a classical perfection. »
19 Jul 2006
I belong to the happy few (some would say ‘unhappy’ few) who ever witnessed a stage production of this rarely performed opera. »
19 Jul 2006
Glyndebourne’s recent DVD release of it’s 1980 production of Die Entführung aus dem Serail is quite an exceptional performance of this particular work. »
18 Jul 2006
JULES MASSENET'S 'BROADWAY HIT,' the 1899 Cendrillon, billed as Cinderella but sung in French, was given top notch treatment at its Santa Fe Opera debut Saturday night (July 15). »
10 Jul 2006
In a room filled with music scholars, conversations surrounding the name Franz Joseph Haydn would be synonymous with symphonic music, keyboard works, operas, string quartets, and vocal music. »
08 Jul 2006
2006 is a centenary year of Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) - a great Russian composer of the 20th century, and a complicated and tortured soul whose posthumous legacy has been a subject of heated ideological debates in recent years. »
05 Jul 2006
Two sets of madrigals, each the fourth book published by its composer, give complementary views of the state of madrigal composition in Italy in the years either side of 1600. »
05 Jul 2006
During the fifties and sixties, it was almost impossible (or horrendously expensive) to collect the hundreds of recordings of zarzuela outside Spain and some Latin American countries. »
05 Jul 2006
The recent Deutsche Grammaphone release of an insightful Metropolitan Opera double bill from 1994 provides a fascinating comparison of contrasting verismo worlds. »
05 Jul 2006
Even with a magnifying glass you won’t be able to find a date of this concert on either the DVD itself or in the sleeve notes. »
27 Jun 2006
Second only to soprano divas, history’s great tenors have received the most retrospective scrutiny. »
26 Jun 2006
Anyone who knows Giacomo Puccini only for his operas is in for a treat. Puccini: Sogno d’or presents Puccini the songwriter, and what is fascinating about this little-known repertory is that it prefigures many of the delightful melodies that later appeared in his works for the stage. »
24 Jun 2006
On June 9th in Sofia and 16th at the Varna Summer Festival, celebrated soprano Krassimira Stoyanova made her Richard Strauss debut in Vier letzte Lieder in her native Bulgaria. »
23 Jun 2006
All the excitement and activity in the classical recording company world now seems to be in the budget area. »
23 Jun 2006
Nestling artistically in a bowl, carefully arranged and lit to suit the camera early in the programme, the testicles seemed to glow softly with their hidden history, their inherent potential and, now, their very lack of future. »
23 Jun 2006
“Gypsies! Filthy, dirty, thieving gypsies!” cried Amy Sedaris as Jerri Blank from one delightful Strangers With Candy episode years back. For those who have experienced a forced ‘chance’ meeting with one of these colorful characters in say, Granada, Spain, they may have espoused a similar belief in recent years. »
23 Jun 2006
One sign that a media market has really come into its own, economically speaking, is the appearance of items previously released in other formats, items that one struggles to imagine a wide market for. DVDs must be doing fairly well, then, in the classical market. »
17 Jun 2006
The world of J.S. Haydn is one gravely underappreciated and undervalued. He never earned the right to a 1980’s bio pic like Mozart or was appreciated and saluted in pop culture through early rock n’ roll like
Beethoven. »
15 Jun 2006
This installment in the remarkable Bach Cantata Pilgrimage series presents four Christmas cantatas: “Gelobet seist du, Jesus Christ,” BWV 91; “Unser Mund sei voll Lachens,” BWV 110; “Dazu ist erschienen,” BWV 40; and “Christum wir sollen loben schon,” BWV 121, all recorded live in St. Bartholomew’s Church, New York City. »
14 Jun 2006
Can you believe it? With all the profound knowledge of my 24 years, I first visited the Verona Arena in 1968. On was Trovatore with Bergonzi, Gencer and, as Luna, Piero Cappuccilli. »
14 Jun 2006
Glyndebourne’s 2004 live recording of Gianni Schicchi, produced by Opus Arte, is quite possibly the most electric and riveting performance of this Puccini one-act opera. »
12 Jun 2006
Like other nineteenth-century composers, Hugo Wolf (1860-1903) orchestrated some of his Lieder, and his contributions to the genre of Orchesterlieder are impressive. »
01 Jun 2006
Among the interpreters of Mahler’s music in the late twentieth century, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Daniel Barenboim stand out for their various contributions. »
01 Jun 2006
The composer Christoph Bernhard (born Kolberg, Pomerania, 1628, died, Dresden 1692) embodies the problematic nature of German musical culture in the seventeenth century. »
01 Jun 2006
This Opus Arte set not only captures a mostly satisfying performance of Monteverdi's opera based on the last books of Homer's Odyssey, but features something even rarer: a booklet essay by the musical director (Glen Wilson) of remarkable lucidity. »
01 Jun 2006
In spite of the religious warfare that consumed France during the second half of the sixteenth century (which claimed the life of one eminent Catholic composer, Antoine de Bertrand, who was murdered by Protestants)*, musical life continued unabated. »
31 May 2006
Dubbed a “spieloper,” Hans Pfitzner’s Das Christelflein (“The Christmas Elf”) casts a magical, yet appropriately cool, spell, even in the warm days of late May, the time of this review. »
31 May 2006
Catherine Bott is an English soprano in her fifties with decades of career and an extensive discography, but even in the world of early music, where she has spent most of her time, one could not say she is a marquee name. »
31 May 2006
“A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring”, quoth the great poet Alexander Pope in 1709. »
31 May 2006
Should Opera Today readers want to test where they would place themselves on a spectrum ranging from “completely politically incorrect” to “utterly politically correct,” the Hyperion Helios re-release of Sidney Jones “Japanese musical play” The Geisha surely will do the trick. »
31 May 2006
The general aversion of the listening public to vocal music can nowhere be more easily seen than in the comparative success of the operatic and instrumental works of the Italian baroque. »
31 May 2006
There was a great northward swing of composers from Italy to Paris and London in the 1820s and 1830s. Actually, this has been going on for a long time, but was temporarily halted by the Napoleonic wars. »
31 May 2006
Few works seem more seminal to our understanding of J. S. Bach than the church cantatas, written over a wide chronological swath of his career, sometimes as part of occasional duties, other times in what was clearly a frenzy of steady prolificity. »
31 May 2006
Sergio Seggalini, former editor of Opéra International (now Opéra Magazine), is the artistic director of both La Fenice and the Festival of Martina Franca. »
30 May 2006
“What a difference a sound makes” goes the song (or something like that). »
25 May 2006
By sheer coincidence I attended a concert performance of this opera at the Vlaamse Opera in Antwerp at the same moment I received these CD’s. »
25 May 2006
When asked whether he believed Rossini had composed Il Barbiere di Siviglia in thirteen days, nineteen-year-old Donizetti is supposed to have replied, »
25 May 2006
Klaus-Edgar Wichmann, in the booklet essay to this Capriccio recording from 2002 of Otto Nicolai's Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor, describes the work as having "asserted itself in the opera repertoire for more than a hundred years." »
25 May 2006
Returning from Munich’s new production of Handel’s “Orlando” at thirty thousand feet above clouds which might have done service as props for that opera when first staged in 1733, it occurred that the great man himself could have had things to say about what might be director David Alden’s valedictory baroque piece for the Bayerische Staatsoper. »
24 May 2006
A little over a year ago Bach scholar Michael Maul found himself in the exceedingly unusual position of having discovered a hitherto unknown Bach composition, a birthday ode for Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Weimar, entitled “Alles mit Gott und nichts ohn’ ihn. »
24 May 2006
Franz Schubert's song cycle Die schöne Müllerin has received, in recent years, frequent attention with several fine recordings having been issued during this period. »
24 May 2006
Among the plentiful selections of orchestral music from the operas of Richard Wagner, it is rare to find recordings that truly stand out, and this recent release of performances conducted by the late Klaus Tennstedt merits distinction. »
24 May 2006
On May 22, the Kennedy Center's Fortas Chamber Music Series and the Chateauville Foundation co-presented a fully staged production of Benjamin Britten's haunting chamber opera The Turn of the Screw, conducted by Lorin Maazel. Here are three reviews: »
24 May 2006
I’ve carefully listened several times to this new solo album (his third) by Rolando Villazón and it grows on you, though there are a few weaknesses. »
24 May 2006
This must be the first Turandot that has in the sleeve notes three photographs of the soprano who sings Liu compared to two of the lady in the title role. »
22 May 2006
Glyndebourne opened this year's festival with "a new production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, subtitled ‘The school for lovers’, will open the 2006 Festival. This masterpiece includes some of Mozart’s most exquisite music, and Così’s now established popularity, following comparative neglect in the 19th century, is partly due to Glyndebourne’s championing of the work since the opening of the Festival in 1934." Here are some initial reviews: »
19 May 2006
Domingo-fans probably have all complete performances from which these scenes were culled, as they were widely broadcast in Europe during the eighties. »
19 May 2006
I can’t imagine a more utopian enterprise for a composer than writing an opera at the end of the twentieth century. »
19 May 2006
For a time this Don Carlo was a return to times people thought long gone. As always, Dutch papers covered beforehand this new Decker production in depth, as the theme of liberty is an important one. »
17 May 2006
Jone is the only Italian opera from the 1850s by a composer other than Giuseppe Verdi to make it into the standard repertory for a period of well over 50 years, lasting until the onset of World War I before eventually disappearing. »
17 May 2006
In the modern performance of seventeenth-century French music, the ensemble Les Arts Florissants holds a special place, both for its longevity and the striking stylistic fluency it brings to performances — performances that have come to define our very sense of French Baroque style. »
16 May 2006
Dans un parfum de roses (“Within the scent of roses”), is the fourth and final volume of the Complete Songs of Gabriel Fauré issued by Hyperion. »
16 May 2006
All is right and good in the world of opera as long as the Arena di Verona puts on vivid productions, in questionable taste, with impassioned singers pouring out the volume, in questionable taste, and the audience roaring its approval - in questionable taste. »
16 May 2006
Here is another handsome production of an early Rossini one-act comedy from the Schwetzingen festival, held at the charming and tiny Rokoko theater in May 1990. »
16 May 2006
In recent years the Sixth Symphony of Gustav Mahler has gained some prominence with the declaration by the internationale Gustav Mahler Gesellschaft about the only correct order of the internal movements, a position that has inspired some discussion among enthusiasts. »
16 May 2006
The booklet somewhat proudly tells us that “a modern Italian opera-going public would likely walk out in horror if confronted with the avant-garde productions of many German opera houses. »
15 May 2006
Frank Sinatra had Reprise. The Beatles had Apple. Madonna has Maverick. And Edita Gruberova has Nightingale. »
11 May 2006
Joe Dubiel is a well known and accomplished music theorist, affable, pleasant in demeanor, learned and astute, and above all friendly in a field that has its thorns and brambles. »
09 May 2006
What happened to Italo Montemezzi’s L’amore dei tre re? After the opera’s triumphant premiere at La Scala in 1913, Montemezzi was vaulted into the international limelight, and his creation enjoyed regular performances throughout the world until his death in 1952. »
02 May 2006
A recent newspaper report — the sort of item conveyed in a short paragraph and relegated to a column of such brief pieces — summarized a study that argues that Mozart did not die a pauper, but actually had a fairly steady stream of income. »
02 May 2006
Brigid Brophy (1929-1995) was a noted novelist and critic who was passionately interested in opera, and especially Mozart and his operas. »
02 May 2006
Passion for music is hardly rare, but it is welcome to hear it espoused in public, especially by some of the art’s strongest proponents. »
29 Apr 2006
On 26 April, The Juilliard Opera Center gave the world premiere of Miss Lonelyhearts by Lowell Liebermann. Commissioned by the Centennial Commission of The Juilliard School with the support of the Trust of Francis Goelet, the production of Miss Lonelyhearts “has been developed cooperatively among The Juilliard School, the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California and the College-Conservatory of Music of the University of Cincinnati.” Here are two reviews. »
29 Apr 2006
This wonderful CD was recorded in the magnificent church of Notre Dame, Rozay-en-Brie, which is 30 miles east of Paris, and contains one of the better-preserved French organs of the seventeenth century, actually played by Francois Couperin during his lifetime. »
29 Apr 2006
In recent years a number of the number of recordings of Mahler’s works have become available on DVD. »
29 Apr 2006
Why would anyone want to replace his LP-version on MRF? Because his records are scratched and it is too much trouble to put everything on CD. »
27 Apr 2006
When these recordings first appeared during the mid-sixties, there was some eye batting. Why did Deutsche Grammophon bring these recordings on the market? »
24 Apr 2006
Tosca "is based on a play by Sardou, which was written for the famous actress Sarah Bernhardt. Sardou crafted melodrama rather well, and Puccini’s librettists distilled the play’s main attributes of action, sex, love, lust, politics, art and religion into one of the most popular operas of the verismo style." Tosca is now playing at the Met with Deborah Voigt in the title role. Here are two reviews. »
22 Apr 2006
Bach’s famed career as an organist, his prolific output of church cantatas, and his personal piety, all conspire to keep the image of the churchly Bach front and center in the modern mind, despite the enduring familiarity and popularity of Brandenburg concertos, sonatas, and suites. »
22 Apr 2006
For those without much time to read reviews, I can be extremely brief: hurry and buy this DVD. For all the others: the same advise though maybe they want to know the reasons for such a purchase. »
22 Apr 2006
Calixto Bieito has made his name as an opera director with productions of unrelenting violence and sex, perhaps exemplified by last year's Abduction from the Seraglio in Berlin with its full nudity and graphic mutilations. »
20 Apr 2006
Enescu's Oedipe has always been a rarity outside his native Romania. »
20 Apr 2006
Last year was the 60th anniversary of Mascagni’s death. When I wrote a big commemoration article for a Dutch operatic magazine, I wondered if we would ever hear a full version of the 18-year old Mascagni’s first work: a cantata called “in the weaving mill.” »
20 Apr 2006
Even if this recording were a failure (which it isn't), it is indispensable on account of its inclusion of about 90 seconds of music not present in the only other studio recording. »
20 Apr 2006
After happily scanning the rarity-filled repertoire on this disc, and considering the unusual program order, with sets of songs by Enescu, Chausson, and Debussy alternating with sets by saloniste Reynaldo Hahn, I visualize this recital as an exquisite hour in Hahn’s salon, with three guest composers present, exchanging ideas with their host. »
20 Apr 2006
Albert Lortzing has suffered much lately. Artistically speaking, he is somewhat moribund. In a recent article in the German operatic magazine, Orpheus, one writer rightfully complained that the once so popular composer has almost disappeared from the German theatres. »
19 Apr 2006
Only a few seconds after watching this DVD I was reminded of one of the great marketing failures in records. More than forty years ago, RCA brought out several glorious LP’s of young Gigli’s records and they put photographs of the sixty-five year old tenor on the sleeve. »
19 Apr 2006
In connection with the joint project by Thomas Hampson and the U.S. Library of Congress to present events about American song and other creativity at venues as varied as Kansas City, Fort Worth, and Carnegie Hall, EMI Classics has released this CD containing tracks from three earlier discs featuring Thomas Hampson. »
18 Apr 2006
I fear this is a CD strictly reserved for fans of both singers or for collectors of Christmas albums by classical singers. »
18 Apr 2006
In March the Glyndebourne Opera production of Jonathan Dove’s Flight played at the 2006 Adelaide Festival. Barely a week later a second Glyndebourne production presented by Opera Australia opened at the Sydney Opera House with further performances in Melbourne at the State Theatre. »
18 Apr 2006
This season, the New York City Opera presents Handel's Acis and Galatea. "When it comes to Handel, he not only lives but thrives at City Opera. Here Ovid’s Metamorphoses is both the source and the inspiration for Acis and Galatea, one of Handel’s most elegant and sensual works." Here are two reviews. »
18 Apr 2006
A few years ago I picked up a buzz among those close to the Seattle Opera Young Artists’ Program that there would be a truly remarkable young tenor in the program’s production of La Cenerentola that year. »
13 Apr 2006
On 11 April 2006, Andreas Scholl appeared at Zankel Hall, one of the performance venues in New York's famous Carnegie Hall. According to Carnegie Hall: "On this program, we span a wonderfully diverse variety of music from a variety of places, sung by one of the world’s leading countertenors. »
10 Apr 2006
Holding “The Rose, the Lily & the Whortleberry” in my hands, I pondered for a moment whether it belonged on my bookshelf or in the CD cabinet. »
10 Apr 2006
This 2001 Vienna State Opera production of Verdi’s first smash hit, Nabucco, serves as a textbook example of the “modern dress” production style, for better or worse – and probably, for both. »
07 Apr 2006
No exact date is given for this performance and there is good reason for
it. The sleeve notes clearly state that baritone Enzo Sordello (of the 15
minutes of world fame when the Met fired him for clinging to a high note
longer than Callas) sings the role of Silvio. »
04 Apr 2006
“A jewel box of a theater”: that great cliché of the opera world comes to mind when viewing a production from the Schwetzinger Festspiele held at the Rokokotheater Schwetzingen. »
04 Apr 2006
The British mezzo, Alice Coote, will make her Met Opera debut as Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro later this month. On the first of April, she gave a recital of Mahler and Schubert lieder, accompanied by Julius Drake. Here are two reviews. »
03 Apr 2006
It’s always interesting when one’s own opinion about a work varies violently from others’ views, even if they are to date minimal in number. In this case, it is not the music per se that is under discussion but the way it is represented, or in my opinion, mis-represented by this film. »
03 Apr 2006
Don Pasquale is generally considered one of Donizetti's greatest works. Yet, "[o]f the three Donizetti operas being performed at The Met this season, the comedy Don Pasquale has been out of the repertoire for the longest time." This season the opera returns with bass Simone Alaimo (Don Pasquale), soprano Anna Netrebko (Norina) and tenor Juan Diego Flórez (Ernesto). Here are four reviews. »
01 Apr 2006
Tuxes and gowns, a marathon of trotting on and offstage by renowned singers, a ritzy audience abusing their palms with ritual clapping—yes, EuroArts has another opera gala event available on DVD in this two-disc Vienna State Opera Gala concert. »
31 Mar 2006
This is a wonderful, recent recording of these popular piano concertos by Rachmaninov. The Piano concerto no. 1 is a studio recording, while the Piano concerto no. 2 is a live version. »
31 Mar 2006
New recordings of complete operas lumber into view these days as the dinosaurs trod painfully into a dying sun in an animated depiction of their extinction. »
30 Mar 2006
Los Angeles Opera opened the 2005-6 season with a staging of Offenbach’s La Grande-Duchesse de Gerolstein, directed by Hollywood’s Garry Marshall. »
30 Mar 2006
In 2001, Finland observed the 300th anniversary of the Finnish Hymnal. As a part of the celebration, YLE (the Finnish public broadcasting company) launched a project to record a substantial portion of the hymnal in performance by soloists or ensembles. »
30 Mar 2006
The East Thirteenth Street Theatre is so unprepossessing that it would be easy to miss it altogether. From the street the entrance looks like an ice cream shop more so than a theatre. The crowded foyer has chairs around little tables and a food service counter. »
29 Mar 2006
In this compelling documentary, Christopher Nupen has captured rare and wondrous collaborations by some of the greatest twentieth century performers as they pay tribute to an early nineteenth century musical treasure, Franz Schubert. »
29 Mar 2006
Jessye Norman’s long-time label, Philips, celebrates the artist’s sizeable recorded heritage with an expansive series of double CDs of re-releases, under the sobriquet The Jessye Norman Collection. »
29 Mar 2006
Guy Joosten, who recently directed the Met’s new Roméo et Juliette, reworked an attempt of Cav and Pag presented at the Essen Opera for the Nederlandse Opera in Amsterdam. I cannot say he succeeded or to put it more plainly: Cav was bad and Pagliacci suffered too. »
28 Mar 2006
Having missed the first 10 minutes of Lysistrata, Or the Nude Goddess, I foolishly crept into my seat where I saw what appeared to be four raging Lainie Kazan’s protesting war by Athenian ruins. »
24 Mar 2006
Here is a Turandot to watch with the sound off—not because the singers misfire so badly, although no one really impresses. »
23 Mar 2006
The theme of the third volume of Hyperion’s set of the Complete Songs of Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) is Chanson d’amour, which takes its name from a piece in the composer’s opus 27 set – a compilation devoted to the love song. »
22 Mar 2006
There is little doubt about the popularity of Eric Whitacre’s music among North American choral ensembles. With the release of this Hyperion disc, the international choral scene may soon become enamored as well. »
21 Mar 2006
Before you watch this DVD, the best thing you can do is read the sleeve notes. They are brief but to the point; and they succinctly tell you the differences between this Venice version and the traditional one. »
21 Mar 2006
After issuing recordings of Les Vêpres Siciliennes, Simon Boccanegra, and Macbeth, Opera Rara continues it series of Verdi Originals—first versions of operas the composer later revised—with La forza del destino. »
21 Mar 2006
This is an absolutely wonderful, live performance recording of two of Mozart’s best operas, Don Giovanni and Cosi fan tutte. »
21 Mar 2006
The New York City Opera opened its spring 2006 season with a new production of Frank Loesser’s The Most Happy Fella, which premiered on Broadway fifty years ago in 1956. »
20 Mar 2006
This is an absolutely fabulous recording of Schubert’s final symphony, which is often compared as his closest composition to the style of Beethoven. »
20 Mar 2006
In the 1990’s Pierre Audi staged productions of Monteverdi’s three surviving operas (L’Orfeo, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, and L’incoronazione di Poppea) with De Nederlandse Opera in Amsterdam. »
20 Mar 2006
Of all opera singers of the last century, no one better dominated the genre’s star power than Maria Callas. During her thirty-four years onstage, she came to embody the essence of the term “diva,” both in her stormy personal life and her equally tempestuous stage career. »
17 Mar 2006
Barbara Bonney’s discography is extensive and wide-ranging, including opera and oratorio, as well as lieder recitals from Mozart and Mendelssohn through the major Romantics to Zemlinsky. »
17 Mar 2006
Hercules (HWV 60) was first performed on 5 January 1745 at King's Theatre, Haymarket, London. Categorized as a drama, it traditionally has been performed in the oratorio style (i.e., a concert performance). Following its performance as an opera at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, this production by William Christie now appears at the Barbican in London. "This extraordinary opera recounts the tragic tale of a hero literally poisoned by the jealousy of his misguided wife. In this modern-dress production, punctuated by Greek references, the action takes place on a sand-covered, amphitheatre-style arena where the chorus is used as Handel originally intended, to embody the people of Trachis and comment on the action." Here are five reviews. »
16 Mar 2006
Of the countertenors coming to the fore in the generation following Alfred Deller, few, if any, have achieved the prominence or performance longevity of James Bowman. »
16 Mar 2006
The Nutcracker is one of the most popular ballets. Tchaikovsky’s score alone is synonymous with Christmas—one can even say that it is what keeps this ballet alive. »
16 Mar 2006
A critical aspect of Mahler’s music is the way the composer often juxtaposed the familiar and the new, and this dichotomy is reflected strongly in his Fourth Symphony. »
14 Mar 2006
Producer Robert Carsen, together with his set designer Tobias Hoheisel, is taking a big risk with their new production of Glück’s 1762 version for alto of “Orfeo ed Euridice” at Chicago Lyric Opera. »
13 Mar 2006
Some opera sets are meant to be an introduction to the work presented. They contain a booklet which tells you about the life of the composer, the history of the work, some analysis, a synopsis of the story, and maybe (if you're lucky) the libretto translated into your language. »
10 Mar 2006
This recording features piano works by the pillars of nineteenth-century Romantic piano composition (Chopin and Liszt), the Spanish-speaking musical nationalists (Granados, Ginastera, and de Falla), and the Russian composer-pianists (Scriabin and Rachmaninov) who reinterpreted the Romantic spirit in new and innovative ways for the piano. »
10 Mar 2006
Mozart’s Requiem has become widely-known and popular since the 1984 movie Amadeus. Left incomplete at his death, his student and assistant Franz Xaver Sussmayr (1766-1803) completed the work from Mozart’s notes. »
10 Mar 2006
Could La Traviata be the opera with the most versions available on DVD? The appetite for the doomed heroine never wavers. »
09 Mar 2006
If Richard Wagner’s music may be seen to pervade the late nineteenth century, an area that is rarely discussed is his influence on song. »
09 Mar 2006
For most of its 40 plus years the Adelaide Festival of Arts has had as its central attraction the Australian premieres of a landmark European opera like Wozzeck, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, The Fiery Angel or landmark contemporary works like Death in Venice, Nixon in China or El Nino presented within a few years of their world premieres. »
08 Mar 2006
Everyone is familiar with the waltzes and polkas of the “Waltz King,” Johan Strauss II, along with his father Johann I and his brother Josef. »
08 Mar 2006
Verdi’s smash hit of 1844 is a relative rarity these days. As Stefano Olcese notes in his booklet essay for a new Dynamic recording, the opera calls for daunting vocal display from tenor, soprano, baritone, and bass. »
08 Mar 2006
This season the Metropolitan Opera presents Tchaikovsky's infrequently performed opera, Mazeppa. Acording to the Met, "[a]lthough Tchaikovsky is best known for Eugene Onegin and several great ballet scores, he wrote many other wonderful operas including Mazeppa, which receives its premiere at The Met this season. Premiered in Moscow in 1884, it was first seen in St Petersburg just three days later, and has remained in the repertoire of The Mariinsky Theatre from that time. Based on a poem by Pushkin, it tells the story of a 17th century Ukrainian separatist, who falls in love with a friend’s daughter. The opera is full of tuneful episodes (similar to those in The Queen of Spades) and this is a very rare chance to see the opera in New York." Here are three reviews. »
05 Mar 2006
The richness of the Ars Antiqua flourishing in Paris in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries marks the time as one of high cultural achievement, drawing nurture from the contemporaneous rise of the Cathedral of Notre Dame and the University of Paris. »
05 Mar 2006
It would be presumptuous of me to go through the entire plot of The Magic Flute, given its historical and popular significance with all classical music devotees. »
05 Mar 2006
Is it possible to say something new and fresh about opera? While many books have been written about the artform, it is rare to find an introductory text that serves its subject well. »
28 Feb 2006
On Sunday, 28 February 2006, Carnegie Hall presented Les Violons du Roy, Bernard Labadie, Music Director and Conductor, with Magdalena Kožená, Mezzo-Soprano, featuring works by Rameau and Gluck. Here are two reviews. »
28 Feb 2006
This recording is a grouping of various compositions by J.S. Bach, which are not solely dedicated to the trumpet, but provide some of the most demanding repertoire for the instrument prior to the nineteenth century. »
28 Feb 2006
On 26 February, Constantine Orbelian led the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, marking its 50th anniversary this season, in works by Haydn, Prokofiev, Rossini, Shostakovich, and Mussorgsky, with the renowned contralto Ewa Podlés. Here are two reviews. »
23 Feb 2006
METROPOLITAN OPERA: "Commissioned for St Petersburg (the premiere was in 1862), La Forza del Destino was based on a play by the Duke of Rivas, and was at first only a moderate success. Although Verdi revised it for Milan in 1869, it took a long time for audiences to come to appreciate the sprawling drama; several years take place between the first and last scenes, and the number of coincidences in the plot stretches credulity to the limit. But the overture, the arias for Leonora (including “Pace!”), and the duets for tenor and baritone have ensured that the opera remains popular whenever it is revived." Here are four reviews. »
22 Feb 2006
Vivaldi was very impressed with the sound and performances of the Dresden court orchestra when they visited Venice in 1716. »
22 Feb 2006
The tragic ravages of the Thirty Years’ War explicitly shaped the musical output of Heinrich Schütz. »
21 Feb 2006
Musicologists should be eager to welcome the “first modern recordings” of any work; surely having the opportunity to hear a long-lost musical treasure, rather than having it stare off the page in black-and-white, is something to be celebrated. »
21 Feb 2006
As the Vivaldi edition continues, Opus 111 is releasing a series of individual volumes dedicated to cantatas interspersed with other chamber works. »
20 Feb 2006
WELSH NATIONAL OPERA: "Welsh National Opera's The Flying Dutchman promises to be a focused, powerful and intense experience. This early Wagnerian masterpiece signalled the composer's fascination with combining epic myths and dramatic music." Here are three reviews. »
17 Feb 2006
This recording is another gem from the Complete Vivaldi Edition, a collaboration of Naïve (opus 111) and various Piedmontese institutions [see this author’s review of Vivaldi’s Orlando in that series]. »
16 Feb 2006
The Brooklyn Academy of Music is presenting Handel's Hercules with Les Arts Florissants, conducted by William Christie and directed by Luc Bondy. Here are two reviews: »
15 Feb 2006
Irish composer Gerald Barry insists that “Really, my music is very straightforward. »
13 Feb 2006
Nikolaus Lehnhoff’s Parsifal, first staged by English National Opera in 1999, is given on this Opus Arte DVD in a 2004 performance led by Kent Nagano at the Baden-Baden summer festival. »
11 Feb 2006
Henryk Górecki’s Symphony no. 3 (1976), his “Symphony of Sorrowful Songs,” as it is called, is one of the most popular recordings of late twentieth-century music. »
11 Feb 2006
Premiered in 1792 (just months after the death of Mozart), Il Matrimonio Segreto won over Vienna from the start, and Domenico Cimarosa’s opera would remain his most popular work. »
10 Feb 2006
This book is for any aficionado or lover of classical instrumental music. »
09 Feb 2006
The religious turmoil of sixteenth-century England was characterized not only by factionalism and polarity, but also famously by the charting of a via media, a middle path, through opposing views. »
05 Feb 2006
The late Gary Bertini (1927-2005) was noted for his fine interpretations of Mahler’s work, and his cycle with EMI was esteemed highly. An accomplished musician, Bertini founded the Israeli Chamber Orchestra in 1965, and later become chief conductor of the Jerusalem Symphony. »
05 Feb 2006
Monteverdi’s great work, “L’Incoronazione di Poppea” in a “semi-staged” format, has been chosen to showcase the talents of some exciting young singers and musicians in London recently as the first part of an ambitious project aimed at a more holistic approach to singing opera. »
04 Feb 2006
This 2005 release was filmed at a performance in La Scala’s temporary home, Milan’s Teatro degli Arcimboldi, in April 2004. It is based on the Burmeister version of the ballet of some 50 years ago, first introduced in the West by the Paris Opera. »
04 Feb 2006
ROYAL OPERA HOUSE: "To mark the 250th anniversary of the birth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, The Royal Opera mounts a new production of his setting of the second of Beaumarchais' domestic but politically charged 'Figaro' comedies, as adapted by librettist Lorenzo da Ponte. " »
03 Feb 2006
It has been nearly thirty years since the centenary production of the Ring at Bayreuth, and the controversy and even scandal that it generated have long since faded into memory. »
02 Feb 2006
The symphonies of Anton Bruckner deserve excellent performances to convey the intensity that the composer intended for them, and sometimes an individual performance can offer the opportunity to understand them more clearly. »
02 Feb 2006
This second edition, co-authored by D. Garfield Davies, Consultant Emeritus Otolaryngologist to The Middlesex and University College Hospitals, and Anthony F. Jahn, Professor of Clinical Otolaryngology, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, was published by Routledge in 2004. »
01 Feb 2006
Handel went to London as a free-lance musician – i.e., “on his own bottom” – in autumn 1710. His Rinaldo of February 1711, with its dazzling arias and scenic spectacles, was resoundingly successful. »
01 Feb 2006
On 30 January, the Collegiate Chorale presented Puccini: A Composer's Journey. Here are two reviews. »
29 Jan 2006
Inspired by the elitist poets of late nineteenth century Paris, Debussy was eager to join their ranks by developing musical ideas that evoked the same emotional response as the poetry he admired. Originally, Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune was a collaborative project between Debussy and Stéphane Mallarmé, a poet highly regarded by the composer. »
29 Jan 2006
Perhaps instead of waiting for the next great new opera, focus should be on finding the next great opera composer. »
27 Jan 2006
Clearly someone at Naxos loves Rossini. The label only recently released a good Cenerentola with the most excellent Joyce Di Donato, and the back catalog contains many titles, including highly praised sets of Barbieri (with Ramon Vargas) and Tancredi (featuring Ewa Podles). »
26 Jan 2006
I wonder if a record company, any record company, would have taken the trouble of recording these songs if the composer had been Zoltan Kocsis or Deszö Ranki instead of Imre (his real first name) Kálmán? »
26 Jan 2006
Known for his virtuosity as a pianist, Ignacy Paderewski (1860-1941) is also known as a composer. While most of his works involve piano, he left a single opera, Manru, a three-act work that he composed between 1892 and 1901. »
26 Jan 2006
Two of Finland’s greatest artistic luminaries—composer Aulis Sallinen (b. 1935) and poet Lassi Nummi (b. 1928)—came together to produce a fine new work, The Barabbas Dialogues (2004), which has been recently recorded and released on CD on the CPO label. »
25 Jan 2006
In an era where new studio recordings by major orchestras have dwindled to a pathetic dribble, leaving many fine institutions to start their own in-house labels, the Berlin Philharmonic still has an active contract with a major company (its conductor’s label of many years, EMI) and releases come on a regular basis. A recent one features some of Benjamin Britten’s great work for instruments and tenor. »
25 Jan 2006
Bellini's Norma is the story of a love triangle involving Norma, the Druid high priestess, Pollione, the Roman proconsul and father of Norma's two children, and Adalgisa, a Druid acolyte and Pollione's new conquest whom he intends to take to Rome. The role of Norma is generally considered one of the most difficult in opera literature. Few have succeeded in mastering it. Now Edita Gruberova, has taken on the role at the Bayerische Staatsoper. Here are two reviews. »
25 Jan 2006
Earlier this week, Sir John Eliot Gardiner led the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique and the Monteverdi Choir in two immortal Mozart works: the C-minor Mass and the Requiem, followed by an evening of Mozart's orchestral works. Here are three reviews. »
24 Jan 2006
“Carmen, un bon conseil” warns Frasquita in the last act of the opera. So friends, heed my advice and don’t play this CD in your car when you are accompanied by someone who likes opera but is not crazy on lieder. »
24 Jan 2006
It is now slightly over 40 years since the first recording of a complete opera by Saverio Mercadante (an Il Giuramento with Maria Vitale and Amedeo Berdini) was released on LP. I quickly fell in love with his music, and realized that, while not necessarily on the same level as Bellini and Donizetti, he was not far behind, and that more of his works would be extremely welcome. »
23 Jan 2006
Some twenty years ago, a leading German musicologist remarked that the
music of Parsifal »
22 Jan 2006
On June 3, 1875, thirty-six year old Bizet died after having one, some say two, heart attacks preceded by other complications. Legend has it that the composer's death was hastened by the failure of his latest work, Carmen. »
19 Jan 2006
In 1981 Wilhelminia Fernandez became somewhat of a cult figure when the French thriller “Diva” appeared on the screens. For a time her “Ebben, ne andro lontano” from La Wally almost became a hit and several commercials used a small part of the aria. »
19 Jan 2006
This season the Royal Opera House has recreated "Richard Eyre's popular production of Verdi's La Traviata, which draws on striking period designs by Bob Crowley to amplify the tensions and confrontations that make Violetta's predicament so tragic and her portrayal so real." Here are three reviews: »
18 Jan 2006
So EMI has declared this 1988 Porgy and Bess to be one of the “Great Recordings of the Century.” That may settle the issue for many – but not all. »
18 Jan 2006
The French city of Nice has this past week been enjoying some wonderful weather and the aptly-named Cote d’Azur has truly lived up to its name. »
17 Jan 2006
It must not have been an easy life, being Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791). Perhaps even more so after the fact when scholars began to do their research and “wanna bes” began their intimations and psychoanalyzing. In the more seventy-five years of Mozart scholarship and its coming of age, one must ask: How much more is there to learn, to research? »
16 Jan 2006
It is not uncommon for opera on DVD to have credits for two directors. In the case of this Paris Capriccio, a new production from June 2004, the credits list Robert Carsen as the stage director and Francois Roussillon as directing for TV and video. »
16 Jan 2006
Under the direction of James O’Donnell since January 2000, the Choir of Westminster Abbey has cultivated a robust singing style that well serves the music of this new recording and continues the Abbey’s position as one of the obvious standard bearers of the English cathedral tradition. »
14 Jan 2006
At 73 minutes, this DVD of the typical gala affair – various soloists trot on, sing an aria, then trot off – can’t be called generous, but it does have variety. »
14 Jan 2006
When you and I were young Maggie, there was only the fine Werther with Thill and Vallin and the Cetra recording with Tagliavini and his first wife, Pia Tassinari. »
14 Jan 2006
I suspect that when we survey the musical landscape of the early seventeenth century, it is opera, monody, and madrigal that come most quickly and lastingly into view, and given the contemporaneous attention given to the relationship between music and word, it is unsurprising that this would be the case. »
14 Jan 2006
When Giulio Caccini entitled his landmark 1601/02 publication Le nuove musiche, he confidently laid claim both to the novelty of the emerging baroque style and his formidable role in bringing it to blossom. »
14 Jan 2006
This new volume from Yale University Press is one of those rare and treasured phenomena in Russian music scholarship that illuminate their subject from a new angle — that of cultural history. Indeed, Boris Gasparov's expressed goal in Five Operas and a Symphony is nothing less than turning the table on poetry, philosophy, and literary criticism that have for so long ruled the field of Slavic research, and elucidating them from a musical point of view. »
11 Jan 2006
This Macbeth, originally conceived by Phyllida Lloyd for a co-production of the Paris Opéra and Covent Garden, is an excellent example of what nowadays is to be seen on most opera stages in Europe (and probably the States as well). »
11 Jan 2006
Through Rossini's influence Bellini and his rival Donizetti were each invited to compose an opera for the Théâtre des Italiens in Paris. Bellini who, paranoid and delusional, thought he was the object of a sinister plan headed by Rossini to benefit Donizetti, went out of his way to ingratiate himself with the "Great Master" long before Donizetti's arrival in the French capital. After a year of idle life in Paris, where he survived off the kindness of his hosts and friends, the Sicilian composer set to work on what would regretfully become his last opera: I Puritani di Scozia. »
09 Jan 2006
On 8 January 2006, the Met Orchestra performed at Carnegie Hall with James Levine, Renée Fleming and Julien Robbins. »
08 Jan 2006
For a work that is known as a one-aria-opera, four official (this one included) recordings is not a bad record. And of course most opera-lovers have not only “E la solita storia” in their many tenor recitals but know the baritone aria “Come due tizzi” and the mezzo’s “Esser madre è un inferno” as well. »
08 Jan 2006
When asked if I had any interest in reviewing the discs of “the Operatunity finalists,” I admit I was so ignorant of what Operatunity was that I had to make a quick web search to find out. »
06 Jan 2006
Dvořák und seine Zeit – Dvořák and his Time – immediately conveys a singular perspective on some of the vocal music of Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904) in the context of his generation. Recorded on 17 August 2004, the music on this two-CD set is from the second of two programs that were given at the 2004 Salzburg Festspiel under the rubric of “Dvořák und seine Zeit.” »
06 Jan 2006
I wonder how Natalie Dessay would comment on this CD made more than 10 years ago when she was barely thirty? The lady is a dream for every interviewer. »
06 Jan 2006
What to do, what to do, with Bellini and Romani’s bel canto masterpiece, La Sonnambula? The exquisite music demands to be performed, so the opera continues to have an existence on the fringes of the standard repertory. »
06 Jan 2006
On 28 December 2005, soprano Alla Ablaberdyeva and pianist Andrei Korobeinikov presented a program of songs by Rachmaninov, Britten and Shostakovich. Here are four reviews. »
04 Jan 2006
For those who want to possess every single TV appearance of Régine Crespin, this issue will not suffice. Only four items of the EMI DVD devoted to the soprano are to be found on the short DVD that is included with this CD. »
04 Jan 2006
Although nothing is mentioned on the cover of the CD, I think this is the first official recording of the opera even if there are some pirates doing the rounds of the collectors (my copy is a Buenos Aires pirate). So this is not an unimportant issue of Catalani’s first opera. »
04 Jan 2006
The Metropolitan Opera presented Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore (The Elixir of Love), which "tells of the peasant Nemorino who decides to take some magic elixir sold to him by a quack doctor, so that he can win the heart of a wealthy land-owner, who (to spite Nemorino) has announced her marriage to a sergeant." Here are three reviews: »
03 Jan 2006
If one should believe British critics, especially English ones, Jonathan Lemalu is a major new bass; one of the greatest talents around whose qualities are widely proven by the fact this is already his third solo CD in a short time. »
02 Jan 2006
A century or so past, those simpler times without the internet, Desperate Housewives, and back-to-back sports and other activities that desperate parents feel they have to chauffeur their children to so they’ll be able to get into the higher levels of student loan debt, Americans joined choral societies and regularly presented well-known oratorios and cantatas: Elijah, The Seasons, maybe Christ on the Mount of Olives if they were really adventurous. »
02 Jan 2006
This 1959 recording is one where the whole is bigger and better than the separate parts. It is the German equivalent to the Cetra recordings of the fifties. Those were maybe not the greatest recording of an opera but one felt that everybody was steeped in the Italian tradition. The same is happening here. »
02 Jan 2006
One takes a look at the sleeve and one realizes the wheel has finally turned a full circle. It started to move with the Decca La Traviata (Gheorgiu as Violetta, conducted by Solti) in 1994. Downloading and pc-copies were still in the future but nevertheless sales of complete opera recordings were spectacularly falling off since the eighties. »
30 Dec 2005
The Metropolitan Opera presents Wozzeck, Alban Berg's "operatic version of Büchner’s play about a soldier who subjects himself to medical experiments to augment his pay." Here are two reviews. »
29 Dec 2005
Myto has the good sense to call a spade a spade. This is an issue exclusively meant for the Del Monaco-crowd and not for people wanting a Carmen or a Pagliacci. The set has one enormous quality: a brilliant natural sound that hides nothing and doesn’t change the balance of the voices. »
29 Dec 2005
How easy it might be to overlook this lesser-known Schreker opera, composed in 1928 and dedicated to Schreker’s good friend Arnold Schoenberg, here in its recorded debut. It has a quite curious libretto, complex and multilayered, and Schreker moves between what are at times quite disparate styles. »
28 Dec 2005
At a time when the press has made the public aware of the difficult circumstances that exist for the symphony orchestra in the United States, it is refreshing to find a book that demonstrates unequivocally the nature of that institution and, as a consequence, its power in culture. »
27 Dec 2005
Franz Schubert’s song cycle Winterreise has been performed by many fine singers, who keep the work alive in the repertoire and in the imagination of audiences. In recent years the work has been subject to a variety of interpretations, and with this recording, the well-known tenor René Kollo offers his perspective on the work, accompanied by the young pianist Oliver Pohl. »
27 Dec 2005
The first thing I saw when I opened the La Scala DVD was a notice on the back that track 5 plays “Va! Pensiero da: I vespri siciliani (1855).” One wonders if there is nobody at the La Scala Bookshop who has at least a bit of knowledge of one of the most popular pieces in the operatic repertoire that served Italy for more than hundred years as an unofficial anthem — the Venice DVD has it right, of course. »
22 Dec 2005
Witold Lutosławski (1913-94) composed vocal works throughout his career, and recording collects several pieces that involve female voices. His set of Twenty Polish Christmas Carols for soprano, women’s choir and orchestra is a late composition compiled between 1985 and 1989 and given its premiere in 1990. »
21 Dec 2005
Though singers have always recorded some of these arias and songs, it was young Leontyne Price who first started a trend by devoting a whole LP to the genre more than 45 years ago. »
21 Dec 2005
In its 2004 season Glyndebourne put on a double bill celebrating avarice — Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi and the much-lesser known The Miserly Knight. »
21 Dec 2005
With the passing of Carl Maria Giulini (1913-2005) in June 2005, the music world lost one of its finest conductors. Among his legacy are some critical recordings, which represent the literature that Giulini chose to preserve. »
21 Dec 2005
I admit I jumped at the chance to review these SACD re-releases of performances that were on the very first classical vocal LP’s that I owned and overplayed on under-maintained equipment, to the point where I frankly shudder to even try to compare my vinyl versions with the digital. »
18 Dec 2005
What an unjust fate for an aspiring opera composer to be born the son of Richard Wagner! Imagine a child of Albert Einstein who dreams of greatness in science, or the son of William Shakespeare sitting down to sketch out his first sonnet. Doubtless you would have a nagging suspicion that you would likely never better your father’s titanic accomplishments. »
18 Dec 2005
What is the difference between a lady who becomes a prima-donna and a prima-donna who becomes a lady? The last one has to be begged as she thinks she has to behave according to her rank. The first one is sure of herself and doesn’t need, well let’s call it to behave somewhat capriciously. »
18 Dec 2005
In fall 2003, Los Angeles Opera opened its season with Deborah Dratell’s Nicholas and Alexandra, with libretto by Nicholas von Hoffman. At that time, company director Placido Domingo, who took on the juicy role of Rasputin, announced that the production would be filmed and prepared for eventual DVD release. »
15 Dec 2005
On 9 December 2005, Malena Ernman stepped in for an ailing Magdalena Kožená at the Barbican in London. Here are three reviews. »
15 Dec 2005
THE METROPOLITAN OPERA: Verdi considered Victor Hugo’s play Le Roi s’amuse “one of the greatest creations of the modern theatre”, and jumped at the opportunity to adapt it for Venice in 1851. »
14 Dec 2005
The former TV-producer in me tells me the following conversation took place between producer and director (in German as this is a GDR (East-Germany) product). »
13 Dec 2005
SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY: The San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas present two semi-staged theatrical performances: a double-bill featuring Stravinsky's rarely heard operas The Nightingale and Oedipus Rex. »
12 Dec 2005
Benjamin Britten’s identity as a decidedly “national” composer is formed in part by his well-known engagement of pre-existent English music, old English texts, and subjects rich in the English legacy, as a glance at works like the Purcellian The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, the Chester mystery play, Noyes Fludde, or the Elizabethan opera, Gloriana, all confirm. »
11 Dec 2005
Sorry my friends, but since I retired as a TV-reporter I forgot a lot of technical know-how, which to be fair never interested me very much. »
11 Dec 2005
There are countless artists whose legend survives on their supposed fame, others leave a substantial legacy of their achievements. »
11 Dec 2005
Tastes in music for Christmas are quite personal. One individual’s beloved tradition may be another’s annoying jangling that just won’t go away. »
11 Dec 2005
So much has been written about the notorious scandal of May 29, 1913, the scandal of the reception of the premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s ballet Le Sacre du Printemps, that it is easy to forget that the music itself was less the cause of the riotous activities than the subject, the décor, and the dancing. »
11 Dec 2005
If anyone had played the soundtrack of those first numbers of the 1955 telecast, I would have looked up in surprise at first and would have wondered if an electronic wizard had cleaned up the acoustic recordings of that giant of French singing: Jean-Emile Vanni-Marcoux. »
11 Dec 2005
Originally issued in LP by Voce (100), this unfairly neglected work by Gaetano Donizetti is now available on the Bongiovanni (GB2386/87-2) label. »
11 Dec 2005
This version of Lehár’s second most popular operetta is not one for purists. By the mid-seventies, it was already clear that one of the biggest tragedies of Western classical music was taking place — the disappearance of operetta with its tons of wonderful music. »
10 Dec 2005
We live in a time of Tristan & Isolde — recordings of the great Wagner opera, that is. »
06 Dec 2005
Rossini's original Italian opera, Mose In Egitto, was re-adapted as Moise et Pharaon for Paris. A new libretto, the renaming of certain characters, some new music, a ballet and reordering of the original music make up the newer version. »
05 Dec 2005
ENGLISH NATIONAL OPERA: ‘Under no circumstances to be missed’ (The Guardian), Neil Armfield’s illuminating reading of Billy Budd receives its long-awaited London premiere. In the season in which Benjamin Britten becomes ENO’s House Composer, this engrossing WNO/Opera Australia production is the perfect salute to a great British masterpiece. »
05 Dec 2005
THE METROPOLITAN OPERA: The American author Theodore Dreiser published An American Tragedy in 1925 and it quickly became a classic. Based on a true story of a man who was found guilty of murdering the woman who was carrying his baby, while he was simultaneously pursuing another woman of a higher social class, Dreiser’s novel tells the story of a mid-western preacher’s son who tasted a little sophistication on his way to death in the electric chair. »
04 Dec 2005
A superstar in Europe, Edita Gruberova can rest assured that future generations have the opportunity to appreciate her artistry: the record label Nightingale Classics exists primarily, it seems, to record her in her greatest roles. »
02 Dec 2005
As the second of four of the thematically organized recording of the Complete Songs of Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924), Un paysage choisi is an excellent offering of chansons that concern selected natural places, that is to say, the “chosen landscape” indicated in the title of this volume. »
02 Dec 2005
Sergei Prokofiev’s Ivan the Terrible? Which one? Prokofiev composed music for Sergei Eisenstein’s film (part 1, 1942-44; part 2, 1945) about the sixteenth-century ruler, and the score is catalogued as op. 116. After the composer’s death, music for the film was arranged first into an oratorio (with speaker, soloists, chorus, and orchestra) by Alexander Stasevich (1961) and later into a concert scenario by Christopher Palmer (1990). »
02 Dec 2005
Ralph Vaughan Williams and Charles Ives; both known more for their symphonic music than anything else, receive superb tributes in these recordings of some of their early songs. Only two years separate the birth dates of these composers; but the musical language each speaks seems to put far more distance than that between them. »
29 Nov 2005
Two recent releases document performances of Georges Bizet’s Carmen that took place within just a few months of each other. The casts share many of the same performers, most notably the conductor and the interpreter of the opera’s title role. »
29 Nov 2005
Bass-baritone Michele Pertusi’s voice is captured in this recital disc after only two years of formal studies. Taking this into account one can forgive what he calls “imperfections: a few, slight musical errors, some invented or switched words, a Neapolitan pronunciation that is not quite perfect, an English one which could be improved on, a few marred notes.” »
28 Nov 2005
On 24 October 1998, the Vienna State Opera presented the opening night of its staging of Gioachino Rosssini’s Guillaume Tell. It was the first Staatsoper production in 91 years of Rossini’s final opera and masterpiece, as well as the Vienna premiere of the 1829 opera’s original French-language version. »
28 Nov 2005
The compositions of John Tavener, Arvo Pärt, and Henryk Górecki have accustomed us to the degree that religious spirituality has found serious musical voice in the late twentieth century. In their works, a profound language of musical mysticism is wed to various liturgical evocations, creating compositions that seem both authentic in their expression and unusually personal in their genesis. »
28 Nov 2005
Watching this DVD, your reviewer suddenly recalled a brief exchange from the film Reversal of Fortune, when the Ron Silver/Alan Dershowitz character says to the Jeremy Irons/Claus von Bulow one, “You are a very strange man, “ and Irons, in the moment that may have won him the Academy Award, replies with eerie blandness, “You have no idea.” »
28 Nov 2005
Monday evening, November 21, 2005, I was fortunate enough to attend a benefit recital given by Thomas Hampson in the Fox Theater in Spokane, Washington. »
26 Nov 2005
Orfeo has joined the ranks of CD companies adding artwork to the inner casing beneath the disc. For this recording of Argentinean composer Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983), a series of photographs of gauchos riding horses on the pampas receives a modified Andy Warhol treatment. »
25 Nov 2005
Eight long and dark years later, La Fenice rose, once again, from the ashes following a devastating fire which destroyed the theater in 1996. For the “formal” re-opening of the refurbished Venetian landmark, its management wisely chose Verdi’s original score for his 1853 opera for La Fenice: La Traviata—another survivor that rose from the ashes. »
22 Nov 2005
Dorothea Schroder, as translated by Stewart Spencer, begins her booklet essay for Magdalena Kozena’s recent CD by quoting a review of an earlier disc of the mezzo: “…Kozena is simply marvelous.” Brazen record company self-promotion? »
21 Nov 2005
Jean-Philippe Rameau is usually remembered today (when he is remembered at all) as an important musical theorist. This limited reputation is unfortunate, because Rameau was a masterful composer known for his sumptuous melodies and colorful harmonies. »
20 Nov 2005
Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a weighty play, and Verdi’s Macbeth seems to be a weighty opera: the three volumes of this edition (two of the full score, plus a smaller Critical Commentary containing the critical notes and a description of the sources) weigh 16.6 pounds. It is remarkable to think that this is the first full score of either the 1847 original or the 1865 revised Macbeth ever published. »
20 Nov 2005
I’m told that, if an auditioning singer’s repertoire includes a Verdi piece, the auditors will very likely choose to hear it, because singing Verdi well requires the full catalogue of skills: musical exactness, dynamic range, breath control, sensitive phrasing, the ability to provide a variety of colors in the voice, and, if possible, a large enough personality to truly fill out whichever character is being portrayed. »
19 Nov 2005
I have to admit it: this is the first time I ever listened to the complete version of this early Decca-issue of 1952 (though some sources say it was recorded one year earlier). »
19 Nov 2005
While I was listening to this recording of Krenek’s song cycles Durch die Nacht (op. 67) and Gesänge des späten Jahres (op. 71), I started to think about art and memory. »
19 Nov 2005
I first became acquainted with Glass’s music when Lyric Opera of Chicago staged his Satyagraha in the 1980s. Having grown up on a small-town Midwestern diet of Beethoven sonatas and Broadway musicals, I was blown away by his vision of Mahatma Gandhi. »
19 Nov 2005
A happy feature of the King CD is the booklet in German and English: at least 7 pages full of information on the tenor. Then there is the pristine sound of the recordings. Though there is no mention of a concert source I’m fairly sure all the pieces (always followed by generous applause), are derived from the famous Münchner Sonntag Konzerte. »
18 Nov 2005
Sir Arthur Sullivan’s legacy suffers from that common malaise that, once a good or bad reputation is made, it is very difficult to be remembered for anything else—be it better or worse. »
17 Nov 2005
For anyone who is remotely familiar with opera, the first question would be, “What is the need for a recording like this?” Of course, not being familiar with the CD justifies the question, but once it has been played, the realization sets in that the answer was there all along. »
17 Nov 2005
For those who frequent the Santa Fe Opera and Houston Grand Opera, Ana María Martínez is well-known as a superb lyric soprano on her way to a stellar career. With the release of this collection of songs and arias for soprano, the rest of the world will come to know this as well. »
16 Nov 2005
The first thought one has is « how nice to have those recitals back like they were issued ». One remembers too well the first days of the CD when historical vocal recitals appeared more or less mutilated, often culled from two or more LP’s so that some tracks were sorely missed. »
15 Nov 2005
The Lieder of Richard Strauss lend themselves well to various interpretations that bring out different aspects of the music. »
15 Nov 2005
Not Just a Famous Overture »
13 Nov 2005
This production, from Glyndebourne in 1975, is a treasure of literate, artistically informed stagecraft. Opera is meant to be seen as much as heard, and productions like this prove that good staging brings a score alive. »
13 Nov 2005
This is the third re-issue (in Europe anyway) on CD of the only existing studio recording of Stiffelio. Luckily it is a rather good one as its live competitors are not recordings for eternity. Neither Limarilli in 1968 nor Del Monaco (at his coarsest in 1972) have much sense of style, let alone a knack for true Verdi-phrasing. Not that José Carreras is flawless. »
09 Nov 2005
Tchaikovsky counted Sleeping Beauty as one of his best works. The idea came from Ivan Vsevolozhsky (1835-1909), director of the Russian Imperial Theatres from 1881 onward. He had staged several of Tchaikovsky’s operas, and he wanted Tchaikovsky to produce a ballet score with him. »
09 Nov 2005
The formidable Straussian Sir Georg Solti wrote that after the 1929 death of Strauss’s long-time librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, “Strauss lived for another twenty years, but he never again wrote a great work.” »
09 Nov 2005
Khachaturian was one of the few Soviet composers of the Stalin regime to overcome his public demotion in 1948. Even though he was removed from his job and his works disappeared from the theatres, Khachaturian moved to the world of film music and waited for the storm to blow over. »
08 Nov 2005
This anthology, a twentieth-anniversary commemoration of Aled Jones’ first recording for the Welsh company, Sain, is a re-issue of that 1983 recording, “Diolch â Chân,” along with several other tracks from the mid-1980’s. Jones stepped out of the choir stalls at Bangor Cathedral to become a highly marketed treble, and his relative celebrity, as attested here, was well deserved. »
07 Nov 2005
As far back as the Middle Ages, students (often only identified as Anonymous) have recorded the methods of performance imparted by their masters. In later centuries, such illustrious teachers wrote and published their own methods. »
06 Nov 2005
Born in Bologna on January 22, 1756, Righini’s musical career started early when he was a choirboy at San Petronio. When he was nineteen, Righini made his professional singing debut as a tenor in Parma, and one year later he joined the Bustelli Opera in Prague. »
02 Nov 2005
Rossini’s masterpiece is based on Beaumarchais’ first of three plays—Le Barbier de Séville, La folle journée ou Le Mariage de Figaro, and La Mère Coupable—detailing the adventures of Figaro, a barber from Seville, Spain. Rossini was not the first, nor the last composer to set the story to music: Giovanni Maria Pagliardi, Friedrich Ludwig Benda, Johann André, Francesco Morlacchi, Miguel Nieto and Gerónimo Jiménez, Nicolo Isouard, and H. R. Bishop are some of the names that come to mind. »
01 Nov 2005
Not long ago the record label Delos announced that they would embark on a series of studio recordings of highlights from operas. This intriguing idea seemed to address the recording crisis spawned by the shrinking market for full studio sets, with their high cost for both producer and purchaser. »
01 Nov 2005
In 1682 the Archbishopric of Salzburg celebrated its 1100th anniversary with an appropriately festal service in the Cathedral, depicted in an engraving by Melchior Küsel. Küsel’s engraving is a striking image, bringing into harmony the grand scale of the building (not yet one hundred years old), the ornamental richness of the interior, and the strong subdivisions of its space. »
30 Oct 2005
French composer Camille Saint-Saëns was a child prodigy, musicologist, astronomer, archeologist, poet, writer, teacher, and one of the most important and prolific composers of his generation. Yet, Saint-Saëns’ reputation has, for some time, mainly rested on his instrumental works the “Organ” Symphony, the overture Carnival of the Animals and his oratorio turned opera, Samson et Dalila. »
30 Oct 2005
Manon Lescaut was Puccini’s first big success, and his first contribution to the repertory. Yet it’s popularity has always lagged behind that of the composer’s following three mega-hits La Boheme, Tosca, and Madama Butterfly, as well as some later successes such as Turandot and even Gianni Schicchi. »
30 Oct 2005
If Rossini could set a laundry list to music, then Ewa Podleś is one of the few candidates available to sing it. In this CD, recorded live at the Polish Radio Hall in Wroclaw (Wratislavia), during the thirty third International Festival Wratislavia Cantans Music and Fine Arts, the Polish contralto gives ample proof of her status as one of the great singers of her generation. »
27 Oct 2005
Naxos is perhaps the only significant major label regularly releasing complete opera sets. A few have won widespread praise, and certainly the prices, at super-budget level, make them attractive to both first-time buyers and those whose collections scarcely justify an additional set. »
27 Oct 2005
This book examines two of the more interesting musical pieces of the Romantic movement: Romeo et Juliette (1839) and La damnation de Faust (1846). Both were composed by Hector Berlioz (1803-69), and were very much constructed in a Gesamtkunstwerk mode where literature, music, and the other arts are fused together in a hybrid style that defies genre and categorization. »
26 Oct 2005
Beethoven Shines Thru the Mix In the best of all possible worlds this recording of arias and show tunes would have been done in the original languages, the language of composition, with the vocal sounds intended by Gluck, Mozart, Weber, Wagner and others who defined great singing. »
26 Oct 2005
Here we have another part of John Eliot Gardiner’s remarkable Bach Cantata Pilgrimage, undertaken to perform—and record live—all of Bach’s surviving church cantatas at many different churches in a single year. »
26 Oct 2005
Piotr Anderszewski is a talented young pianist, who makes Szymanowski’s music come alive in his recent recording of three of the composer’s major pieces. »
24 Oct 2005
Reviewing this DVD recording of Purcell’s music-drama “King Arthur” from the 2004 Salzburg Festival was both a pleasure and a pain. The pleasure came from the intense, contagious sense of sheer fun that illuminates this production by Jurgen Flimm and Nikolaus Harnoncourt from start to finish. »
24 Oct 2005
“Das Wunder Karajan” – “the miracle of Karajan” – is a phrase associated with the conductor since he was thirty years old, and that phrase holds true in his recorded legacy. In addition to recent DVD releases, EMI has issued a series of CDs in its “The Karajan Collection,” which preserves many fine studio recordings. »
24 Oct 2005
The rich legacy of Herbert von Karajan includes a number of recordings with various orchestras around the world, and among them is the Philharmonia Orchestra, which is documented in the CD entitled Philharmonia Promenade Concert. As Richard Osborne recounts in the notes that accompany this release, Herbert von Karajan made a number of recordings with the Philharmonia Orchestra between 1948 and 1960. »
24 Oct 2005
In a richly Bohemian folk-style, the Czech poet Karel Jaromír Erben produced a collection of enchanted poetry that inspired Antonín Dvořák to compose his expressive array of hauntingly dark tone poems. Ultimately, the main character of each poem suffers a tragic consequence for their transgressions, ranging from the thoughtless utterances of a frustrated mother, to disobeying a parent, to murder. »
23 Oct 2005
This is a collection of the original libretti to Puccini's Le Villi, Edgar, Manon Lescaut, La Bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, La Fanciulla del West, La Rondine, Il Trittico (Gianni Schicchi, Il Tabarro, Suor Angelica), and Turandot in nine booklets within a cardboard slipcase. »
21 Oct 2005
In recent years orchestras like the London Symphony have begun to release their own CDs, in lieu of pursing contracts recording firms. While the implications of this are best left to another discussion, it is significant to see that Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra now has its own label, and among its recordings is a fine live performance of Anton Bruckner’s Symphony no. 8 in C minor, led by its conductor laureate, Bernard Haitink. This recording is actually made from performances given on 18 and 20 February 2005, and preserves an outstanding recent interpretation of this enduring work by Bruckner. »
21 Oct 2005
Das walisische Label SAIN (das walisische Wort für "Sound"), gegründet 1969 von Dafydd Iwan, Huw Jones und Brian Morgan Edwards, hat einen starken sozialen und politischen Anspruch und ist darauf spezialisiert, CD's mit jungen Sängern und Liedern aus Wales und in walisischer Sprache herauszubringen. »
21 Oct 2005
SAIN (the Welsh word for 'sound', and pronounced like the English word 'sign') is Wales' leading recording company, founded in 1969 in Cardiff by Dafydd Iwan, Huw Jones and Brian Morgan Edwards. The label has a strong social and political message, and for the first few years, SAIN specialised in songs by young singers, many of them concerning the national and linguistic resurgence of Wales, which had begun in the 60's. »
18 Oct 2005
You may never have heard of Lennox Berkeley. But his music was admired by many of the most notable composers of the mid-20th century—Britten and Poulenc were close personal friends, and he has a dedicated band of admirers today (there is a Lennox Berkeley Society). Yet, for one reason or another, Berkeley has never become a household name. »
18 Oct 2005
The “XL” of the title of this recording is, as the program book notes, a double reference. First, read as Roman numerals, it points to the extraordinary number of voice parts in Thomas Tallis’ famous “Spem in alium” and its modern analogue here, Antony Pitts’ “XL,” a forty-voice setting of text from Psalm 40. »
14 Oct 2005
This Dynamic set spills over with rewards for opera lovers, especially those looking for something a little (or a lot) off the beaten path. »
13 Oct 2005
One can divide these recordings into two groups of two compact discs each. Much of the music of the two Mass settings offered here was composed in the mid 1770s. We have a young Mozart—twenty years old and in the employ of Archbishop Colloredo of Salzburg when he composed this Credo Mass—and the veteran Franz Joseph Haydn, twice Mozart’s age and firmly settled at the Esterhazy court, when he completed the Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei movements of the Missa Cellensis, a work he had begun in 1766 with the Kyrie and Gloria movements. »
13 Oct 2005
OMAHA — Having first heard Anna Christy a few years ago in the title role of Lucia di Lammermoor, she clearly had a bright future ahead of her. On Tuesday, this opinion was not only reaffirmed, but it is now manifest that this lovely and elegant soprano is well on her way to becoming one of the great coloraturas of the 21st Century. »
11 Oct 2005
The genre of grand opera is not traditionally associated with Jacques Offenbach’s posthumous reputation. Yet as demonstrated by the performances documented in the present recording and essays in the accompanying notes, a revision of our assessment of Offenbach’s strengths is long overdue. »
10 Oct 2005
“Teseo” is one of those “might have been” Handel operas that for one reason or another has never quite made the big time in a high profile, major house performance during our current period of baroque revival. However, this is not something that worries the enterprising likes of the Lautten Compagney Berlin and its Music Director Wolfgang Katschner nor the countertenor-turned-stage director Axel Kohler: for them this rather rare oddity of Handel’s genius is simply too good a chance to miss. »
08 Oct 2005
In recent years the few recordings of Mahler’s Lieder with piano accompaniment demonstrate the delicacy of the music in this format and its connections traditional Romantic Lieder. To such fine examples as those by Stephan Genz (on Hyperion) and Thomas E. Bauer (on Ars Musici), Konrad Jarnot is a fine addition. »
06 Oct 2005
Once hailed by the Nazis as a symbol of Aryan supremacy, Carmina Burana has come to be recognized as a powerful expression of the gluttony and depravity present in a medieval, pagan society. An effective performance of Orff’s musical adventure must allow audiences to envision the “imagines magicae,” or magical images conveyed through the convergence of music and choreography. »
04 Oct 2005
Konrad Jarnot is a young baritone who brings a wonderful vitality to the music he has recorded. He also has another Oehms release, a selection of Lieder by Gustav Mahler, which is engaging for the strong sense of line he brings to that repertoire, which is precisely what he brings to this collection of French vocal music. »
04 Oct 2005
The biographies of the two composers whose works are represented on this disc, Sergei Prokofiev and Ottorino Respighi, share many common threads. In addition to moving in similar circles early in their lives (for example, both studied with Rimsky-Korsakov and both were later connected with Diaghilev), they similarly composed in totalitarian regimes at the end of their careers. »
03 Oct 2005
Since its inception in 1980, the biennial Boston Early Music Festival has grown to international stature of the first rank, and while its programming is diverse in scale and repertory, its focus in recent years has been on full-scale productions of baroque opera, including Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, Rossi’s Orfeo, Cavalli’s Ercole Amante, Lully’s Thésée, and this past summer, Mattheson’s Boris Goudenouw. »
30 Sep 2005
For the most part, the posthumous reputation of Felix Mendelssohn (1809-43) resides on the composer’s instrumental works and of all his vocal music, his two oratorios, Elias and Paulus are familiar to the general public. »
29 Sep 2005
Since 1995 the mezzo-soprano Brigitte Fassbaender no longer performs as a singer, but has devoted her recent career to directing. »
29 Sep 2005
With this CD, Naxos continues its well deserved reputation for producing recordings at affordable prices, and more often than not, but not limited to, music that is rarely performed, or with a limited audience. »
28 Sep 2005
The Very Best of Thomas Hampson is an excellent selection on CD of Hampson’s recordings from various points in his career. The American baritone is one of the international stars of classical music for both his roles on the opera stage and his work as a recitalist. »
28 Sep 2005
This is one of the most enchanting and lovely ballet performances that I have ever seen, and believe me I have seen quite a few! First performed in Paris on May 12, 1832, La Sylphide marks the advent of Romanticism in ballet. »
28 Sep 2005
On Christmas 1999, the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists with conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner set out on one of the most unusual musical tours ever undertaken. »
28 Sep 2005
J. S. Bach’s large output of church cantatas and their prominence in his duties as Kantor at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig have made them central to our modern understanding of Bach. »
27 Sep 2005
Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony is a tour de force that can tax a conductor and orchestra in live performances. While it often takes several sessions in the studio for performers to match the required intensity of playing with exuberance that is also part of the work, some live performances convey that fine balance immediately. »
26 Sep 2005
Yiddish is a language based on medieval German that developed separately from modern German. It spread throughout Eastern Europe, where it acquired words from Hebrew, as well as Russian, Polish, and other Slavic languages. »
26 Sep 2005
In addition to some notable, recent recordings of selected Lieder by Robert Schumann (1810-56), two comprehensive editions of the composer’s works in this genre are underway, one by Hyperion, which is almost complete and another that is just starting on the Naxos label. Performed by Thomas E. Bauer, baritone and his wife, the pianist Uta Hielscher, the first volume is as promising as it is ambitious. »
26 Sep 2005
Paul Hillier has written the book on Arvo Pärt, quite literally. He has spent significant time with the Estonian composer interviewing him, working with him, and studying his music. He has not only authored the only text researching Pärt's music and background, but Hillier also seems to one of the first to perform and record his music, thereby exposing it to the general public. »
26 Sep 2005
Now this is one beautiful piece of music, a setting of the text of the “Song of Songs,” taken from the Hebrew Bible by the composer Jorge Liderman. Liderman is Argentinian by birth, now on the composition faculty of the Department of Music at the University of California at Berkeley. His work shows a distinct ability at the craft of composition: this is a very attractively put together work. »
25 Sep 2005
Glimmerglass Opera has been doing innovative and often remarkable work for a number of years. Thankfully, many of their productions have been shared with the New York City Opera and, thus, with a large opera-going public. »
25 Sep 2005
Based on a tongue-in-cheek poem by young Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Glinka’s second opera Ruslan and Lyudmila (1842) is an epic adventure tale, in which three rival Russian knights roam the land in search of a Kievan princess kidnapped by a sorcerer. »
24 Sep 2005
This newly re-mastered recording was originally released in 1954 by Columbia (Qcx 10111/12), later reprinted by EMI (C163-00981/2), and it includes, besides Giulieta Simionato in the title role, three other members of the original 1953 production at La Scala: tenor Cesare Valleti, and bass Mario Petri in their respective roles of Lindoro and Mustafà and Conductor Carlo Maria Giulini. »
24 Sep 2005
Audiences accustomed to hearing the grandeur of Shostakovich’s early symphonies may initially be disillusioned when listening to his Thirteenth Symphony for the first time. »
22 Sep 2005
With a career spanning the monarchies of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary Tudor, and Elizabeth I, Thomas Tallis’s musical pragmatism became both a necessary and distinctive trait. »
22 Sep 2005
Among Gaetano Donizetti’s compositions are just over a dozen one-act operas. Save for his one (Venice 1818), a genre that many twentieth-century historians considered respectable primarily because of contributions made to it by Gioachino Rossini, the Donizetti’s other single-act works generally have been brushed aside as less important than the larger operas. »
22 Sep 2005
This recording of Musica Nuptialis celebrates occasional music and does so in a fittingly occasional manner. »
22 Sep 2005
Baritone Lado Ataneli’s self-titled debut CD contains an impressive selection of arias intended to showcase the singer’s style, range, and versatility. »
22 Sep 2005
In 1728 John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera was produced in London as a sardonic response to the ongoing craze for Italian opera seria. »
22 Sep 2005
Among recent recordings of music by Gustav Mahler, the 2004 release of the composer’s Second Symphony conducted by Claudio Abbado stands out as an intense and highly charged performance. »
22 Sep 2005
Schoenberg, born in Vienna in 1874, is remembered as a composer and a music theorist. He held strong attitudes toward the craft of composition and its pedagogy, which have been received as the beginnings of a theory of music, though Schoenberg denied ever attempting to create a systematic theory. »
21 Sep 2005
When I was a young child, my mother purchased a blouse and brought it home to the acclaim of my aunts and older sisters. "Oh, that's smart!" they pronounced, cooing and stepping back to admire the thing. Not a little bit jealous, I was taken aback. »
19 Sep 2005
“I send my heart up to thee, all my heart in this, my singing” Robert Browning.
The title of this CD is taken from the text of one of Amy Beach’s Three Browning Songs, which close the program. Given Deborah Voigt’s ability to sing this program with completely natural expression and crystal clear diction while maintaining a consistently high standard of vocal production and musicianship, it is easy to believe that in her singing she shares with us something of what is most dear to her own heart. Fortunately for us, in doing this she is also giving us a fine recording of American art songs, some of which will be quite familiar to many listeners, others of which will be wonderful new discoveries. »
19 Sep 2005
Joachim Carlos Martini is well represented in the Naxos catalog with recordings of Handel oratorios, including Athalia, Saul, Il Trionfo del Tempo . . ., Deborah, the “pasticcio” oratorios, Gideon and Nabal, and this recent release of L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato. Narrowly traditional views of what an oratorio ought to be—a Biblical narrative in a dramatic frame—are stretched here, and this is a good reminder that the term “oratorio” was used flexibly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. »
19 Sep 2005
The 19th Century French composer Charles Gounod is best known for his lyric dramas / operas Faust (1859) and Roméo et Juliette (1867), and the very popular Méditation sur le 1er prélude de piano de J. S. Bach (1852), arranged as an Ave Maria in 1859. Yet the dominant portion of Gounod’s creative output was church music, the amount of which surpassed that of any other composer of the 19th Century. In spite of this, the church music of Gounod remains an obscure portion of his oeuvre. »
16 Sep 2005
Sergei Rachmaninov established his reputation early in his career as one of the twentieth- century’s foremost pianists and conductors. Critical assessment of his abilities as composer, however, was harsh. In the fifth edition of Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Eric Blom wrote dismissively: “…as a composer [Rachmaninov] can hardly be said to have belonged to his time at all,…His music is well constructed and effective, but monotonous in texture, which consists in essence mainly of artificial and gushing tunes….[His] enormous popular success…is not likely to last,…” In general, critics dismissed his musical language as outmoded, as being far from the mainstream of twentieth-century musical styles--indeed, most considered his works as anachronisms, composed by a man whose style had not left the late nineteenth century. Even Rachmaninov acknowledged feeling lost amid the music of most other twentieth-century composers. In a 1939 interview he gave for the Musical Courier, Rachmaninov said, “I felt like a ghost wandering in a world grown alien. I cannot cast out the old way of writing and I cannot acquire the new.” »
16 Sep 2005
Despite his relative youth (b.1971), Thomas Adès is well-known among today’s serious opera connoisseurs for his 1995 opera hit, Powder Her Face, as well as his more recent opera, The Tempest, which opened in February 2004 to rave reviews. The success of these imaginative, ground-breaking compositions has led him to be recognized as one of Britain’s most promising young composers. As such, Adès has enjoyed the privilege of having his music performed by only the highest caliber of musicians. The featured performers in the 2005 EMI Classics release of his Piano Quintet (2001) are no exception. »
15 Sep 2005
Probably the best thing that can be said about Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, Richard Stilgoe, and Charles Hart’s The Phantom of the Opera becoming the longest running Broadway musical, which it almost certainly will, is that it will take that honor away from Cats. (I am reminded of David Letterman’s comment, made with mock horror, “What if it really is ‘now and forever’?”) Phantom, as it is known both with and without affection, is perhaps Lloyd Webber’s most “traditional” show: it has far more book scenes than his earlier, concept-album-as-musical shows, although the latter, including Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita, are tremendously and, arguably, more effective; it recalls operetta despite its pop-heavy score; and it is based on a novel that is already known through incarnations on stage and screen. Its unabashed romanticism, despite its occasional descent into bathos, has endeared it to millions, many of who see it again and again and continue to be moved by it. So I suppose it was only a matter of time until an arranger came up with an orchestral version of the score to satisfy pop concert audiences and other aficionados of the score. »
15 Sep 2005
Johann Theile is best known for his significant body of church music and his reputation as “the father of contrapuntists.” It is easy to summon the image of a learned graybeard, well-practiced in contrapuntal art (especially invertible counterpoint, it would seem). This recent recording from Ludger Rémy, however, shows us a less well-known and very congenial side of Theile: the composer of student love songs. »
15 Sep 2005
It is unfortunate that audiences tend to pigeonhole Xavier Montsalvatge (1912-2002) as a one-work composer. There is no doubt, however, that the popularity of his Canciones negras has overshadowed the rest of his output. »
14 Sep 2005
This new recording of two somewhat early works with music by Sir Arthur Sullivan provides a taste of Sullivan just before and just after the beginning of his famed collaboration with W. S. Gilbert. Cox and Box was produced in 1866. Trial by Jury debuted in 1875, four years after Thespis, Gilbert and Sullivan’s first work as a team. The difference is apparent if not glaring. It is mostly noticeable in Sullivan’s more nuanced response to Gilbert’s libretto, which is far more sophisticated and clever than Burnand’s nonetheless amusing effort. The transition from the end of the earlier work to the opening chorus of Trial by Jury, which immediately places us in the identifiable musical world of G&S, is remarkable. With Burnand, Sullivan is broader in his parodic musical pastiche; with Gilbert, he lets the words take over most of the satire and composes in a subtler, and even more delightful, vein. »
14 Sep 2005
Prokofiev was one of a number of twentieth-century composers of art music who also devoted a significant amount of time to composing for the cinema. The eight films for which he composed scores were met with varying degrees of success, from the celebrated fame of Aleksandr Nevsky to the frustrated productions of lesser-known films such as The Queen of Spades and Tonya. Sergei Eisenstein’s colossal trilogy Ivan the Terrible, for which Prokofiev composed his final film score, was met with both extremes: Although part one of the film was released in January of 1945 to great critical acclaim, the second part was attacked during production for political reasons, even to the extreme of attracting criticism from Stalin himself. Part two would not appear in theaters until 1958, long after Prokofiev and Eisenstein were gone, and part three was never produced. »
14 Sep 2005
The composers of these overtures — what today we would call suites — range from the world-famous George Frideric Handel to the moderately well-known Reinhard Keiser to the virtually unknown Johann Christian Schieferdecker. The works represented here also cover a range of dates: 1693 for the Ouverture no. 4 by Philipp Heinrich Erlebach to 1726 for the Suite “Ludovicus Pius” by Georg Caspar Schürmann (1672/3-1751), neither of whom have made a noticeable dent in the performance repertoire of today’s early-music groups. »
13 Sep 2005
Pietro il Grande ossia Il falegname di Livonia was premiered to open the 1819-20 Carnival season at the Teatro San Samuele in Venice, a city that saw the birth of many of the light operas of the decade, including quite a few by Rossini. The premiere took place on Dec. 26, 1819. »
11 Sep 2005
Experienced listeners gain nothing but lose very little when a mediocre, even bad performance of Wagner’s stage works is released on DVD. »
11 Sep 2005
First impressions are important. For instance, one expects certain things from Bang on a Can and their four-year-old record label Cantaloupe – there are graphics, ideas, names, and especially musical styles that have become predictably associated with the New York... »
08 Sep 2005
Since opera began, composers have honoured, or pretended to honour, the principle that the music should serve the words, though, in reality, it is done more in the breach than the observance. »
07 Sep 2005
First, you signed the waiver relieving the venue of any liability for your injury or death. Then, you were handed a flashlight and felt the chill in the air – not a typical cold draft but the prickly tingle that comes with unquiet spirits nearby. »
31 Aug 2005
Perhaps some Opera Today readers may wonder why a book on Sir Edward Elgar merits reviewing on this particular site. The composer never came near to completing an opera. In fact, only toward the end of his career did he... »
27 Aug 2005
Chances are the world of opera bouffe is somewhat foreign to most listeners. Many may know one or two operettas by Offenbach - La Perichole, perhaps, or La belle Helene and a large number of melodies from various of his works collected for the ballet Gaite parisienne. But this extensive body of works from the last quarter of the nineteenth-century is infrequently performed, and, apart from the occasional aria heard on an inventively programmed recital, the repertory today is heard about more than it is heard. The names Audran or Lecoq are largely unknown, despite their having been very popular in this country at the end of the nineteenth century. (Maurice Grau brought many French productions to New York during the 1870s and 1880s, and the operettas, sung in French, were quite popular. Productions in the original language allowed the retention of the racy dialogue and numerous double entendres - most of which would have been unacceptable in English -- so typical of these works.) »
27 Aug 2005
Like many of the nearly forgotten composers of his era, Henri Rabaud (1873-1949) had his day in the sun. A pupil of Massenet at the Paris Conservatoire, and later its director, Rabaud wrote eight operas, the most successful of which was Marouf, Savetier du Caire, which premiered in 1914 at the Opera-Comique in Paris and soon became a world wide hit. But today a mention of Rabaud's name will likely draw a blank stare, even from well versed opera aficionados. »
27 Aug 2005
I had never heard of the Italian composer Domenico Alaleona (1891-1928) when a recording of his opera Mirra arrived in the mail. Baker's gives him a respectable 22 lines, but says "his importance lies in his theoretical writings," not this opera or various collections of songs, instrumental works, and a Requiem. If you've ever come across the term "dodecaphony," well, Alaleona coined it (in Italian, of course). »
26 Aug 2005
As part of their "Gemini--the EMI Treasures" series, EMI has re-released recordings of some of Olivier Messiaen's greatest hits: the Turangalila-Symphonie (1946 - 48), Quatour pour la fin du temp (1940 - 41), and Le Merle Noir (1951, for flute and piano). This two-disc release features the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, with Tristan Murail playing ondes martenot and Peter Donohoe on solo piano in the 1986 recording of Turangalila-Symphonie. Quatour pour la fin du temps was recorded in 1968 by Erich Gruenberg (violin), Gervase de Peyer (clarinet), William Pleeth (cello), and Michel Beroff (piano); Le Merle Noir was taken from a 1971 Abbey Road session with flutist Karlheinz Zoller accompanied by Aloys Kontarsky. These performances in their various manifestations on earlier albums have consistently received rave reviews, and with good reason. The performances are exceptional in their interpretation and the recordings have been beautifully remastered. »
26 Aug 2005
Between the 1930s and the 1950s, Hollywood composers pumped out tens of thousands of scores for what we now call "classical Hollywood films." These films often contained an hour or more of music, but few viewers would have realized this. Certainly, many of these scores included themes that became very well known--Casablanca and Gone with the Wind come immediately to mind; however, much of the music was played quietly and inconspicuously. In classical Hollywood films, music is subservient to the narrative, and generally played two main roles. First, it served the film's central narrative by heightening the emotional content of important scenes (e.g., ominous music when characters approach an abandoned castle) and revealing characters' hidden feelings (e.g., love music while two characters are fighting). Second, music gave the film a greater sense of continuity by smoothing over cuts and moving slower scenes along. »
25 Aug 2005
Giovanni Bononcini (Modena, 1670 - Vienna, 1747) is best known today for his dozen years in London, which began when he was 50 and Handel was 35. Five years later, a well-known epigram likened them to Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee . Londoners then had to decide whether Handel, compared to Bononcini, was "but a Ninny," or whether Bononcini, when matched with Handel, was "scarcely fit to hold a Candle." For many Londoners, the more luminous composer was Bononcini, since he had served munificent patrons for four decades before his arrival in England: duke Francesco II of Modena (1680s); two immensely wealthy noblemen - Filippo Colonna and Luigi de la Cerda, the Spanish ambassador - in Rome (1690s); two emperors - Leopold I and Joseph I - in Vienna (1700s); and an immensely wealthy Viennese ambassador in Rome (1710s). »
25 Aug 2005
It has taken 14 years for John Adams’ second opera to reach a British stage. Scottish Opera’s production of The Death of Klinghoffer at last goes boldly where no opera company in these islands has dared before (and one of them, Glyndebourne, shared in the original commission). »
25 Aug 2005
First performed in 1775, Georg Benda’s Ariadne auf Naxos is a melodrama in the most literal sense of the word — a work for actors and orchestra in which music is deployed to heighten the effect of emotional declamation. Even though posterity has tended to play its influence down, many in the late 18th and early 19th centuries rated it as both a masterpiece and a major vehicle for a tragic actress. This performance revealed it to be a work of considerable power. »
25 Aug 2005
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – German writers Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s stylized 1928 masterpiece “The Threepenny Opera” is savagely cynical, sardonic, brittle and worldly wise—and wonderfully well-performed at the Odyssey Theater Ensemble, a tribute to savvy director Ron Sossi and a cast of 16 talented and eager performers. »
23 Aug 2005
Throughout the history of Poland, music has been an enduring force in its culture, and Polish composers were at the forefront of a number of developments in the twentieth century. »
23 Aug 2005
Carlo Bergonzi never recorded the role commercially and he is obviously the " raison d'etre " of this set. Among collectors there are quite a lot of Met-performances circulating but none is in very good sound. These performances date from around 1960 during the tenor's heyday but even they prove that the role is not completely his best: part of the score lays a little too high for his tessitura and he misses the sheer power to overwhelm us in some of the arias. This Venice-performance is in good sound and as the theatre is so much smaller than the Met maybe better suited for a role a shade too heavy for the voice. By 1972 too he knew much better where his strong points were and he fully exploits them. Time and again he makes a point by a diminuendo or a piano where Del Monaco and Corelli hector along. While the voice is slightly less beautiful than in the famous 1970-concert performance in London he succeeds in giving us a truly fine " Come un bel di di maggio "; the only piece Luigi Illica culled from the poems of Andre Chenier himself. In London Bergonzi has to switch in a lower gear when he realizes he is not going to make it but in Venice the voice is at its best in the fourth act. There are some fascinating glimpses of the tenor's experienced singing. When in his second act monologue he gets before the beat, he simply introduces a little sob and stage and pit are once on the same wave length. In that terrible first act monologue " Colpito qui m'avete " he has given so much breath in getting to the top in the first verse, that during the second verse he starts declaiming instead of singing though he does that with such skill and conviction that most people in the audience probably thought of it as an interpretative trick. A live audience probably didn't notice the appearance of the weak link in late Bergonzi's vocal armour: a gliding towards a fortissimo note from high A onwards that would almost always result in flat singing above the staff from 1975 onwards. »
23 Aug 2005
As everyone knows, the art of the song recital is in decline. When you and I were young Maggie, Columbia Concerts and Community Concerts regularly sent vocal and other musical artists all around America providing a never fading rainbow of wonderful music, as great classical music performers educated and thrilled us with their art. For example, As a youth I once heard Leonard Warren give a recital in a high school auditorium in Webster Groves, Missouri, price of admission $5. I still have the ticket stub - and the memories. Kathleen Ferrier, Robert Casadesus Jennie Tourel and Guiomar Novaes performed in my town when I was a kid. »
22 Aug 2005
Any new recording of Handel under the baton of Rene Jacobs has to be greeted with both respect and interest, even if the absolute need for another recording of this well-represented oratorio is debatable. Perhaps some Handel scholars would argue with that and are still discussing the precedence of the current available recordings — the older Gardiner, the Neumann, or the more recent McCreesh for instance. So, one presumes, this recording of "Saul" on the Harmonia Mundi label must be intended to either trump those three or to at least offer a viable fourth choice for those who prefer their Handel oratorios as complete as possible. And a plus point is that the entire work is squeezed onto just 2 CDs with a total running time of 2 hrs 30 minutes, accompanied by some stimulating liner notes by Pierre Degott that are both informative and absorbing for the non-specialist consumer. »
19 Aug 2005
Benjamin Britten’s opera Curlew River was inspired by the Noh plays he saw on his 1956 visit to Japan, after which he asked his regular librettist, William Plomer, to adapt Sumidagawa for him. Eight years later, the opera was composed. Since it lasts only an hour and requires a highly stylised kind of performance, it has never been a favourite with regular opera houses, but it makes for excellent festival fare. The Edinburgh Festival has mounted its own production, directed by Olivier Py, which is well worth catching. »
16 Aug 2005
Collectors have known this piece for more than a quarter of a century due to the MRF-pirate recording. Some have probably transferred these LP's unto CD-R and don't see a reason why they should buy this issue. Well, there is one and it's a compelling one. The MRF-sound was good mono, obviously culled from a radio broadcast. This Bongiovanni-issue however gives us the original brilliant stereo sound and it makes for a world of difference. I always liked the opera though I thought the first act somewhat lacking in inspiration; the performance only taking fire by Labo's first appearance. This set cured me of that impression while the choruses and brilliant orchestration (even somewhat too showy to prove Cilea had mastered his craft after Adriana where the violins are mostly doubling the vocal line) are now crystal clear and one quickly recognizes the inspired melodious ideas of the maestro. »
12 Aug 2005
Mit h-moll in den Untergang. Die Zeit laeuft. Der Tod sitzt bereit. Geteilte Geigen in hoechster Hoehe, triste, abfallende Phrasen. Eine Frau in fuchsrotem Brokat und mit wirrem Haar platzt rueckwaerts in das leere Raumrund. Kruemmt sich, sinkt auf eine Bank, schaut fast erleichtert Freund Hein, einem weisshaarigen Alten, ins Auge. Anna Netrebko ist da. Violetta auch. Es kann losgehen. Die Salzburger "Traviata" hat seit zwei Minuten endlich begonnen. »
07 Aug 2005
Nineteenth-century German opera before Wagner is rarely performed in the United States, although it is still quite popular in Germany. While works by Spohr, Marschner, and Lortzing, among others, are very much a part of the repertory in many German houses, they are virtually unknown in America, and none of the above-mentioned composers is even mentioned in the index of the new seventh edition of the Burkholder-Grout-Palisca A History of Western Music. This new recording of Lortzing's Der Waffenschmied (The Armorer [of Worms]) suggests not only why this work is still performed. It also suggests that American audiences are missing out on a delightful body of work for the lyric stage. From Lortzing's relatively better-known works, such as Zar und Zimmermann or Der Wildschuetz, to works by Marschner, such as Der Vampyr, nineteenth-century German opera with spoken dialogue is often highly entertaining and musically satisfying, if one is not anticipating work of great gravitas. And who is always in the mood for Tristan und Isolde, masterpiece that it is? »
07 Aug 2005
The director of this production, Robert Herzl, composed an impressively thoughtful and serious essay for the DVD booklet. He considers the historical context of both the opera-story and the opera's premiere, taking into consideration Verdi's staging demands as well as the composer's willingness to compromise for the greater benefit of the production. »
07 Aug 2005
The Cambridge Companion to Stravinsky joins more than a dozen similar volumes published by the Cambridge University Press over the years and devoted to the life and works of a single composer. Each one traditionally is a collection of essays by leading scholars in the field, organized into three main sections — biography; works (mostly by genre); reception and posthumous legacy. »
07 Aug 2005
For those without videos or DVD's by the Italian soprano, this is a must. For all the others, better to read attentively the sleeve notes as there is nothing new to be found on these two DVD's. The Concerto Italiano can be purchased separately with the same firm. The Bell Telephone Hour selections are still available on the several Great Stars of Opera-DVD's brought out by VAI or on the video exclusively devoted to the soprano. And the selections from Tosca (Stuttgart 1961) are culled from a complete performance, also put on DVD by VAI and somewhat misleadingly called "The only available video of Renata Tebaldi in her signature role" on the firm's web; for convenience's sake forgetting the words "at this moment" as VAI once published another complete Tosca (with Poggi, Guelfi and the late soprano's lover at the time, conductor Arturo Basile). »
05 Aug 2005
Bizet's youthful masterpiece is notoriously difficult to stage. Up to now I have not seen a production which is not slightly ridiculous. So it is an ideal opera for a concert performance or a listening experience. If you are looking for an authentic performance this is not the one to go for. »
05 Aug 2005
Alexander Frey, upon learning that a song Leonard Bernstein had written for the 1950 production of Peter Pan had been cut before the show opened, wondered if there was other music originally intended for the production that went by the wayside. »
05 Aug 2005
From the start of its lively and distinctive overture Carl Nielsen's 1906 comic masterpiece Maskarade calls for a light and ironic approach, yet one which brings the ensemble forward with sufficient directorial force. »
03 Aug 2005
A DVD performance of an opera may deserve recommendation for a single memorable performance, or because a rare work has finally been recorded, or simply for nostalgia's sake. How many DVDs primarily offer the pleasures of a witty, imaginative staging, done on a minimal budget? »
02 Aug 2005
On the evening of 28 July, I had the privilege to attend the Wiener Kammeroper's performance of Donizetti's Rita. Subtitled "The Battered Husband," this one act farce revolves around Rita, the owner of a cafe, and her husband Beppe (Jose Aparicio). »
16 Jul 2005
The Requiem mass of Gabriel Fauré is often unfairly overshadowed by other 19th century settings of the mass. The monumental works of Giuseppe Verdi and Hector Berlioz achieve moments of extreme drama by stretching the limits of soloists, chorus, and orchestra. Fauré’s Requiem, in contrast, is an intimate vision of heavenly peace in the afterlife. The soaring melodic lines and compact harmonic progressions evoke profundity through beauty and simplicity. »
16 Jul 2005
In addition, to his popular score to A Midsummer Night's Dream Felix Mendelssohn wrote incidental music to several other plays. Commissioned by the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, the incidental music to Athalia was intended for a private performance of the play by Jean Racine. »
16 Jul 2005
The Cambridge companion series provides one of the more scholarly and intensely interesting examinations of musical composers currently available. This is because of its in-depth and multifaceted contributions to each volume, by a variety of musicologists and musicians, as well as overall management of each volume by a well-established and known scholar in the field. The Mendelssohn volume is no exception in this area. It is a collection of fourteen essays that examine the life and work of the nineteenth-century Romantic composer Felix Mendelssohn. It is divided into four major sections: Issues in Biography, Situating the Compositions, Profiles of the Music, and Reception and Performance. »
15 Jul 2005
This staging of the Mozart/da Ponte masterpiece took place in 1977, at the Glyndebourne Festival. Although the conductor is Dutch, and members of the cast come from Eastern Europe and the States, a more British performance would be hard to imagine. »
15 Jul 2005
Every so often there appears a recording so good, so almost revelatory, that we find ourselves re-examining the work recorded and our relationship to it, no matter how well we thought we already knew it. Ian Bostridge and Julius Drake’s recording of Schumann’s Dichterliebe was one of the more recent recordings to do this. Now we have Kent Nagano’s amazing reading of (and Harmonia Mundi’s equally amazing engineering of) Mahler’s massive Symphony No. 8. Many excellent recordings of this work already exist, and all of them bring a number of insights and extraordinary performances to the work. None of them, however, quite equals Nagano’s overall vision of the work, and no recording of the symphony can match the impressive acoustic accomplishments found here. »
15 Jul 2005
In her awesome Emblems of Eloquence, Wendy Heller tirelessly investigates treatises, myths, libretti and letters to illuminate the natures of “real” and “imagined” women who reigned over seventeenth-century opera as subjects of musical portraiture. From Dido to Semiramide, Poppea to Calisto, Heller argues that women and women’s issues dominated the Venetian stage. Librettists struggled with issues of women’s sexuality, dominance, suppression of desire, overt desire, covert desire, homoeroticism and misogyny. And all at the time when, “Venice’s absolute exclusion of women in public life was written into the organization of the Republic.” This apparent contradiction is at the heart of her eminently readable text that displays Heller as a musicological Simon Schama. »
15 Jul 2005
The initial reception of Rachmaninov's Symphony No. 1 marked an unhappy yet decisive moment in the composer's life, one that propelled his stylistic development and the trajectory of his career in new directions. »
14 Jul 2005
Like Glyndebourne, Aix treats Mozart and Rossini as “house” composers, but Rossini has traditionally taken second place. This summer, in Provence as much as in Sussex, Rossini comes off better. After its two disappointing Mozart productions in the Théâtre de l’Archevèche at the weekend, the Aix festival decamped to the gardens of a dilapidated but enchanted estate outside the town for an evening of pure joy, courtesy of a new Barber. »
09 Jul 2005
Franco Alfano is best known for having composed the standard ending to Puccini’s Turandot. But he wrote some 12-13 operas under his own name as well. A few of these are revisions of earlier operas. The most familiar of his works have long been La resurrezione (1904), Sakuntala (1922, revised 1952) and Cyrano de Bergerac (1936). Cyrano seems to be coming into its own in the last few years, what with a performance in Kiel and a revival planned for Montpellier in 2003. The latter was cancelled due to strikes (although it was filmed anyway). This was followed by a few performances at the end of the 2004-5 Metropolitan Opera season, with more performances planned at Covent Garden in 2005 and the Met for the 2005-06 season. It is very much the tenor’s opera, with the revival (that never really happened as far as the general public is concerned) in Montpellier featuring Roberto Alagna, and that at the Met featuring Placido Domingo, now approaching the end of a fantastic career. He is also scheduled to sing it at Covent Garden, and again at the Met next year. It is my understanding that Alagna will also sing some additional performances. »
09 Jul 2005
The second in a series called Parallel Lives, this book consists of a series of essays by one author. The same Daniel Felsenfeld also authored the first in the series, which set Charles Ives and Aaron Copland side by side. By comparison to that juxtaposition only, Britten and Barber make an intriguing and appropriate pair for analysis. Felsenfeld's book, however, is slim yet repetitive, and far from stylishly written. The inclusion of a CD of selections from Naxos recordings of both composers may, however, make the volume of interest to some readers. »
08 Jul 2005
Among the best-known works of Richard Strauss is his set of Vier letzte Lieder, the so-called four “last” songs. These are just a fraction of the music he composed in this genre, with over 200 songs for voice and piano, and around fifty of them arranged with orchestral accompaniment. The prospect of a new series of complete songs is promising, and it should augment the various recorded selections of his Lieder that are currently available. »
07 Jul 2005
Central City – Perhaps because of its home in a small, historic mining town far from the two coasts, Central City Opera has long championed American opera. »
07 Jul 2005
There is one splendid reason to see Gaetano Donizetti’s “Lucie de Lammermoor” at Glimmerglass Opera this season, and her name is Sarah Coburn. »
07 Jul 2005
Britten’s folksong arrangements, which span much of his career from 1943 to 1976, provide unique insights into the composer’s oeuvre. Having been strongly encouraged by his teacher, Frank Bridge, to at all times be true to himself and to develop his own voice, one might expect Britten to eschew the folksong tradition, which had been so used (and misused?) by the generation before him. But Britten, following more in the line of Grainger than Vaughan Williams, voiced his distinctive style in these arrangements with appealing results. Sometimes making merely subtle changes and the simplest of accompaniments, Britten’s arrangements display artistic grace and sensitivity that has made them some of the most beloved choices of singers and audiences alike. »
06 Jul 2005
Handel's Admeto premiered in London in 1727 at the King's Theater and was an unambiguous critical and popular success. It had an initial run of nineteen performances between January 31 and April 18 of 1727, each of which was attended by King George I. »
06 Jul 2005
I can only dimly imagine how this singular and arresting production was first greeted at Covent Garden back in 1991. To this newcomer’s eye it is still both amazingly original in its design and concept, and yet also oddly frustrating. Essentially, director Graham Vick and designer Paul Brown and their team created a world, half historic, half fantastic, and one is left with a visual memory replete with starkly simple blood-red sets, kaleidoscopically coloured bizarrely shaped costumes and arrowed shafts of silver light, almost painfully reflecting from armoured breastplates. The time is about 65 BC and the world is one of an old Asia Minor versus a rising Rome, with an ageing King Mitridate fighting off both martial and sexual invasions of his territories. The heavy, stylised, costumes — extravagant to the point of caricature — are in themselves a theatrical tool that both enable and yet also constrain the drama of this young Mozart’s early work. If the singers were disadvantaged physically by what they were wearing, they didn’t seem to show it — although to be fair none had to move at anything more than a dignified pace. It was the supporting actors/dancers, Kabuki-like, who supplied the human activity — including a memorable “a capella” rhythmic foot-stamping war-interlude. All other dramatic extremes — be it fevered love declaration, jealous rage or elegant death — was conducted in an almost balletic minimalism of physical effort. »
06 Jul 2005
The investment of money, not to mention time, to listen carefully to a complete opera can be intimidating for some uninitiated listeners. After all, operas can be quite long and — with all that strange singing in a foreign language — could be incomprehensible, and therefore less than enjoyable. Opera still carries the cachet in our culture of being the pastime of the wealthy, the educated, and the elite. References to opera in popular culture, such as ads or music videos, signify a different world of privilege and exclusion. »
06 Jul 2005
In the Baroque era, the liturgical intensity of Holy Week and the affective richness of its themes would find a powerful echo in the music of various European chapels. Old-fashioned counterpoint on antique models would solemnify the sound, while the expressive harmonic freedoms of the day would bring the affective sense of words and themes into sharp focus. This dual path is much in evidence in the Responsories for Good Friday by Jan Dismas Zelenka, recorded here by the Czech ensembles, Boni pueri and Musica Florea. »
05 Jul 2005
Giacomo Puccini’s “La Boheme” is really a winter piece. It is the cold and the dark that draw seamstress Mimi together with poet Rodolfo. Christmas in Cafe Momus brings the illusion of warmth, though not even the spring of the last act can take the chill from dying Mimi’s hands. »
05 Jul 2005
LEWES, England, July 3 – Glyndebourne’s achievements are too various for one to speak of a company style, but there is certainly a Glyndebourne scent: of excellence and elegance, of singers and musicians enjoying at once the freedom gained by thorough rehearsal and the intimacy of a small, warm house. And its waft is strong, luxurious and exciting around the new production of Handel’s “Giulio Cesare,” which opened on Sunday afternoon. »
04 Jul 2005
The Santa Fe Opera waited almost 50 years to mount Puccini’s final opera, Turandot—a warhorse of a work full of color and pageantry, and a heart-breaking love story. Puccini died before he could finish the work, whose story comes from myth and fable. »
04 Jul 2005
Contrary to what one might expect from its title, Downing A. Thomas' book on Aesthetics of Opera in the Ancien Régime is not a comprehensive historical treatment of the subject. Instead, the chapters — which seem to have been drawn from separate articles or other studies — cover a wide range of topics, but are successfully drawn together through a view of aesthetics from a pre-nineteenth-century vantage point; according to Thomas, discussions of aesthetics from the time of the ancien régime "rose out of the many developments in medicine and philosophy ... in relation to questions of sensibility, sympathy, and taste" (p. 323). Cultural and aesthetic issues of the day centered on "the experience of passion, of intersubjective feeling, and of pleasure" (p. 323). Thomas' work rests on extensive studies of philosophical and theoretical writings from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but it also shows a broad knowledge of present-day analytical approaches and musical and cultural studies. Thomas uses this broad range of sources to argue for the importance of opera as an influence on — and a reflection of — French culture and thought during the ancien régime. The author identifies two basic assumptions that lie behind the varied studies in the book: "First, ... individual operas not only display traces of the aesthetic and ideological circumstances of their creation, but ... they also engage productively in those circumstances. Second, ... opera came to serve as a touchstone in the eighteenth century for understanding the mechanisms behind human feeling and for reflecting upon how emotion impacts social relations." »
03 Jul 2005
This is a recording that makes a full meal of various salads: in this case, several ensaladas by the Spanish composer most associated with the form, Mateo Flecha, the elder (?1481-1553). Ensaladas toss together different languages and verbal quotations (sometimes musical quotation, as well) in a quodlibet that promotes an appealing sense of variety within the unified frame of their textual themes. »
03 Jul 2005
Five minutes into this DVD there has been a lot of talk on Abbado’s aura, his aristocratic reserve and the fact that he is a private thinker. With a deep sigh I was reminded of some of those dreadful documentaries on Arte (a German-French arts channel which I have on cable) that have promising titles and then soon lose themselves in a lot of philosophical treatises without any real content. And what was almost the last image of this documentary?: “In collaboration with Arte” »
03 Jul 2005
With a masterpiece like Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin, each generation of singers seems to rediscover the music and make the work its own. The nature of music almost demands that performers arrive at their own approaches, and the resulting differences offer insights into the way the music works and, perhaps, on how perception functions. With something as familiar as Die schöne Müllerin, it is possible to gain some perspective by listening to the way a singers of earlier generations performed the work to sample it, just as aficionados appreciate wine at vertical tastings. By approaching the music in this manner, it is possible to put the differences in perspective by using the nuances as points of reference where interpretations diverge. »
02 Jul 2005
An important thing to realize about this DVD is that it is not so much about Die Schöne Müllerin as about the performers, pianist András Schiff and especially baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. There are no liner notes about the song cycle itself, and if you want to see texts or translations you watch them go by as subtitles during the performance (you may choose German, English, French, Spanish, Italian, or none.). But, since the cycle is quite well-known, largely through the earlier recordings by Fischer-Dieskau with other collaborators, this omission is not grave enough to detract from the real focus of the DVD: to make publicly available a 1991 performance at the Feldkirch Schubertiade, in which two Schubertiade regulars, Fischer-Dieskau and Schiff, performed together for the first time. The record of the performance is doubly significant because, while Fischer-Dieskau earlier in his career had been one of the preeminent performers of Die Schöne Müllerin, he had not performed it since 1971, and he was to retire from public performance two years later. »
02 Jul 2005
When I was young, my father said: Don’t judge others before hearing them through, listen before interrupting. His advice applies so well to Wagnerian opera, with its potential for diverse interpretation. The greatest works of art have the power to speak beyond restricted parameters of space and time. We may have a preference for one style or another, but when we listen to a new production, it’s a good idea to listen to it for what it conveys on its own terms. Whether we like or dislike something isn’t ultimately the point, for we learn something along the way. »
30 Jun 2005
When Rossini’s Il viaggio a Reims was rediscovered more than two decades ago, its musical brilliance was immediately recognised. But its almost nonexistent plot, designed to incorporate an abundance of superstars, lent credence to Rossini’s decision to withdraw the opera once it had served its purpose — providing entertainment for the coronation of Charles X of France. Experiencing Il viaggio in the theatre, however, reveals its unconventional drama about a collection of upper-crust Europeans thwarted in their plans to attend the coronation to be an essential strength. The very triviality points up human foibles and, in the context of Rossini’s elaborate music, supplies a source of hilarity. »
30 Jun 2005
The San Francisco Opera’s 2004-05 season is winding down in nicely palindromic fashion. The company’s final offering, which opened (or reopened) Friday night at the War Memorial Opera House, is a revival of the handsome new production of Mozart’s “Così fan tutte” that began the season back in September, and its virtues remain essentially intact. »
29 Jun 2005
The CD incarnation of this performance, reviewed earlier on Opera Today, faces the formidable competition of an earlier Philips set conducted by Lamberto Gardelli, with Jose Carreras, Montserrat Caballé, and Jessye Norman in the cast. As a recording, that set remains the best recommendation for this neglected (fairly or not) Verdi score. »
29 Jun 2005
The liner notes dryly state that “This was a stringent programme for an opening-concert audience used to lighter fare at such events.” In the past this would surely have been true but together with “Das Regietheater,” there is now a firm tradition in European houses that the reason for their very existence is art, and preferably in its purest form. Audiences are not there to amuse themselves or even to enjoy the music but to ponder on whatever life’s questions may be at that exact moment. They are mightily helped in their endeavours by conductor Riccardo Muti who cannot be caught with a single smile on his face during more than an hour of music making. Therefore a house where five operas by Giuseppe Verdi were premièred cannot be expected to open with such banalaties as Ernani, Attila, Rigoletto, La Traviata or Simon Boccanegra. Even worse would have been a concert with some prominent singers performing well-known arias and duets from these operas. The danger of enjoyment would have been too great. A conductor who reopened La Scala one year later with that immortal masterpiece L’Europa riconosciuta can be expected to make more original choices. Muti preferred lesser known music by maestros who had some ties with the city itself, even with the opera house. »
28 Jun 2005
Henze’s magical opera L’Upupa oder Der Triumph der Sohnesliebe (L’Upupa or the Triumph of Filial Love) bears the subtitle, “a German comedy in eleven tableaux based on the Arabic.” The “Arabic” here refers to a traditional dream-tale from Syria, around which Henze crafted his libretto (his first such effort as a librettist). Like dreams, which condense from memory several images (of people, objects, actions) that share underlying characteristics into single composite dream figures, L’Upupa condenses many stories and characters into its over determined images. Far from pastiche, however, Henze’s condensations cohere in a compelling tale. »
28 Jun 2005
This performance must have been heart-warming for all diehards of traditionalism — no Spanish Civil War, no Palestinian-Israeli conflict, just plain religious warfare in France on the night of the 23rd of August 1572, the infamous ‘nuit de Saint-Bartholomée’ (St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre). One is now almost so used to the excesses of ‘das Regie-Theater’ that one almost is shocked to see such a realistic looking production where dozens of people move on the stage in magnificent authentic costumes all the time (300 of them during the whole opera). As a consequence director Lacombe had his singers act as realistically as possible with real sword fights instead of stylised ones, no squirming on the floor etc. Apart from the visual splendour, everything was concentrated on the music and the singing. »
27 Jun 2005
NO FLOTILLA of swans, no dancing green men, no grand descent of the Sun King; in fact no big production numbers at all. Yet this concert performance of Purcell’s The Fairy Queen will be a hard act for the forthcoming Proms appearance to follow. »
27 Jun 2005
Vom Bundeskanzler bis zu Deutsch lands Feuilletonistinnen waren alle da. Denn mit Andrea Breth und Ni kolaus Harnoncourt hatten zwei Liebkinder des Kultur-Establishments erstmals gemeinsam eine Musiktheaterproduktion zu erarbeiten. Derartige Kunst-Bande zu knüpfen, ist die nobelste Aufgabe von Festspielen. Womit die “Styriarte” für ihre heurige Eröffnung ein adäquates Zeichen gesetzt hat. Auf der Strecke blieb dabei Bizets “Carmen”; oder zumindest das, was man bisher dafür gehalten hat. »
26 Jun 2005
EMI has re-released a 2-disc set of some of Samuel Barber’s most compelling orchestral and chambers works on the Gemini — The EMI Treasures label. An album of the same recordings was released in 2001, itself a remastering of original recordings dating from the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s. Disc 1 from both these sets contains music recorded in 1986 and 1988 with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leonard Slatkin and released in 1990 as a single disc. The second disc of the set contains chamber music of Barber, recorded in 1995. Each time this music has been released it has received positive reviews. See for example, Jon Yungkans’s review on the The Flying Inkpot; the reviews on Amazon.com; or Victor Carr’s review on Classics Today. »
26 Jun 2005
Ottorino Respighi’s reputation as an arranger of early music sometimes obscures the contributions he made in assembling those works into what are essentially new compositions. The carefully planned suite of music from the Baroque era entitled “Gli uccelli” – “The Birds” – is an excellent example of his ability to adapt older compositions into a new context, and in this case juxtapose music by various composers into a cohesive whole. Respighi completed this suite in 1927, and the orchestrations remain effective, over a half a century later. The idiomatic use of the orchestra makes “Gli uccelli” a fine piece for an orchestra to show its ability to perform as a tightly rehearsed ensemble, and this is borne out in the festival performance preserved in this recording. »
26 Jun 2005
Das schönste Teil steht als Reklame vor der Tür: einer von Jimmy Durhams Büffeln, gehäutet und skelettiert. Ansonsten hat der indianische Künstler und Bühnenbildner eine Mischung aus Showbühne mit Aussichtspodest und Bahnhofshalle für Hans Zenders neue Chief Joseph-Oper gebaut: Vorn links auf dem teilweise überdeckten Orchestergraben ein Riesenmüllcontainer, aus dem später der kleine Joseph oder auch Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekht, was soviel heißt wie “Der Donner, der über die Berge rollt”, kriecht und den Vater befragt, wie das denn sei mit den Weißen, ob sie alle Lügner sind, oder ob man einigen von ihnen wenigstens trauen kann, bevor er selbst das Kommando übernimmt, übernehmen muss. In rotbraunem Siedleranzug, nicht in umbrafarbener Federkluft, geht er dann sinnend durch die Szene. »
24 Jun 2005
One of my oldest memorabilia is a programme of a performance of Zigeunerliebe by my father’s operetta company just after the war. It was one of the many amateur companies in Flanders though the title roles were sung by good singers who earned extra money by combining a few companies. I was too young to assist at this performance but a few years later I would be a regular spectator. The moment I could read I was put into service rehearsing my father’s lines. Every time the company put on a new piece I eagerly read the libretto. Most people nowadays think that an operetta is something like a Carmen with a few dialogues but that’s definitely not true. A Lehár operetta always had a lot of spoken dialogue and often had a 50% spoken 50% sung lines balance. Many an operetta lasted 3 hours without including pauses. »
23 Jun 2005
Ernst Krenek is remembered primarily for one work, his jazz opera Jonny spielt auf, which irritated the cultural conservatives in Germany and Austria in the years between the wars and helped ensure his exile to America during the Nazi era. If an opera strewn with jazzy tunes and a romantic black hero wasn’t enough to tick off the right wing, he turned to serialism for his magnum opus, the anti-Nazi, pro-Austrian Karl V (Charles V, whom you’ll remember from Verdi’s Don Carlo). »
23 Jun 2005
Two recent CDs of Carissimi oratorios provide the listener the opportunity to compare very different “takes” on the composer’s remarkable works, which exemplify the sophisticated and exclusive style cultivated by the cardinalate nobility in mid-seventeenth-century Rome. Carissimi’s oratorios survive in manuscript only, and with relatively sparse indications concerning instrumentation; it has long been a challenge for contemporary performers to balance the need for dramatic clarity with the desirability of sonic variety, and the two groups featured on these CDs take different approaches to that challenge, each with fruitful results. »
22 Jun 2005
This production of Puccini’s classic, originally directed by John Copley, began life in 1974 and is now the oldest in the Royal Opera’s repertory. It’s still serviceable in its old-fashioned way, at least when lit with sufficient discretion to hide its increasing shabbiness. »
21 Jun 2005
If you’ve recently browsed the shelves in a bookstore or Blockbuster, you would have to be oblivious not to notice titles such as The DaVinci Code, the Romanov Prophecy, or films like National Treasure and Kingdom of Heaven. Responses to these titles suggest an increased interest in historical topics and journeys that provoke us to unravel clues that, in the end, will reveal an ultimate truth. Works that exude knowledge and mystery have always been popular in music, because it is by the dissemination of clues and their eventual interpretation that lead to the re-creation of a musical moment in history. One might even call it one of the earliest forms of a “treasure hunt.” In this high quality CD, the Concert des Nations directed by Jordi Savall, has successfully disseminated the few details left by Couperin and re-created what are perhaps the most important works of the French royal court: the Concert Royaux. Having already recorded Couperin’s Pièces de Voile, Les Nations, and Les Apothéoses, the Concert Royaux would comprise the second category of chamber works written by Couperin for the Court of King Louis XIV. To gain a better understanding of the general purpose of these concerts, you might think of them as relative to Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks, but only in their sense of purpose. Their stylistic elements couldn’t be more diverse. »
20 Jun 2005
ST. LOUIS, June 19 – In more than 50 years on the British throne Queen Elizabeth II has shown scant interest in opera. So it is paradoxical that one of the major events of her coronation ceremonies was the 1953 premiere by the Royal Opera at Covent Garden of Benjamin Britten’s “Gloriana,” an elaborate three-act work about the first Queen Elizabeth, with a libretto by William Plomer based on Lytton Strachey’s book “Elizabeth and Essex.” »
19 Jun 2005
Die Zugabe war klug gewählt: “Wien, Wien nur du allein” sang der deutsch-kanadische Tenor Michael Schade zum Abschluss seines Liederabends im Konzerthaus. Bei so viel Zuneigung war ihm frenetischer Beifall sicher – und mancher Lacher für die drollige Aussprache. Den Applaus hatte er sich verdient. “Of Ladies and Love” war das Motto des Konzerts mit Liedern von Schubert, Beethoven, Liszt, Faure, Ravel und Strauss. Besonders mit leidenschaftlichen, ungestümen Liedern überzeugte er, etwa mit Liszts “Tre sonetti de Petrarca” oder Beethovens “Adelaide”. Hier kam Schades volle, schön timbrierte Stimme hervorragend zur Geltung, und auch im Ausdruck schienen ihm dramatische Liebeserfahrungen näher zu liegen als innig-verzärtelnde. »
19 Jun 2005
BOSTON, June 17 – For fans and performers of early music, this city is paradise for a week every other June, when the Boston Early Music Festival sets up its combination concert marathon and trade show. The festival offers performances every night between 5 and midnight. The centerpiece is always a lavishly produced Baroque opera – this year’s is Johann Mattheson’s long-lost “Boris Goudenow” – but concerts by imported ensembles and soloists, and by the festival’s period instrument orchestra, are also a strong draw. »
18 Jun 2005
Despite theoretical beginnings several centuries earlier, we have come to think of early polyphony as having its first “golden age” in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Paris, an environment teeming with things new: the University of Paris, the Cathedral of Notre Dame, and the large-scale organa by Leoninus and Perotinus. If our attention is drawn to Paris, it is with good reason. But significantly, the musically innovative style of the Parisians had a geographic dissemination that took it to places like St. Andrews in Scotland, home to a cathedral roughly contemporary with Notre Dame and, to continue the symmetry further, in the fifteenth century, also home to Scotland’s oldest university. A run of Norman bishops in St. Andrews secured a degree of continentalism in the local ecclesiastical culture, and one of the most important manifestations of this is the Scottish manuscript of Parisian repertory that we today know as “W1.” W1 is a copy, in all likelihood one made at St. Andrews, of the Parisian Magnus liber organi — the “great book of organum” by Leoninus, as well as other works, some of them local. And it is from this local Scottish repertory contained within W1 that Red Byrd has fashioned their “Scottish Lady Mass.” »
16 Jun 2005
In the seventeenth century Germany did not move quickly to embrace the new oratorio genre, despite its mainstream cultivation in Italy. Arguably, in fact, the Italianism of the genre may have made it suspect in some Protestant circles, and contributed to its slow cultivation. However, German interest in musical settings of sacred narrative is clear, given the examples of historiae composed by Heinrich Schütz and his contemporaries. These historiae present Biblical stories without modern poetic interpolations, and Schütz’s “Resurrection History” of 1623 is one of the most compelling. Music historians have rightly seen in the historia an antecedent of the German oratorio, but in its own right — and especially in Schütz’s compositions — it is a rich form, liturgically functional and compositionally sophisticated, that need not be harnessed to the more prominent oratorio to warrant our attention. With this recent recording of the “Resurrection History,” Manfred Cordes and Weser-Renaissance Bremen add a fifth installment to their series of Schütz recordings for Classic Production Osnabrück and with it a welcome new performance of this significant work. »
16 Jun 2005
El dramaturgo y premio Nobel de Literatura italiano Dario Fo confesó ayer que ha «saqueado» a Rossini y la tradición de la ‘comedia dell’arte’ para hacer la escenografía de la ópera ‘La gazzeta’ del compositor italiano, que el Liceo barcelonés estrenará el próximo día 20. ‘La gazzeta’ narra la historia de don Pomponio, que quiere casar a su hija con el mejor partido. Para ello, inserta un anuncio en el diario en el que hace un elogio ditirámbico. Aunque la obra estaba llamada a tener éxito, la escasa promoción propició, según Fo, que no recibiera el interés del público cuando se estrenó en Nápoles en 1816. »
15 Jun 2005
The recording “Immortal Fire” presents a varied anthology of music for female saints, excellently sung by the Girl Choristers and Lay Clerks of Winchester Cathedral under the direction of Sarah Baldock. Much of the music is Marian, with additional pieces in honor of St. Cecilia, St. Margaret of Scotland, and St. Ursula. Some of the works are highly familiar — Britten’s youthful “A Hymn to the Virgin,” and his popular setting of Auden’s “A Hymn to St. Cecilia” for instance — and the performances seem familiar, as well. As the pieces are canonical within the cathedral repertory, so too are the interpretations, sung with polish and high accomplishment, but few surprises. However, other works are new or less familiar. For example, Judith Bingham’s “Margaret, Forsaken,” a work commemorating Margaret of Scotland, was commissioned for this recording. The composer’s imaginative use of patterned repetition and ornamental organ effects are evocative of a North Sea moodiness, and the choir responds with an impressive reading that is both intense and dramatic. Herbert Howells — never far from the cathedral choir folder—is represented by two works, a “Hymn for St. Cecilia” and a “Salve Regina.” The former is an expansive hymn tune with a wonderfully uplifting descant to its final verse. The “Salve” is an early work whose chordal gestures are reminiscent of Vaughan Williams, but in the main it is a work showing the developing harmonic fingerprints of Howells’ musical signature, with sweet dissonant propensities and chromatic inflection. Howells graces the concluding acclamations with a memorable treble solo — the embodiment of the text’s “dulcis” — gracefully sung by Tempe Nell. »
15 Jun 2005
Very attentive readers will have noticed I put “Siviglia” in quotation marks as it refers in this production to the name of an Italian hairdresser’s salon and not to the Spanish city. Director Joosten who always keeps an attentive eye on surtitles and has them changed when the sung lines are contrary to the happenings on the scene nevertheless let a reference to the Spanish Prado slip in. »
14 Jun 2005
This CD is a digital remastering of an original 1991 recording of Gwyneth Jones in selections from Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, Tristan und Isolde and Götterdämmerung. Jones was (and is) one of the great interpreters of Wagner, and the release of this CD is a welcome event, not only to her many friends, but all of us who are fascinated by the interpretation of Wagner’s works. The recording is clearly meant to serve as a recorded monument to her artistry. Unfortunately, the CD is marred by many problems that make it less than satisfactory. »
14 Jun 2005
Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936) is known best in the United States for his tone poems, including the Pines of Rome, the Fountains of Rome, and Roman Festivals, and, perhaps for some of his suites of early music, like the sets of Ancient Airs and Dances that reflect his detailed orchestrations. During his lifetime, however, his operas were known, and they include Re Enzo (1905); Semirama (1910); Belfagor (1921-22); La bella dormente nel bosco (1916-21); La campana sommersa (The Sunken Bell) (1923-27); Maria Egiziaca (1929-31); La Fiamma (1931-33); Lucrezia (1935). It is unfortunate that recordings of these works are somewhat rare, but that is quickly remedied by the recent issue of La campana sommersa on the Accord label. »
14 Jun 2005
It is an unfortunate fact that operas outside of the common repertory have in the past been deemed less worthy than those included in what amounts to a popular "play list" of works that consistently draw audiences. »
14 Jun 2005
Antonio Vivaldi composed Arsilda, Regina di Ponto for the Venetian theater of Sant’Angelo in the fall of 1716. While Vivaldi had, by its debut, been an important member of Venetian musical culture for over a decade as a violinist and composer, he had begun composing only three years earlier. Domenico Lalli, his librettist, who settled in Venice in 1710 after fleeing his native Naples upon being charged with embezzlement, was one of the most important librettists of the first decades of the eighteenth century. »
14 Jun 2005
Irish fairies can be malign spirits, but they’ve done nothing but good for Queen of Puddings Music Theatre. This small Toronto company launched its only production of the season at Harbourfront Centre on Saturday, and a scant hour later had scored its biggest artistic success ever. »
12 Jun 2005
Ulf Bästlein’s recent compilation of Lieder by Schumann presents fine performances of the works listed in the title, the cycle Dichterliebe (to texts by Heinrich Heine) and the Liederreihe usually referred to as the Kerner-Lieder for the twelve settings of poetry by author Justinus Kerner. It also contains some songs that may be less familiar, including several other settings of Heine: “Der arme Peter,” op. 53, no. 3, “Die beiden Grenadiere,” op. 49, no 1, and the late work “Dein Angesicht,” op. 127, no. 2. This is a rich and focused program that offers some of Schumann’s finest Lieder on a single disc. »
11 Jun 2005
Alessandro Scarlatti, a contemporary of Handel and father of Domenico Scarlatti, was a prolific composer of cantatas, oratorios, and operas. He wrote more than 60 operas and 600 cantatas. Contemporaries frequently distinguished between styles according to the locale in which they might have been performed or to which they were appropriate: the church, chamber, and theatrical styles. The cantata was considered a genre of the chamber style and offered listeners refined counterpoint and delicate changes in dynamics; cantatas of the period generally set pastoral or love texts and employed recitative alternating with arias. Many of Scarlatti’s cantatas were written for performances at aristocratic residences; most survive in manuscript form and were never published. »
11 Jun 2005
This two-disc performance was performed and recorded on December 12, 1981 at Covent Garden in London. The recording is one of a series of Ponto releases dedicated to Dame Janet Baker, who performs here the role of Alceste. This drama, a collaboration between Gluck and the librettist Calzabigi, was performed in late 1767 and is based on the tragedy by the ancient Greek poet Euripides. It was written in response to Empress Maria Theresa’s grief over the death of the emperor, given that the text is practically synonymous with conjugal devotion. Calzabigi’s libretto specifically emphasizes Alceste’s sacrifice for her husband throughout, and is dedicated to Maria Theresa. The staging of the opera was delayed by a number of other royal deaths in 1767. Alceste was revived in 1770. »
11 Jun 2005
In a certain sense, each of Carl Maria von Weber's final three operas: Der Freischütz, Euryanthe, and Oberon belongs to a different genre. Freischütz — the only one of these three that still in any way forms a part of the repertoire — builds on the folk-like traditions of the Singspiel, while Euryanthe is more closely related to the grand operas that were to become so important in the 1830s and 1840s. »
11 Jun 2005
Interludes in opera articulate moments when the lush voices of singers and vivid spectacle of scenery and action are removed and often the curtain is drawn, and thus they span a functional gap between textless instrumental music and explicit theatrical vehicle. Although composers and analysts suggest rich and multivalent meanings for the music, those implications often escape decoding by audiences. Even the interlude titles — Zwischenspiel, entr'acte, intermezzo — suggest their intermission-like nature. As functional placeholders for scene changes and the like, the interludes are for many a cue to relax attentive listening, read synopses, and whisper with companions. Undaunted by such complexities, Morris takes up the problematic nature of operatic interludes, engaging their ambiguities with eyes wide open in an effort to enrich our understanding of these challenging bits of music. »
10 Jun 2005
This wonderful recording features two Haydn symphonies composed in the year 1789, which frame the short dramatic scena Berenice, premiered in London in 1795. The autograph scores of the two symphonies were dedicated and given to Claude-Francois-Marie Rigoley, Comte d’Ogny, cofounder and patron of the “Concert de la Loge Olympique,” an association for which Haydn had already written the so-called “Paris” symphonies in 1785/86. »
09 Jun 2005
Up to now Ernst Gruber was only a name to me. During the fifties and sixties his career was centered in the houses of the defunct German Democratic Republic; first Dresden and Leipzig and later on at the Deutsche Staatsoper in East-Berlin. Usually he rated one or two entries each year in Opera Magazine; mostly just barely mentioning his name as even in those times reviewers concentrated almost exclusively on the antics of director Felsenstein and some of his copycats. So I thought of him as one of those somewhat to be avoided German tenors like Hans Günther Nocker who, while acting their heads off, sang in that barking way that got them epitaphs like “intelligent, thought-provoking” while words like “beauty of tone” were anathema to them and the critics. Mostly they remained behind the Iron Curtain, unless at the last moment they had to run to the rescue in Western Europe or the US when Windgassen or Thomas fell unexpectedly ill. They were always happy to comply as they mostly got 20% of the fee, immediately handing over the remaining 80% to the Stasi officer accompanying and controlling them, who would always remind them of the fate of their families who had to stay home as hostages. »
09 Jun 2005
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – “Falstaff” might have been Verdi’s last opera; it might have been Verdi’s greatest opera; it is, without doubt, Verdi’s only and most hilariously comic opera. »
09 Jun 2005
“What’s a dame like me doing in a dump like this?” It takes a DBE to get away with a line like that in a venue as august as the Wigmore Hall – and this was how Felicity Lott wrapped up a recital marking 30 years of performing here with pianist Graham Johnson. The programme, Fallen Women and Virtuous Wives, is one the pair are currently touring. While its humour found its niche in the Wigmore Hall, how it will play in Luxembourg next week is anyone’s guess. »
09 Jun 2005
If Carl Maria von Weber never quite made it into the grand procession of Romantic giants, he left behind an opera of indestructible charm. “Der Freischütz,” which Eve Queler’s Opera Orchestra of New York undertook on Monday night at Carnegie Hall, is first of all a darling of historians – a musicological ground zero for the German musical theater. »
08 Jun 2005
Boris Christoff was, together with Cesare Siepi, the most prominent bass during The New Golden Age of Singing (1945-1975). At the time of this television recording, he was considered somewhat old hat as he had been singing for more than 30 years. During the mid-sixties he was superseded by Nicolai Ghiaurov who, due to his rolling voice and bigger volume, quickly became the hottest ticket in town. Both men were Bulgarians and there was pure hate between them; especially from Christoff’s side. Christoff was a protégé of the deceased king Boris. He studied in Italy and was not allowed to return home after the war when the communists had snatched power. He didn’t even get a visa to attend his father’s funeral. Ghiaurov was sent to Italy by the communists for further study. Their confrontations as Filippo and Grande Inquisitore in a La Scala Don Carlos are still legendary. Nobody had ever witnessed such (real) hatred in that scene. Afterwards, Christoff demanded that Ghiaurov be ousted but sovrintende Ghiringhelli sided with the younger bass and Christoff’s career at La Scala was finished. »
08 Jun 2005
With Monserrat Caballé’s sensational concert at the same hall in September 2000, this is the second appearance of a famous Spanish opera singer in Sofia. The advertising campaign that started two months ago brought very good results assembling the la crema y la nata de la sociedad. The Sofia Metropolitan Orchestra conducted by David Himenez performed well in the solos: Rossini’s “La gazza ladra” and the intermezzo of Heronimo Himenez’ zarzuella “La boda de Luis Alonso.” José Carreras chose to partner with the young and promising Bulgarian soprano, Zvetelina Maldzanska, to share his triumph in Sofia. »
07 Jun 2005
Theatrical magic and cheerful charm abound in Opera Theatre of St. Louis’ new production of Andre-Ernest-Modeste Gretry’s version of “Beauty and the Beast,” seen Sunday evening in its premiere. »
06 Jun 2005
Alessandro Trovato’s admirably honest and forthright booklet essay (translated by Daniela Pilarz) for this Dynamic release of Verdi’s Il Corsaro goes a long way to explaining why this ranks as one of the master’s least-performed works. »
06 Jun 2005
Ahí estaba Angela Gheorghiu, recogiendo la ovación que se llevaba tras cantar el aria Prendi, per me sei libero, de la penúltima escena de L’elisir d’amore. Lo hacía abrazada al tenor Giuseppe Filianoti, a quien consolaba mesándole el pelo. En la escena anterior, Filianoti había cantado Una furtiva lagrima, y lo hizo, ay, con dos espectaculares gallos incluidos. »
05 Jun 2005
Ein gesellschaftliches, aber auch ein musikalisches Ereignis der besonderen Art: auf Einladung der Philharmoniker im Kammermusiksaal neben Sir Simon Rattle sitzen zu dürfen, um gemeinsam mit ihm die zauberhafte Lady Rattle, alias Magdalena Kozená, singen zu hören. Ihr Vortrag glich einem Streifzug durch Kunst gewordene Volkstümlichkeit: einer klingenden Speisekarte der Erinnerungen an die Heimatsprache der Musik. »
05 Jun 2005
In some circles, Bostridge isn’t fashionable, perhaps because he achieved success so early, because he didn’t come up through the choirboy route, and, perhaps, most of all because he is so startlingly different. But those with a real interest in intelligent music making would do well to ignore the clichés and really listen to this. It’s an experience to change most perceptions of the cycle, and indeed of Schubert. This is no quaint bucolic romp. The protagonist kills himself, doomed even before he meets the girl. As Bostridge points out, the poet Wilhelm Müller said it should be “im Winter zu lessen.” The songs refer to Maytime and blossoms, but since Nature itself is destructive, this is just seductive sham. This cycle is to read in the spirit of a harsh Prussian winter, not an innocent Austrian spring. Schubert picked up on the inner meaning of Müller’s poetry because he had himself just been diagnosed with syphilis — the AIDS of his era. He had no bucolic delusions. He knew only too well that Nature can turn love into death. »
04 Jun 2005
Lorin Maazel has done a very bad thing. Have you heard? He wrote an opera, “1984” (based on the Orwell novel, of course). It was premiered at London’s Covent Garden last month. And he paid for part of the production himself. Very, very bad. »
04 Jun 2005
We haven’t seen much of American soprano Carole Farley in the UK for a very long time. She was something of a cult figure in the late 1970s and early 1980s, specialising in roles such as Berg’s Lulu and the unnamed woman in Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine at a time when some singers were unwilling to tackle them. »
02 Jun 2005
Wojciech Kilar (b. 1932) is an exciting composer from Poland, and he may be best known in the West for his film scores, which include Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), Polanski’s Death and the Maiden (1994), Campion’s Portrait of a Lady (1996) and others. At the same time, Kilar also composes concert music, and his Tryptyk (1997) is a fine example of his work. Nevertheless, film is a useful point of reference in discussions of his style, since some of the techniques he used in creating effective soundtracks may be found in his other music. »
02 Jun 2005
Beyond his song cycles and collections like Schwanengesang, Schubert’s Lieder can be grouped in various ways. In this recording, the baritone Dietrich Henschel and pianist Helmut Deutsch selected twenty Lieder that reflect the ideas of wandering, night, and death, as stated on the jacket copy of this CD. Some of the music chosen is predictably part of this kind of selection, as with “Der Wanderer,” D. 649, “Der Wanderer an den Mond,” D. 870, and “Auf dem Wasser zu singen,” D. 774, while others may be less familiar. The Lieder are from different times in Schubert’s career and include various poets, not only the more famous ones like Goethe and Schlegel, but also figures whose reputation may be attributed to the composer’s settings of their verses. »
01 Jun 2005
In its recent performances of Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream Chicago Opera Theater affirms its reputation for carefully gauged and well cast productions. Already from the subdued opening accompanied by muted strings an underlying tension is evident in the darting figure of Puck, a spoken role assumed in this production by the actor Jason Griffin. The movements of all the characters in this production are matched consistently to an orchestral or vocal expression, emphasizing thus the union of choreography with lyrical and declamatory effect. Chicago Opera Theater’s presentation divides the action and emotional entanglements of Britten’s three acts into two parts. Soon after the start of the first of these the royal fairy couple, Oberon and Tytania, enter in formal dress. Their disagreement over a youth taken into the service of the queen, yet desired by Oberon, fuels an initial conflict that — by the time of its resolution — will bear on the fates of the other pairs of young lovers in the piece as well. »
01 Jun 2005
With Nabucco (1842) Giuseppe Verdi began a long and feverishly productive creative period in his life. More importantly, in this work, largely influenced by French grand opéra, the masses are as important as the soloists. This is one of the reasons why this opera, representing the enslavement of the Hebrews by the Babylonians under the rule of Nebuchadnezzar, was later received as a metaphor of the Austrian political domination of Italy, which the patriots of the Risorgimento were fighting against. Neither the alleged political metaphor (which has been recently questioned by Roger Parker), nor the grandeur of the drama as a series of large tableaux seem to be at the center of the conception of this recent production (Genoa, 2004), staged in a relatively small theater that does not allow choral masses to act dynamically (the soloists overpower the contained choral masses). »
01 Jun 2005
The recording industry has recently been good for Umberto Giordano. We now at last have well recorded performances of Mala Vita (Bongiovanni), Siberia (Gala), Madame Sans-Gêne, Il Re and Mese Mariano (all on Dynamic). Still missing are recordings of his first opera Marina, of Regina Diaz, Marcella (Gigli recorded one aria) and Giove a Pompei. La Cena delle Beffe was somewhat better represented. There was a live performance on MRF-LP and in 1988 Bongiovanni recorded another performance (with Fabio Armiliato) in Piacenza. Both recordings however are no match for the RAI broadcast of the 14th of April 1956 (and not 1955 as the sleeve notes say). That recording was already issued several years ago by the same company (Myto 2MCD002.220). The big difference between both issues is that this first version included an Italian language-only libretto while this new issue doesn’t. That can make a difference for enjoying the recording though Sem Benelli’s Italian libretto is not exactly written in house and kitchen Italian. »
31 May 2005
One of the nice features of art in former times was the care-free way artists took in mining the same sources over and over again. Contents and quality were held in higher esteem than an “original” idea. Auber’s La Muette de Portici was still in full swing in many theatres when Antonio Ghislanzoni of Aida-fame concocted a libretto on the same subject: the rising of Naples led by the fisherman Tomas Aniello against the Spanish viceroy in 1647. (Incidentally, it is a legend that La Muette triggered the separatist mutiny that ended the united Netherlands in 1830). And in 1953 composer Jacopo Napoli won third prize in the Verdi composition competition with another Mas’aniello which was duly performed at La Scala. As they couldn’t find a tenor, they asked a youngster, thanked him profusely after the job was done and sent him back home for another two years: Carlo Bergonzi. »
30 May 2005
The appearance of a DVD of the Beaumarchais — Salieri Tarare is cause for celebration. »
30 May 2005
L’événement du mois, sinon de la saison, vient d’avoir lieu à Toulouse avec la nouvelle production d’un chef d’œuvre trop rarement joué : Medea de Luigi Cherubini. Avec, pour défendre le rôle-titre, l’éblouissante performance d’Anna Caterina Antonacci, couronnant une réalisation de tout premier plan, tant au niveau de l’Orchestre National du Capitole dirigé par Evelino Pidò, qu’à celui des mises en scène, décors et costumes signés Yannis Kokkos. Une réussite exemplaire dont il ne faudra pas rater la reprise au Châtelet de Paris dans le cadre de son annuel festival des régions.* Compositeur majeur, à la fois contemporain de Mozart – il était son cadet de quatre ans – et de Beethoven – né dix ans après lui -, injustement boudé par divers oukases de ces modes qui se suivent puis se démodent, il était l’homme de la maestria absolue, héritier de Gluck, mozartien dans l’air du temps, adepte de la rigueur classique et annonciateur visionnaire du romantisme. Autant d’éléments et de formes qui émaillent son œuvre prolifique (opéras, cantates, messes, sublime musique de chambre) comme Les Cailloux du Petit Poucet. Berlioz le railla, l’admira, l’imita… »
30 May 2005
LOS ANGELES, May 29 – Portraying the title role of Verdi’s “Falstaff,” which opened at the Los Angeles Opera on Saturday, the bass-baritone Bryn Terfel is so irascible, nimble on his feet and altogether charming that he almost makes you forget how splendidly he sings the music. Yes, this Falstaff is a blowhard, a bald and broken-down knight, and a shameless moocher. »
29 May 2005
Did Mozart really think Cosi Fan Tutte was a comedy? Matthew Warchus didn’t seem sure when he created his ENO staging three years ago; but, even if Steven Stead’s revival doesn’t milk every gag in Jeremy Sams’ wonderfully witty translation of Da Ponte’s libretto, there are enough laughs to make you think he might have done. »
29 May 2005
Friday will go down in the annals as one of the most spectacular opera evenings ever at the May Festival.
Two of the world’s greatest Wagnerian singers, soprano Deborah Voigt and tenor Ben Heppner, came together for the first time in Act II of “Tristan und Isolde,” a concert performance under the baton of James Conlon in Music Hall. It was one of those rare moments of music making that one feels lucky to witness, and the hall erupted in cheers for nearly 10 minutes at its conclusion. »
29 May 2005
Recently released by TDK, this version of a Tchaikovsky classic was recorded at the Bolshoi Theater in October 2000. Directed by Boris Pokrovsky and conducted by Mark Ermler, the production features Maria Gavrilova as Tatiana, Nikolai Baskov as Lensky, Vladimir Redkin as Onegin, Yelena Novak as Olga, and Aik Martirosyan as Gremin. It is very much a live recording, complete with curtain calls and screaming fans who cheer their favorites after practically every number (to the performers’ credit, there are no encores!). »
28 May 2005
Bellini’s last opera has had its share of classic performances on stage and in studio, but it has not truly challenged the prominence of the reigning work of this bel canto master, Norma. The Druid princess remains such an attraction both for sopranos who aspire to greatness and to audiences who relish its dramatic power that it alone of all Bellini’s works maintains a firm position in the standard repertory. »
27 May 2005
Il y a trois ans, l’Arabella de Richard Strauss mise en scène par Peter Mussbach avait été l’un des points culminants de la saison du Châtelet, mais avait divisé les esprits : certains avaient taxé de froideur le décor étonnant d’Erich Wonder, regrettant sans doute le rococo viennois. C’était oublier que le livret, laissé inachevé par Hofmannsthal, mort d’une apoplexie alors qu’il mettait son chapeau pour se rendre à l’enterrement de son fils, n’a strictement plus rien des stucs du Chevalier à la rose, mais éclaire avec cruauté le monde moderne des années 20 et sa décomposition sociale. Tout cela, ce hall de grand magasin avec ses escalators à l’endroit et à l’envers, le dit aussi bien que des personnages dont le rang social s’effrite sous l’assaut des névroses. Non seulement le spectacle n’a pas vieilli, mais il a gagné en concentration. »
27 May 2005
It doesn’t matter who sings what. At some point, someone’s fist is up someone else’s rectum. Some of us were not even sure this was anatomically possible until the nihilistic Catalan director Calixto Bieito took up opera. Now it’s routine. »
27 May 2005
This 2-disc recording contains three mid-Baroque English operas, two of them by Purcell. Dido and Aeneas is the well-known ancient Greek story of the widowed Carthaginian queen Dido and her doomed love for the wandering Aeneas, with its most famous aria built on a descending ground bass. The Masque of Cupid and Bacchus is a light-hearted comparison of the joys of love and drunkenness. Pan and Syrinx is a through-sung, one-act English opera on an original text by Lewis Theobald. It premiered at London’s Lincoln’s Inns Fields Theatre in 1718. London’s opera scene was dominated by Italian opera at this time, and it was very successful as an English-language opera. It is the story of the woodland god Pan, who falls for a cold-hearted nymph named Syrinx. Typical of maidens who are about to be ravished when they don’t want to be, Syrinx calls to the gods as Pan attempts to grab her, and she is transformed into a bunch of reeds, from which Pan makes his panpipe, in order to sing her eternal praise and lament her death. »
27 May 2005
In an age where youth and haste are prized, this is anachronistic: Claudio Abbado, at the age of 72, is conducting his first Magic Flute. Paradoxically, it would be hard to imagine the piece sounding fresher, more limber or agile. »
26 May 2005
In December 1772, Mozart completed Lucio Silla on commission for Milan’s Teatro Regio Ducale — his second opera for Milan, after Mitridate. This opera seria is placed in ancient Rome, where Lucio Silla is the absolute dictator. Silla wishes to marry Giunia, the wife of the Roman senator Cecilio, whom he had exiled. After an attempt to assassinate Silla is thwarted, Cecilio is condemned to die. Silla eventually renounces the dictatorship, pardons Cecilio, frees all political prisoners, and gives freedom to the Roman people. »
26 May 2005
Por primera vez en México y con una producción fastuosa como se ha presentado en Nueva York se presentará en el Teatro de la Ciudad la ópera “Rigoletto” de Giuseppe Verdi. »
26 May 2005
Rigoletto was condemned by the governor of Venice as a deplorable, repugnant, obscene triviality. We live in more enlightened times: Compared to Desperate Housewives, Giuseppe Verdi’s tale of seduction, vengeance, corruption and murder is a walk in the park. »
25 May 2005
These two sets of three CDs each are the current installment in Ton Koopman’s monumental complete cycle of J.S. Bach’s cantatas, performed by the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Choir, and produced by his wife, Tini Mathot. The cycle started out in 1995 on the Erato label, but only twelve volumes had been published when Erato was disbanded by its parent company, Time Warner. After searching for another label that would take over his cycle project, Koopman finally applied for a loan and started his own label, Antoine Marchand, which is distributed by Challenge Classics and Allegro. Koopman’s cycle has loosely followed Bach’s original chronological order of performance for the volumes appearing so far (vol. 1-13.) Appearing after a gap of two years since vol. 13, the current two volumes cover cantatas from Bach’s second to third yearly cycles of cantatas for Leipzig (chorale cantatas.) »
24 May 2005
Brilliant Classics’ Teresa Berganza: The Spanish Soul is an outstanding compilation of Spanish songs and cycles by prolific Spanish and Latin American composers, including de Falla, Granados, Turina, Guridi, Toldra, Villa-Lobos, Braga, and Guastavino. The very beauty of this recording is the innate sense of energy in the Spanish style, which both Berganza and pianist Juan Antonio Alvarez Parejo seem to execute effortlessly. Once more, such an extensive collection of well-known compositions alongside rare jewels creates an essential recording. »
24 May 2005
This new release from Pearl presents an anthology of Russian selections, primarily operatic, performed by tenor Ivan Kozlovsky (1900-1993). Kozlovsky was one of the giants of the Russian operatic stage during its glory days in the 1940s and 50s; he recorded extensively with Melodiya, both Russian and Western repertoire. Surprisingly, however, there has apparently never been a Kozlovsky Russian anthology available prior to this release (Myto Records released a collection of the singer’s Western operatic hits in 2000). It is gratifying to see it finally here. »
24 May 2005
Featuring nine arias from various eighteenth-century operas and composers, this recording contains a wide variety of dramatic songs, three of which are the recitative and aria “Se cerca, se dice: “I’amico dov’e?” and “Ha keres, ha kerdez: a baratom hol van?” from the opera L’Olimpiade, set by three different composers. Accompanied on period instruments by the Savaria Baroque Orchestra, Monica González does a magnificent job with each of the arias on this disc. She is a former winner of the International “Toti dal Monte” singing competition, and has studied by personal invitation with Dame Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge at their home in Montreaux. »
24 May 2005
Accord has gone back to the vaults for an attractively packaged series called “Opérette.” On the evidence of two of the sets, these releases feature recordings made in the late 1950s and early ‘60s. The booklets are entirely in French (and offer no librettos whatsoever), but even a French-challenged persons such as your reviewer can understand the inside front cover, which appears to explain that the recordings are the efforts of “L’Academie Nationale de l’Opérette.” This organization appears to have as its rationale — all right, raison d’etre — the preservation, if not resuscitation, of the great French tradition of light musical entertainments. With bold, bright colors decorating the packaging, the sets come across as delectable candy boxes — but how much sweetness one will enjoy when partaking of the series does depend on a taste for the bouncy, frivolous world of operetta. »
23 May 2005
One of the more interesting debates in arts politics in England last century centered on the language in which operas should be performed. While some staunchly favored opera in the original, others maintained that librettos should be translated into the vernacular. The latter side felt strongly that opera in English would nurture a national style of operatic presentation; a more chauvinistic argument suggested that if native composers heard opera in English, they would be more likely to attempt to set original English librettos (which, of course, would come from the pens of similarly inspired writers). Benjamin Britten and W.H. Auden’s Peter Grimes (1945) might be interpreted as representative of such a strategy. In addition, the mounting of vernacular performances also would inspire British performers (and discourage foreign singers who would be less likely to want to relearn a role in a new language). The debate eventually led to the division of operatic labor, with Covent Garden (soon to be renamed The Royal Opera) to perform works in their original languages and Sadler’s Wells (renamed the English National Opera after its move to the Coliseum, where it remains today) to produce works in translation. Thus, it was left up to audiences to decide which they preferred—or, better yet, to enjoy them both. »
23 May 2005
This disc features nine compositions by eight composers located in the area of northern Germany from the sixteenth to the early seventeenth centuries. Despite the title, this recording presents sets of sacred compositions for soprano voice and instruments separated by purely instrumental pieces. The disc begins and ends with compositions by Christian Geist (ca. 1640-1711); otherwise, there is a variety of composers and compositions represented here. »
23 May 2005
IT IS 35 years since Sir Peter Hall’s first Glyndebourne production, 21 since he became director of productions and 15 since he stormed out. Two of his productions are playing this year, including this curtainraiser; it makes you wonder what is going on there. »
23 May 2005
Conductor Charles Mackerras is 80 later this year, a fact he is seemingly already celebrating with multiple performances of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. Hard on the heels of a revival at Covent Garden and a new recording for Chandos comes a second revival at Glyndebourne, which, purely in terms of conducting and playing, is well nigh exemplary. Mackerras’s interpretation of Zauberflöte has always combined serenity with great wit, and his deployment here of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment adds an extra emotional dimension, with the darker sound of period instruments creating a mood of spiritual austerity that offsets the score’s humour and humane warmth. »
22 May 2005
I never “got” I Masnadieri; not even in the wonderful Bergonzi-Caballé recording I bought the moment it appeared in 1975. I had a feeling that for once Verdi had lost his unbelievable magic as a tune-smith. Corsaro, Giorno di Regno, Battaglia, Alzira etc. all sounded familiar after a few playings but Masnadieri never got under my skin with the exception of the rousing tenor cabaletta and the soprano’s aria. I was in good company as even Budden in his well-known analysis of the opera speaks of “a seemingly backward step.” Well, the good news is that Verdi of course knew it better and that the opera really works in a professional production with acceptable singers. »
22 May 2005
When the irascible W.S. Gilbert was directing this break-through operetta, he admonished a soprano: “This is not Italian opera. It is only a low burlesque of the worst possible kind.” »
21 May 2005
There are two reasons the rising Russian superstar Evgeny Nikitin should not sing Don Giovanni. One is his obfuscated, typically Slav diction in Italian, the other the difficulty his impressive voice has in spinning exposed Mozartian line. Both defects would disqualify him on a recording but, in the magical world of live opera, Nikitin’s animal magnetism helps us understand what the fuss is all about. »
21 May 2005
According to the book jacket, this is the first major scholarly study of Così fan tutte, considered to be one of Mozart's least-understood operas and librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte's most interesting text. »
20 May 2005
The importance of the Teatre del Liceu, can not be overstated. The house ranks with all the leading theatres of the world, being right up there with Paris, London, New York, Vienna, Madrid, Rome, Milan, Lisbon, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Turin, Naples, Buenos Aires, and other cities of comparable importance. During its long history (158 years at the time of writing) it featured many of the great singers. These include Caruso, Battistini, Tamagno, Ruffo, Caballe, Tebaldi, Mario, Pavarotti, Vignas, Lazaro, O'Sullivan, Stracciari, Pagliughi, Gayarre, Masini, Stagno, Lauri-Volpi, Bellincioni, and countless others. Quite a few of these who sang there before 1897 are represented on the accompanying disc. »
20 May 2005
Thomas May's stated goal in Decoding Wagner is indeed summarized in his subtitle, An Invitation to His Music Dramas. Mr. May offers an introduction to those who may seek a reliable yet succinct guide in their first Wagnerian experience; a further potential readership is seen among those who have attended performances of Wagner but who wish to expand their appreciation of the music dramas. In his chronological overview of Wagner's oeuvre from the mid-1830s until the close of his career May presents an approachable guide to appreciating the composer's operatic genius. As an illustration of May's commentary on the works, a generous selection of Wagner's music is included on two Discs that accompany the volume in a protective sleeve. »
20 May 2005
The songs of Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) are some of the finest works examples of the genre and they represent the mature French mélodie in the hands of a composer who knew both the voice and the piano quite well. This release is the first of four discs that include all of Fauré’s songs for voice and piano within Hyperion’s series of French Song editions. Like those other collections from Hyperion, this volume of the Fauré set involves excellent performers who know the literature well. »
20 May 2005
Blouson vert pomme, jeans bleus, corsage fuchsia, cheveux courts et roux couronnant une taille imposante, Susan Graham joue sans affectation l’Américaine à Paris dans les couloirs austères et académiques de l’Opéra Garnier. Dans quelques jours, elle interprétera le rôle de Sesto (Sextus) de La Clémence de Titus dans une mise en scène déjà représentée à Salzbourg en 1994 où elle était alors Annio (Annius). «J’ai eu la chance d’avoir de grands professeurs pour cet opéra, explique-t-elle, puisque j’ai tenu trois fois le rôle d’Annio alors que Sesto était chanté par Tatiana Troyanos, Ann Murray et Frederica von Stade. J’ai toujours dans l’oreille les inflexions et l’intensité de Tatiana. C’était ma première apparition professionnelle à Chicago, en 1989…» »
19 May 2005
Paul McCreesh’s approach to Bach’s last major choral work is about as far removed as possible from traditional heavyweight performances of the B minor Mass, and distinctly different from the approach of many of his period-instrument peers as well. For this superbly energised account, the Gabrieli Consort consisted of just 10 singers, divided equally into a ripieno, which provided the soloists, and a consort, which joined in for the large-scale numbers. The orchestra was just over twice that size. This minimalist approach produced gains in equality between voices and orchestras, and marvellous clarity in the contrapuntal writing. It also enabled McCreesh to adopt tempi that would have had a larger choir tied in knots. »
19 May 2005
Hot on the heels of their marathon appearance at the Moscow Easter Festival, the artistic forces of St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater are preparing for a return visit to Moscow. Starting Monday, they take to the main stage of the Bolshoi Theater with three evenings of ballet and a complete performance of Richard Wagner’s four-part operatic cycle “The Ring of the Nibelung.” »
19 May 2005
At first glance, Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream’’ is a frothy tale, a story of youthful romance going charmingly awry.
True, Tatania, the fairy queen, feuds fiercely with her husband, Fairy King Oberon, over custody of a boy prince the Queen of India has given her. But the course of true love ne’er did run smooth, and Shakespeare’s beleaguered lovers triumph in the end. »
18 May 2005
On Monday night at Weill Recital Hall—the lovely space upstairs at Carnegie—Sarah Connolly gave us one of the most satisfying events of the season. The English mezzo-soprano sang a diverse recital, offering Haydn, Brahms, Hahn, Korngold, and Weill (Weill at Weill!). This followed her debut at the Metropolitan Opera, as Annio in Mozart’s “Clemenza di Tito.” All in all, Ms. Connolly put in a very good month’s work in New York. »
18 May 2005
Nelle sue ultime dichiarazioni il nuovo sovrintendente della Scala Lissner ha spesso accennato, senza fare nomi, a cinque direttori d’orchestra, da lui ritenuti i migliori del mondo. Non siamo in grado di dire se Harnoncourt faccia parte di questa rosa, ma non esiteremmo ad affermare che nell’ambito dell’opera mozartiana il direttore austriaco abbia introdotto nuovi canoni interpretativi. Tra palco e buca, infatti, l’intesa è simbiosi. Il Concentus Musicus ha dimostrato di essere non solo ottimo complesso strumentale, ma anche eccelso apparato operistico. Harnoncourt dirige l’orchestra ascoltando le voci, senza mai coprirle, anzi assecondandone le virtù e sfocandone le debolezze, in un alternare continuo di livelli dinamici e sfumature timbriche. Tre ore e mezza di musica che non conoscono cali di tensione. »
17 May 2005
Für Jean-Pierre Haeck war es eine gelungene Premiere. Für das Publikum war der Abend die Begegnung mit einem Höhepunkt des verdischen Belcanto, einer Oper, die zu unrecht ein wenig in Vergessenheit geraten ist. »
17 May 2005
El Liceu estrena esta noche Jenufa, una gran ópera del compositor checo Leos Janacek, con libreto de Gabriella Preissova, en una producción de la ópera de Hamburgo que se ha visto en el Covent Garden y el Metropolitan. »
17 May 2005
NEW YORK—There’s a line in Act 2 of Franco Alfano’s rarely heard opera “Cyrano de Bergerac” that marks a critical turning point in the sad story of a poet’s unrequited love: “The Tiger’s awakening.” It’s said to Cyrano, the artist with a short temper, a fast sword and an excruciatingly big nose. But it might well stand for the effect tenor Placido Domingo had on audiences Friday night at the Metropolitan Opera when he sang the title role, a new role and the 121st of his exceptionally long and productive career. »
17 May 2005
For more than a quarter century, Peter Phillips and the Tallis Scholars have achieved great distinction in the performance of sixteenth-century polyphony, bringing to that repertory interpretations of engaging directness, rhythmic vitality, and fullness of tone. These are qualities that are admirably well suited to the music of the Eton Choirbook and one of its most representative composers, John Browne, the subject of this recent recording. »
16 May 2005
This strange effort was billed as a Celebratory Gala Concert: Angela Gheorghiu Sings Puccini. Just what we were meant to be celebrating was unclear. But what we got was Gheorghiu singing eight Puccini arias, plus his Salve Regina, together with a couple of encores. »
16 May 2005
Philippe Jordan leitete eine musikalische Neueinstudierung des “Rosenkavalier” mit Johan Botha als Überraschungsgast.
Ganz auf kammermusikalische Finesse hatte Philippe Jordan diesen Strauss angelegt. Freilich führte er das makellos, mit kostbaren Soli aufspielende Staatsopernorchester meist so straff, dass selbst die Walzerpassagen sich selten zu brillantem Glanz aufschwangen. »
16 May 2005
Katie Mitchell’s staging of Handel’s last original oratorio was widely admired when presented by Welsh National Opera two years ago. Transported from Cardiff’s New Theatre to the Coliseum for English National Opera’s share of the production, whatever dramatic and musical force it had originally has been dissipated. That may be partly the result of the transfer to a much larger auditorium, but the real problems seem more deeply rooted in the production itself. »
13 May 2005
I DON’T say that James Wood’s new opera about everyone’s favourite 12th-century abbess, Hildegard of Bingen, broke the Trade Descriptions Act. But I imagine that many Norfolk and Norwich Festival patrons, lured by the promise of “a spectacle of sound and light”, thought that they were going to get one of those grandiose cathedral son et lumière shows, with the voice of someone like Donald Sinden doing a lugubrious narration while stained-glass windows gently light up. »
13 May 2005
Verdi’s “Rigoletto,” a long-standing audience favorite, received languid treatment from Italian director Walter Le Moli, whose interpretation of the opera premiered at the Mariinsky Theater on May 6 and 7. »
13 May 2005
For its first new production since May of last year, Helikon Opera chose to honor the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe with the premiere last Saturday of “Fallen from the Sky,” a operatic pastiche based on two war-related works by Sergei Prokofiev. »
12 May 2005
There are sopranos, and there are divas. Angela Gheorghiu is definitely one of the latter. You know straight away from watching her stride on to the stage why this woman wins her battles with directors and conductors. »
11 May 2005
Flag-waving celebrations may have been the order of the day across the river, but a far more thoughtful marking of the VE Day anniversary was to be found in the London Philharmonic’s tribute, which almost inevitably took the form of Britten’s War Requiem. What wasn’t inevitable was that it should be led by the orchestra’s chief conductor, who spent VE day as a teenage German soldier in an Allied prisoner-of-war camp. However, it seemed right that Kurt Masur was there. »
11 May 2005
It would be easy to say that the best thing about Il Corsaro is its brevity. There isn’t one item in the young Verdi’s compositional bag of tricks that he didn’t brandish with greater flair elsewhere. Written when the composer was Paris-based and exploring new artistic directions, it suffers from a sense that he was going through the motions. But the Teatro Carlo Felice accords Il Corsaro the respect it would any other Verdi opera, and the rewards are substantial. »
11 May 2005
When this CD arrived, I had never heard of Danish composer Hakon Børresen (1876–1954). Baker’s gives him only a few lines, and a Google search didn’t turn up much information until I found a Danish site (www.samfundet.dk) with interesting biographical details to supplement the little biography in the CD notes. When I put the CD on and sat back to listen, I suddenly realized I had heard, if not heard of, Børresen before. It’s Richard Strauss! Or maybe Edward Elgar. The composer seems to have remained firmly rooted in the nineteenth century (or maybe Hans Pfitzner) until his death, three years after that of Arnold Schoenberg. That he retained his leadership of the Danish Composers’ Society during the Nazi occupation until he was ousted in 1948 may say something about his conservative nature as well. »
11 May 2005
This problematic recording is another in Naxos’s “American Classics” series, an important body of releases that demonstrates the broad reach of American music across two centuries. While some of the recordings are decidedly novelties, they are welcome as such. William Henry Fry’s “Santa Claus” Symphony, for instance, deserves to be heard as well as mentioned in textbooks. The songs of Dave Brubeck, however, are certainly more than novelties, despite their not being as well known or as widely heard as the music of his justly famous quartet. »
10 May 2005
No city is more closely identified with Verdi than Parma – the urban centre closest to the composer’s rural home – and it polishes its image with an annual Verdi festival. As Parma is also home to the National Institute of Verdi Studies, scholarly gatherings play a role, and several visiting orchestras appear. But the festival’s mainstay rests in the Teatro Regio with two new opera productions. »
10 May 2005
The recurring practice in classical recording studios is “re-mastering” recordings of a legendary artist, sometimes focusing on those artists well known but not frequently recorded. Soprano Mara Zampieri is one of those veteran performers, who released only a handful of commercial recordings and no personal compilations. Myto’s new release, Mara Zampieri: A Tribute to Verdi, is proof why this singer has not been recorded more frequently. »
10 May 2005
Das war ein Ensemble! Musikalisch ganz auf Rossinis Spur. Und komödiantisch? Da reichten 50 Quadratzentimeter pro Person, um anzudeuten, was auf einer Opernbühne abgegangen wäre. Denn leider handelte es sich beim jüngsten Münchner “Barbier von Sevilla” nur um eine konzertante Aufführung. Wieder einmal trumpfte das Münchner Rundfunkorchester mit der Oper auf. Diesmal nicht mit einer Rarität, sondern mit einem Top-Ensemble, das eigentlich von Vesselina Kasarova als Rosina angeführt werden sollte. Doch für die Erkrankte sprang kurzfristig Elina Garanca ein und sahnte – zusammen mit ihren Kollegen – beim Sonntagskonzert im Gasteig mächtig ab. »
10 May 2005
Sascha und Mascha, jung verheiratet, treffen einander einmal täglich ir gendwo in Moskau und träumen von einer eigenen Wohnung. Semjon Semjonowitsch Baburow und seine Tochter sind obdachlos geworden – das alte Haus in der “Warmen Seitengasse” ist eingestürzt. Der Sprengstoffexperte und “Dissident” Boris möchte nach Jahren fern von Moskau hier seine große Liebe finden. Und da sind dann noch Sergej und seine angebetete, stramm linientreue Bauarbeiterin Ljusja, auch auf der Suche nach einer Bleibe. »
10 May 2005
Jacques Offenbach’s “The Tales of Hoffmann” has to be one of the most problematic and untidy operas in the international repertory.
Nearly 125 years after its premiere at the Opera-Comique in Paris, the opera is still subject to alterations and adjustments of whatever impresario is producing the show. Different editions abound—since the score was unfinished at the time of the composer’s death—as well as different opinions, almost by definition, about what should and should not be included in any performing edition. »
09 May 2005
The Grand Tour, whereby wealthy Britons travelled through Europe, in particular Italy, imbibing culture at its fountainhead, is the theme of this year’s Lufthansa Baroque Festival. The opening concert focused on Handel, whose reasons for going to Italy were professional, and whose route was unusual. German-born and trained, Handel spent four years in Italy in his early 20s, learning everything he needed to know about the Italian style, and particularly how to write Italian opera. Moving to London, he became its leading purveyor to English audiences for 30 years. »
09 May 2005
MANAUS, Brazil, May 8 – Richard Wagner set his fantastical world of Valkyries, gnomes and giants along the Rhine, not the Amazon. But this is a city with a long history of thinking large and even outlandishly, which is how the Amazonas Opera Festival here has ended up staging Wagner’s sprawling four-part “Ring of the Nibelungen” cycle in the heart of the world’s biggest rain forest. »
09 May 2005
DETROIT, May 8 – Grand opera is happiest when the issues are big and little neutral ground stands between good and evil. What better topic than American slavery and its aftermath? The Michigan Opera Theater’s premiere performance of “Margaret Garner” on Saturday night had heated the passions, stirred guilt and broken a lot of hearts before a word or a note was written. »
09 May 2005
A new recording of Kurt Weill’s (1900 – 1950) ballet chanté, Die 7 Todsünden (1933) featuring Anja Silja and the SWR Rundfunkorchestra Kaiserslautern and conducted by Grzegorz Nowak, has recently been made available in the U.S. on the Hässler-Classic label. Also included on the CD is Weill’s Quodlibet, opus 9 (1923) — an orchestral arrangement taken from his 1922 children’s pantomime, Zaubernacht. »
09 May 2005
Strange to think that Magda Olivero has to thank Renata Tebaldi and Maria Callas for two of her best known live recordings. Tebaldi cancelled the famous Adriana Lecouvreur performances in Naples 1958 (Corelli, Bastianini, Simionato) and La Scala originally wanted Callas as Francesca da Rimini. Twice Olivero substituted and made the role so much her own that whenever one of these operas pops up in a conversation so does Olivero’s name. Contrary to Adriana, Francesca was not a staple in the soprano’s repertoire. She sang a few performances with Alessandro Ziliano and Tullio Serafin in Torino in 1940 and only returned to the role 19 years later for her second and last run of Francescas. »
09 May 2005
The Brilliant Classics label has been releasing budget priced recordings on CD for some time now, many to high praise. Complete symphony cycles (for example, of Shostakovich and Bruckner) have been favorably compared in some publications to those from major labels featuring star conductors and top orchestras. »
09 May 2005
The Basque region of Spain is known as a unique cultural enclave. Within its confines thrives a rich artistic heritage. Composer Francisco Escudero has become one of the most famous 20th century composers from the region. His avant-garde sound blends many eclectic styles with elements of traditional Basque music. »
07 May 2005
Das Amt des Hausregisseurs gibt es an der Bayerischen Staatsoper offiziell nicht. Wenn aber einem diese Funktion gebührt, dann ist es David Alden. Über ein Dutzend Inszenierungen hat der New Yorker hier bereits herausgebracht. Seine aktuelle Regie: Francesco Cavallis Barock-Oper “La Calisto”, die am Montag im Nationaltheater ihre Münchner Erstaufführung erlebt. Ivor Bolton dirigiert. Das Stück erzählt von der Nymphe Calisto, in die sich Jupiter verliebt. In Gestalt der Göttin Diana bandelt er mit ihr an – was die Gattin natürlich übel nimmt. »
07 May 2005
‘The day on which a High Mass composed by me will be performed during the ceremonies solemnised for your imperial highness will be the most glorious day of my life,” wrote Beethoven in 1819 to Archduke Rudolph, the youngest brother of the Holy Roman Emperor Franz I and his composition student. Rudolph had just been elected archbishop of Olmütz in Moravia, and Beethoven was to write a setting of the mass for the installation the following year. In the event, however, the Missa Solemnis would take Beethoven five years to write and would be one of the grandest and most complex works of his later years. It is also one of the hardest of all musical works to perform. When Harmonia Mundi produced a live recording of the piece, conducted by Philippe Herreweghe, there were many who felt that this was the first time they had heard a performance that had the full measure of the work. This weekend he brings the same forces, the Collegium Vocale Gent and the Orchestre des Champs-Elysées to perform it in London. »
06 May 2005
Düsseldorf. Die “Geierwally” als Oper lässt ein Alpendrama mit deftigem Lokalkolorit vermuten. Die Düsseldorfer Erstinszenierung von Alfredo Catalanis “La Wally” bot stattdessen die Seelenstudie einer sexuell frustrierten Gesellschaftsdame, die mit ihrem Wohlstand nichts anzufangen weiß, weil sich ihr der Mann verweigert, den sie liebt. Das Premierenpublikum folgte dieser Umdeutung bereitwillig, jubelte ihr nicht ohne die Lust der Wiedererkennung begeistert zu. »
06 May 2005
Durant les riches années passées à la tête de la Monnaie de Bruxelles, Bernard Foccroulle aura élargi la palette de la mise en scène d’opéra, en faisant appel à des chorégraphes ou à des plasticiens. Ainsi, l’homme de théâtre et dessinateur, le Sud-Africain William Kentridge, grand inventeur d’images fixes et animées. Si l’alchimie se fait entre l’univers visuel du créateur et l’oeuvre qu’il met en scène, cela peut renouveler la question. Dans le cas contraire, on a l’impression de voir, pour paraphraser Godard, non pas «des images justes», mais «juste des images». C’est ce qui se passe avec La Flûte enchantée vue par Kentridge. »
06 May 2005
With a voice at once silvery and dark, compact yet ripe with overtones, soprano Soile Isokoski is in increasing demand as a Wagner and Strauss interpreter. New York so far has heard her primarily in Mozart and French opera, most recently as an achingly poignant Rachel in Halévy’s “La Juive” and as Marguerite in the Metropolitan Opera’s glitzy new staging of Gounod’s “Faust.” »
05 May 2005
Once upon a time, Masked Ball might have made sense. Back in the 1850s, when Giuseppe Verdi wrote it, he based his story on the assassination of Sweden’s King Gustavus III. A despot, cuckold, and philanderer, Gustavus further alienated himself from his subjects by claiming the exclusive right to produce aquavit, and was shot by one Jacob Johan Anckarström at a costume party in 1792. »
05 May 2005
EMI Classics’ release of The Very Best of Bevery Sills is a mixed bag. Unlike similar EMI compilations of Maria Callas, Mirella Freni, or Lucia Popp, who all present an array of signature arias or art songs, this release should be re-titled Some of Beverly Sills’ Opera Scenes and a Few Arias. Though Sills performs with an impressive cast, including Alfredo Kraus, Nicolai Gedda, Sherrill Milnes, and Samuel Ramey, this recording would be much more satisfying if is showcased more of signature Sills. »
04 May 2005
I still remember the incredible excitement in the early 1970s when DGG issued recordings featuring the young conductor, Carlos Kleiber (1930-2004). Both the Weber Freischütz and Beethoven Fifth Symphony showcased the craft of an extraordinary talent, an artist capable of making even the most familiar music sound fresh, spontaneous, and new. Music lovers hoped that this son of the great conductor Erich Kleiber would be a constant presence, both in the concert hall and opera house. »
03 May 2005
“The policies of recording companies never fail to wonder me.” I am often reminded of the late Harold Rosenthal’s expression in the magazine, Opera, and I definitely had it in mind when I received this recording. Why would anyone bring out a set with two singers (Bergonzi and Cappuccilli) duplicating their roles of the classic EMI-recording of 1969; maybe still the best buy around? And yet, yet I’m not so sure anymore of the superfluousness of this set. There are two reasons for it. Number one is Carlo Bergonzi. I didn’t think he would be able to surpass his formidable EMI-Alvaro and nevertheless he does. Bergonzi’s voice was slowly changing in the early seventies. He had been singing the most strenuous roles of the repertoire for almost a quarter of a century and still the voice had not suffered. On the contrary, there were no traces of his baritone past anymore. The top was secure, though there never was much squillo and a high C usually became a high B. It was the middle voice that had changed most. It became honeyed, silvery in an almost Gigli-like way. Combined with his inexhaustible breath control, his legato and the way he could colour some small phrases and switch from forte to a heavenly pianissimo it slowly dawned upon many listeners that here was one of the greatest tenors of the century who maybe had been taken too much for granted. »
03 May 2005
“Few tenors today have his ringing top” and “his ringing, clear top” are not exactly qualities one associates with baritenor Placido Domingo, as he has been calling himself for the last ten years. Still, those were the exact words used by critic Peter Hoffer in his reports for Opera Magazine and Opera News on the opening of La Scala for the season 1969-1970. In all honesty, a ringing top à la Corelli is not exactly what one hears on this recording. But there is no hint of a pushed up baritone either. This is 28-year old fresh voiced Domingo with all the beauty and youthful freshness of the middle voice and quite an acceptable top always taking the higher option (A or B-flat) at the end of a solo or a duet. Mr. Domingo has been so long among us that one somewhat has forgotten how meltingly beautiful the young tenor sang, relying on his outstanding vocal gifts. »
03 May 2005
This DVD release, taken from an RAI telecast, documents a 1991 La Scala performance of Verdi’s 1846 opera, based on the life of Attila the Hun. I’ve always felt that early Verdi is one of Riccardo Muti’s greatest strengths. When Muti was Music Director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, I was privileged to see their concert performances of Nabucco and Macbeth. Both featured breathtaking execution, intensity, and momentum. »
02 May 2005
Beinahe ist die Geschichte zu Ende. Einen Durchlauf wird die Adolf-Dresen-Inszenierung von Wagners “Ring”— Tetralogie in der kommenden Spielzeit noch erleben, dann ist — nach der 25. Aufführung der “Götterdämmerung” — Schluss. Am 2. Dezember 2007 beginnt mit der Premiere der “Walküre” ein neues “Ring”-Projekt, inszeniert von Sven-Eric Bechtolf, dirigiert von Franz Welser-Möst. Dieses wird im Mai 2009 abgeschlossen sein, ziemlich genau ein halbes Jahrhundert nach dem ersten Wiener Nachkriegs — “Ring” Herbert von Karajans. »
02 May 2005
It’s always sensible to arrive early for a show by Birmingham Opera Company, simply to locate the venue. After a marquee for Fidelio three years ago and an abandoned car workshop for Candide in 2003, the company’s Monteverdi project, running since the beginning of last year, comes to a climax in a disused ice rink. »
02 May 2005
A plenitude of sweet music was in the air Saturday night at the Civic Opera House. It arrived long before Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Serenade to Music,” its Shakespearean text a paean to “sweet music,’’ that closed the concert by members of the Lyric Opera Center for American Artists. »
02 May 2005
Operas like “Don Giovanni” or “Die Zauberflöte” today look like repudiations of the formal, almost motionless style that ruled Europe’s musical theater for most of the 18th century. Yet Mozart was surrounded all his life by opera seria, and he wrote four of them, including the early “Idomeneo” and the late “Clemenza di Tito,” which was heard Friday night at the Metropolitan Opera. »
01 May 2005
Vielleicht ist es das beste, was dem krausen Opernschauerdrama passieren kann: Die Macht des Schicksals konzertant, vom ersten Schuss an, der sich von selbst aus der Pistole löst. Die Oper Frankfurt lässt das Werk in der Fassung von 1869 in der Alten Oper unter Leitung Paolo Carignanis hören und hat damit die Einschätzung Theodor W. Adornos angesichts einer Inszenierung des Stücks 1928 am gleichen Ort noch überboten. Die schicksalswütige Romantik des Forza-Buchs, so der damals 25-jährige Musikkritiker, “sei in sich bereits so welk, dass zu seiner Beurteilung Marionettendramaturgie allein zuständig wäre”. »
01 May 2005
The power of the very greatest conductors to reinvent whatever they conduct is one of music’s great mysteries. Claudio Abbado’s conducting is not the only reason to catch the production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte being toured in Italy and Germany by the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, but it is by a very long way the most important. Abbado’s performance is, quite simply, mesmerising. It is so full of musical insight and operatic experience that every bar seems perfectly placed, every detail of the scoring perfectly illuminated. »
01 May 2005
Bring a hankie, the Florentine just opened “La Bohème.”
Puccini’s opera, which combines likable characters, elements of verismo realism, poignantly beautiful music and a tragic tale of young love lost, is one of the world’s best-loved operas. The Florentine Opera opened a strong production of the classic on Friday, in which director Lillian Groag found a balance between the story’s humor and pathos. »
01 May 2005
Monteverdi’s “Orfeo” set in a chic apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutte’’ played out in a trendy club complete with burly, stone-faced doormen and a sleek VIP room.
Chicago Opera Theater has had some smashing successes with stage director Diane Paulus’ contemporary take on centuries-old operas. She is back this spring, teamed once again with conductor Jane ver, her colleague on four previous COT productions, for a fresh look at another Mozart opera, the bittersweet “The Marriage of Figaro.’’ A “Figaro’’ set in Miami’s South Beach, anyone? »
29 Apr 2005
Not the usual twins but a rather original though no less appealing combination. Both operas were cast from strength and far bigger houses would have been proud of it. Hasmik Papian with her splendid spinto voice was a moving if less than usually placid Angelica. She once more became a princess during the confrontation with her aunt. She poured out wonderful tone during her aria ending it however with the soft ravishing high A the score demands. I know Puccini cut it himself though after some protest but one of these days I’d love to hear Angelica’s second big aria after the intermezzo though it was not to be this time. A lot of interest centred upon Fiorenza Cossotto who at the day of the première celebrated her 70th birthday. Well, you cannot erase 50 years of stage experience and she brought to Zia Principessa all the necessary haughtiness and at one small moment even seemed to relent ( nice touch) but then regained her composure. And the voice? In the low register there are still some sounds reminding me of the impetuous Amneris I first saw in 1969. But higher on there is nothing that resembles that bright silvery sound of yore. Decibels there are and a wobble as well. Still, she was not a travesty as was Rita Gorr a few years back in Antwerp who grunted the role. All other roles were sung convincingly. »
29 Apr 2005
The performance started with another prologue than the usual Verdi one. The Minister of Culture had just announced that the Vlaamse Opera would lose its orchestra so that it could be cut into two to complete the two Flemish Symphonic Orchestras which have some empty chairs. As a token of protest the Opera Orchestra decided to play in their daily outfit, not wanting to deprive their clients (and future supporters) of a performance and not repeating the odious Italian way of striking. Their action resulted in a wave of sympathy. At the end of the performance, frail 81 year old Silvio Varviso spoke briefly but forcefully and asked for the spectators’ support. He is completely right as the Opera Orchestra has grown enormously these last 15 years and can easily compete (and sometimes surpasses) Pappano’s former phalanx: De Munt Orchestra. This was only the last stage in a series of happenings that illustrate the difficulties in performing a less known opera. »
29 Apr 2005
In the dark before the lights came up, the stage looked like a set for “Oklahoma!,” down to the dozing cowpoke. The rising lights revealed the object that had looked like a windmill to be a maypole and the setting to be Czech, yet the “Oklahoma!” resemblance didn’t altogether fade. Bedrich Smetana’s opera “The Bartered Bride” has a whiff of an American musical to its simple sweet story (boy loves girl, boy figures out how to get together with girl) and pretty tunes, and the Juilliard Opera Center’s production, which opened on Wednesday, brought out the similarities. »
29 Apr 2005
A few seconds into Dawn Upshaw’s singing, you decide that the most important thing is purity of tone – honest, solid, unadorned tone – and Upshaw has it in spades. »
29 Apr 2005
We don’t hear Bo Skovhus in the UK as much as we should. One of today’s great singers, the handsome Danish baritone is both a star and something of a sex symbol on the European mainland, although his work has been inexplicably undervalued by British opera companies and concert managements. »
28 Apr 2005
Looking for an escape—from reality? The Baltimore Opera Company has just the ticket. Jacques Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann (The Tales of Hoffmann) is not called an “opera fantastique” for nothing. »
28 Apr 2005
There was a time, not so long ago, when Handel was a rare bird on the video shelves of opera shops and record retailers, but it seems that with the advent of the slim ‘n sexy DVD disc, and (in Europe at least) a more flexible attitude to rights issues between record companies and opera houses, that those days are now, happily, past. The latest offering from Farao Classics is the 3 year old Munich Staatsoper production of his “Rodelinda” with staging by David Alden, music direction by Ivor Bolton, first given at their Festival in 2003. I’m not entirely sure why certain operas get chosen for DVD release and others don’t, and this one is a bit of a puzzle for several reasons. »
28 Apr 2005
This CD, entitled "Love Lies Bleeding," is a companion to the fascinating recording by the same soprano and pianist, entitled "With All My Soul" (The Orchard 6003). »
28 Apr 2005
WHAT was that about working with children? Halfway through Humperdinck’s fairytale opera a gang of local kids troops onstage dressed in sheets — angels, see — and hangs around for a bit before sloping off again: the naffest piece of staging I’ve collected in a while, and indicative of some confusion about the purpose of Scottish Opera’s mid-scale touring arm. »
28 Apr 2005
L’Opéra de Paris redonne à partir d’aujourd’hui, à Bastille, le Boris Godounov créé en octobre 2002 sous la baguette de James Conlon et dans la mise en scène de Francesca Zambello. C’est Jiri Kout qui devait assurer la direction musicale de ces nouvelles représentations. Empêché pour des raisons de santé, il sera remplacé par Alexander Vedernikov, directeur musical et chef principal du Théâtre Bolchoï qui assurera les sept premiers concerts, laissant à Alexander Titov, chef invité du Théâtre Marinski depuis 1991, le soin de prendre le pupitre pour les deux derniers. Une façon de recréer à Paris la rivalité artistique qui oppose Moscou à Saint-Pétersbourg. »
28 Apr 2005
In opera, embarrassment comes with the territory. Sooner or later, if you’re a fine and dignified singer, you will find yourself trapped onstage in a situation or a costume so stupid that the voice of God couldn’t save the scene. For René Pape, who has the body and bearing of a Hussar and who is probably the world’s best basso, the moment came in Act IV of the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of “Faust,” the scene in which the illegitimately pregnant Marguerite enters a church to repent and finds a taunting Mephistopheles. »
28 Apr 2005
IMAGINE you’ve got a birthday coming up. What would you like this year? How about a dwarf? I didn’t think so. Well, how about a dwarf who doesn’t know how ugly and misshapen he is, and in fact thinks he’s attractive and loveable? »
26 Apr 2005
On April 23, the 70-year old Bulgarian mezzo, Alexandrina Milcheva, gave a recital of a full value program at the Sofia opera, including airs from: “Orpheus” (Gluck), “Dido and Eneas”(Purcell), “Faust” (Gounod), “Il Trovatore”, “Werther”(Massenet), “Adrienne Lecouvreur”(Cilea)and “Carmen.” »
26 Apr 2005
Christoph Willibald Gluck's (1714-1787) Orfeo ed Euridice is an opera that began a major reform of Italian opera and the way it was composed and performed in the eighteenth century. »
26 Apr 2005
Amid the annual parade of world-class orchestras passing through New York, a visit by the Wroclaw Philharmonic of Poland could easily have been overlooked – and to some extent it was, in a sparsely attended concert at Alice Tully Hall on Sunday afternoon. But on Saturday evening, partly through an accident of timing, the orchestra played to a nearly full house in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. »
26 Apr 2005
In the middle of 2006, when you’d rather scream than hear another note of Mozart, take heed of a less-heralded musical birthday: Hans Werner Henze will turn 80. »
25 Apr 2005
In the wake of soprano Helene Hunt Lieberson cancellation of a Friday appearance at the University of Chicago’s Mandel Hall, management was fortunate to land Michelle DeYoung, one of the finest in a strong contingent of young American mezzos. »
25 Apr 2005
Britten biographer Humphrey Carpenter quotes a friend of the composer’s as calling Miles “a male Lolita.” For all the blather, if not bother, about innocence in The Turn of the Screw, I’ve never felt there was much of it present among the inhabitants of Bly. There’s sure a nasty case of naiveté going around among the grown-ups though. »
24 Apr 2005
Les Pêcheurs de Perles is not a terribly major opera. Ned Rorem once memorably described it as “harmless” concerning the occasion on which it shared a double bill with the world premiere of Poulenc’s Les Mammeles De Tiresias. But for a competent early work by a promising composer who went on to greater things (well, one greater thing, given his tragically early death), Pecheurs has been given an enormous amount of attention both on stage and in the recording studio. An attractive work of conventional Second Empire French oriental exotica, it’s blessed to contain two beloved numbers that have won the hearts of opera lovers whose loyalty keeps it before the public with some frequency. »
24 Apr 2005
Miliza Korjus (1912-1980), the “Queen of Pyrotechnics”, sings with a crystalline precision, reminiscent of Joan Sutherland, and a purity of voice akin to Natalie Dessay. During the height of her operatic career, 1933-1936, Korjus had the flexibility, dynamic vocal range, and brightness to become the quintessential lyric coloratura. Hänssler Classic brings her voice back to life by remastering the very Electrola recordings that made her singing “immortal.” »
24 Apr 2005
With a running time of 60 minutes, this DVD biographic feature on Verdi’s life might possibly be a satisfactory introductory piece for the newcomer to the great man and his art. Even then, the knowledge gained would barely form an outline to be filled in by much more study. However, if one would like a pretty travelogue of the sights and landscapes of Verdi’s Italian roots (with a side trip to Paris), plus a little time joining Thomas Hampson in admiring his own handsome self, Euroarts has a treat in store. »
24 Apr 2005
Last night I saw the second of four performances of Mozart’s La Finta Giardiniera given at the Huntington Theater by the Boston University Opera Institute. Hallmarks of their program are fresh, clear voices brought along in a sane way in appropriate repertory, with stage time given in productions directed, conducted and designed with care. There was a bit of extra drama to this production as Craig Smith, a grand figure in the Boston musical landscape, suffered a heart attack during the final days of rehearsal and David Hoose came to the rescue. The good news is that Smith is doing well. Hoose brought the opera to the stage in fine condition. »
22 Apr 2005
In spite of the fact that Gounod had a special fondness for Polyeucte, it was among the least successful of his many operas. In fact, he was reported to have considered it as the favorite of his works. It was first composed around the time of the Franco-Prussian war. »
22 Apr 2005
There is no doubt that Richard Wagner as an artist, composer, and writer was the center of controversy both during and after his lifetime. Despite the overwhelming political, social, and psychological elements contained in his musical oeuvre, Wagner is one of the more enduring figures in the history of the arts. Based on lectures delivered at the Bayreuth Festival between 1998 and 2000, Simon Williams examines a topic that has generated much interest and scrutiny both within the arts and outside of it: Wagner’s treatment of the hero. »
22 Apr 2005
You can rely on Lovely Music. The new-music label Lovely Music invariably provides some of the most interesting new music available on recordings. They can be relied upon in a business with its fair share of unreliables — immaturity, bad quality recording, sophistry — to give good quality interesting recordings of innovative work. They’ve been around for at least two decades, and their catalog covers some of the very best in what can be called “downtown” new music — conceptual music influenced in large part by John Cage, world music, and modern American art and dance after abstract expressionism (let’s say Warhol and after). Their rather humble website is at www.lovely.com, and really tells only a small part of their story. For someone exploring American new music for the first time, they make a very good starting point. »
21 Apr 2005
Well I’m trying. The liner notes read: “Les Enfants Terribles, the final installment of Philip Glass’ trilogy based on the work of Jean Cocteau, articulates Cocteau’s belief in the transcendent power of imagination and creativity. It is the story of a brother and a sister, Paul and Lise, two characters so caught up in a world of their own imaginings that they can no longer see a reality beyond their ‘game’.” The music on this cd is the accompaniment to a dance/opera (and thus it’s only half the story — to be as fair as possible to thing). The work is scored for three singers and a narrator, accompanied by three keyboards. »
21 Apr 2005
This is very pleasant new music, long in breath, richly scored, nice poetry, nothing pretentious, but good solid rewarding composition. Ms. Saariaho is truly adept at making a great orchestral score, and she has a way with voices, particularly Pia Freund’s on the first track, which truly soars. »
20 Apr 2005
Richard Jones’s English National Opera production of Berg’s Lulu was widely regarded as one of the company’s finest achievements when it premiered in 2002. The first night of its revival, however, was a somewhat awkward affair, in which illness regrettably played its part. Lisa Saffer (Lulu) and Susan Parry (Geschwitz) were singing with apologies, after suffering from throat infections. Fine actresses both, they compensated for vocal roughness with performances of uncommon dramatic vividness, though Saffer’s understandable tentativeness inevitably meant that we were faced with a Lulu whose physical glamour was unsupported by equivalent vocal allure. »
20 Apr 2005
No other city puts on a welcome quite like Paris. When the Olympic committee came to evaluate the city’s bid to host the games, they were greeted by strikes, and last week the Théâtre du Châtelet’s bid for artistic glory met with a similarly thumb-to-the-nose response. »
20 Apr 2005
Tomorrow night, the Metropolitan Opera unveils a new production of Charles Gounod’s “Faust,” its sixth. The musical expectations are high. James Levine, the Met’s music director, is conducting the opera for the first time, leading an international A-list cast: the French-Sicilian tenor Roberto Alagna as Faust, one of his signature roles; the Finnish soprano Soile Isokoski as Marguerite, the innocent he seduces and abandons; the German bass René Pape as Méphistophelès, an eagerly anticipated role debut; and the Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky as the soldier Valentin, Marguerite’s brother. »
20 Apr 2005
Even though no sensation-hungry opera director has tampered with Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Consul to “update” the work in today’s all-too-common effort to make opera “relevant” to modern audiences, this half-century-old opera has not lost one iota of such relevancy. »
19 Apr 2005
Some 20 years ago I ended my subscription to Opera Magazine after an article by its editor, the late Harold Rosenthal. He had written a review of La Clemenza di Tito that described tenor Stuart Burrows in words that, for those who did not attend the performance, they had missed the second coming of Enrico Caruso, Jussi Björling and Beniamino Gigli in one person. I had attended and I knew that Rosenthal and his colleagues could be almost funny in their chauvinism but enough was enough. Well, I’m happy to report the old tradition still lives on. I looked at some reviews of this recital by British critics and Giuseppe De Luca, Tito Gobbi and Robert Merrill in their heydays would have been proud of such notices. »
19 Apr 2005
Books described as a "Companion" to this or that and published by university presses should be required to come with a Reader Beware label. As is the case with many books put out by university and many for-profit publishers, the main reason for publishing these is to advance the tenure and promotion prospects of the authors. This is not a bad thing, except that all too often the books aren't very good. »
18 Apr 2005
Riccardo Muti, the Italian conductor, has been much in the news lately, having quit La Scala – that is an interesting story. But that is not today’s story: Mr. Muti was in New York last week, for a subscription series with the Philharmonic. On his program were two seldom-heard works, the first more seldom heard than the second: Goffredo Petrassi’s “Coro di morti” (“Chorus of Dead Ones”) and Liszt’s “Faust Symphony.” Saturday’s was a concert of the highest order. »
18 Apr 2005
For whom is this fine CD? It is published by Hänssler Verlag; a publishing house that specializes in Christian literature and that has a classical record branch as well. »
18 Apr 2005
KÖLN. Als Anna Netrebko ihre Stimme zum silbernen Mond hob wie Rusalka in der gleichnamigen Märchenoper Antonín Dvoráks, tönten die ersten Bravi der 8000 Gäste in der Großoper Kölnarena. Annas Aufstieg ist märchenhaft verlaufen; von Kälte, dem Problem der Nixe Rusalka, war in der gut geheizten und besuchten Halle keine Spur, und einen Prinzen musste sie nicht verführen, sie hat ihn einfach angerufen. José Cura, der gut aussehende und zudem stimmgewaltige Tenor aus Argentinien, war der Einladung gern gefolgt. »
17 Apr 2005
Despite Nabucco’s rudimentary plot and underdevelopment of its subsidiary characters, its dignity is maintained through its music, which, although still primitive by Verdian standards, already shows signs of the greatness to come. »
17 Apr 2005
Michelle DeYoung, to seriously understate the fact, looked radiant.
The first of three performances as Sieglinde and Waltraute in Lyric Opera of Chicago’s hugely successful production of Wagner’s “The Ring of the Nibelung” was behind her, and the American mezzo-soprano seemed to be counting the minutes until she would be back on the Civic Opera House stage making passionate love to Placido Domingo, Siegmund to her Sieglinde in this production. Her cloud of long, crisply crinkled blond hair caught the light like an angel’s aureole as she settled into a conference room backstage at Lyric. She was revved up to talk about her transformation from a Colorado-reared, conservative Christian teenager whose chosen life goal was to marry and have lots of children into an opera singer in demand across the United States and Europe. »
17 Apr 2005
Fondé en 1985 par Olivier Desbordes, Opéra Eclaté Midi-Pyrénées est bien connu des amateurs d’art lyrique qui fréquentent, au mois d’août, le festival de Saint-Céré (Lot). Cette compagnie nationale de théâtre musical, fixée depuis 1996 à Tarbes (Hautes-Pyrénées), trouve toutefois sa raison d’être dans une décentralisation qui s’est traduite pendant vingt ans par plus de 900 représentations données en France et à l’étranger. »
16 Apr 2005
The second of two performances of Manuel García’s L’isola disabitata (The Uninhabited Island) in WFU’s Brendle Recital Hall on April 8 was a happy marriage of musicological scholarship and practical vocal pedagogy. I am familiar with Teresa Radomski’s work as an opera and oratorio soloist; the focus of her scholarship – the careful transcription of manuscripts and the creation of a performing edition of a salon opera by García – was fascinating. Her splendid program notes place the work in its historical context and recount aspects of her research. She transcribed the score from a complex original manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris) while on research leave. With her brother, musicologist James Radomski, she completed a critical edition of the opera which is being published by A-R Editions, Inc. »
15 Apr 2005
Of all the singing geniuses of the 20th century, Lotte Lehmann is among the forefront. Though not blessed with the most beautiful voice or impressive technique, Lehmann knew how to reach her audience through unmatched musical interpretation and expression. She was able to win the love of her audience, and now, almost a century from the start of her career, the world continues to sing her praises. »
15 Apr 2005
Am 8. Jänner 1734 wurde erstmals eine Oper von Georg Friedrich Händel am Royal Opera House in Covent Garden gespielt. “Ariodante” hieß sie – und wurde ein voller Publikumserfolg. Bald darauf fiel das Werk in einen 200-jährigen Dornröschenschlaf. Erst ab 1927 erlebte es eine Renaissance, wurde in Stuttgart gespielt, an der Berliner Staatsoper, beim Salzburger Pfingstfestival. In Wien war die opera seria, die auf demselben Stoff beruht wie Shakespeares “Viel Lärm um nichts” (auf “Orlando furioso” von Ariosto), noch nie zu sehen. »
15 Apr 2005
In Making Words Sing, Jonathan Dunsby investigates what he calls the "vocality" of song, that is, the "quality of having voice," as the author states in the introduction to his study. By using this perspective, Dunsby focuses on the intensification of the text that occurs when words are set to music, which stands in opposition to the kind of "songfulness" that Lawrence Kramer discussed in Musical Meaning: Toward a Critical History (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002). »
15 Apr 2005
One has to wonder if the number of recordings of English choirs singing English choral music will ever reach a saturation point. This Naxos double disc by the Choir of St. Johns College, Cambridge, may very well signify such a moment through its attempt to chronicle the succession of English choral music from the 19th century to the present. The choir of men and boys sings gloriously, nearly equaling their more famous sister choir at King’s College, yet the musical montage is rather unusual. »
14 Apr 2005
PARIS, April 13 – Huge, dense, taxing, with almost all the action taking place in the heart, Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” is notoriously difficult to stage. Indeed, the composer himself abandoned his first attempt in Vienna in the early 1860’s after no fewer than 77 rehearsals. Now, in a daring experiment, the Paris National Opera has invited the American video artist Bill Viola to accompany the work with his own visual commentary. »
14 Apr 2005
The aesthetics of this new staging have been determined by a co-production deal with Madrid and Houston, rather than by any wish to explore Verdi in a modern context. Like La forza del destino earlier this season, it is an old-fashioned singers’ show – safe, bankable, peppered with big-house spectacle but oblivious to the characters’ psychology and Verdi’s elegantly crafted dramatic situations. The onus for making those situations come alive once again falls on Antonio Pappano. »
13 Apr 2005
After playing a few tracks I was reminded of the late Harold Rosenthal’s review of a 1973 Callas and Di Stefano-concert in his own Opera Magazine: “This is one of the saddest reviews I ever had to write.” »
13 Apr 2005
"Puccini & the Girl" is a rare and engrossing work of scholarship that can be enjoyed on several levels. For the Puccini-lover, to say nothing of one who has a special interest in La Fanciulla del West, it will provide a wealth of information not previously available, particularly all in one place. Any one interested in the creative process will find it exposed and examined clearly. The scholar will recognize the fascinating chance discovery, the thrill of the chase and the deep rewards of work undertaken lovingly and with rigorous care by the dedicated and passionate co-authors. »
13 Apr 2005
I have long been accustomed to the grumblings of my German and Italian colleagues concerning the pronunciation and expression of musical works in their native languages by English-native singers and choirs. I had chalked it up to benevolent xenophobia, but this beautiful recording gives me new insight into their perspective. »
11 Apr 2005
Kam da doch glatt ein Franzose (ausgerechnet!) und stellte 1859 nonchalant das deutsche Literatur-Nationalheiligtum vom Kopf auf die Füße! Sprich: Ignorierte Goethes Motto “Wer vieles bringt, wird manchem etwas bringen” und nahm des Dichterfürsten Ideendrama als Text-Steinbruch einer amour fou. Bei den deutschen Kritikern fiel das Stück durch, das Publikum hingegen war begeistert, bekam es doch genau das zu sehen, wonach es in einer Oper dürstet. »
11 Apr 2005
The new “Pearl Fishers” that arrived at New York City Opera on Sunday afternoon came from the San Diego Opera, but it looks as if it came from the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. Maybe it was the fluorescent hues; or the attempt to create local color with tinselly choreography; or the stylized patterns painted on the stage, like sun on sand, and the women’s bikinis, which evoked the flavor of a recent addition to the Games, beach volleyball. »
11 Apr 2005
My last encounter with Olga Borodina as a songstress was a particularly memorable one, and I daresay it was for her as well. In May 2001 she postponed a Carnegie Hall recital literally at the last minute, a hastily scrawled piece of paper taped over the poster out front our only greeting. Ms. Borodina was suffering from allergies and gamely attempted to forge ahead a week later with James Levine at the piano. The afternoon was challenging, but the half-empty hall was populated by a dedicated group that admired her courage. »
11 Apr 2005
Once upon a time, Freedom Fries didn’t exist, no one made apologies for charm and grace, and operas like Ambroise Thomas’ “Mignon” (1866, revised 1870) ruled the boards.
As it happens, April 2005 is a throwback to those innocent days of musical Francophilia in New York. The Philharmonic just performed “Damnation of Faust” by Berlioz; a new staging of Bizet’s “The Pearl Fishers” opened yesterday at New York City Opera, and the Metropolitan Opera presents Gounod’s once-ubiquitous “Faust” with a promising cast later this month. »
11 Apr 2005
When it comes to any new recordings of Schubert’s song cycle Winterreise, it is difficult not to think of the fine performances by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau at various points in his career. While Fischer-Dieskau’s recordings can serve as points of reference, the recent CD by the baritone Andreas Schmidt adds to the many excellent recordings that already exist for this work. Schmidt brings to this cycle a personal and effective interpretation that emerges clearly in the recording, where the close ensemble with Rudolf Jansen results in a nuanced performance. By allowing themselves fluid tempos, the performers allow the text to serve the music well. At times they linger over a syllable or stretch a phrase to reinforce the meaning. These are subtle differences that are at the core of experienced and effective Lieder performance. »
10 Apr 2005
Rossini’s long-lost, magnificent “party piece,” originally created for an army of bel canto singers, “Il Viaggio a Reims,” is being revived at the Mariinsky Theater, where it premieres on Wednesday with a further performance on April 16. The French actor and director Alain Maratrat is responsible for the staging, while his compatriot Pierre Alain Bertola created the sets. With their show, the French team promises an explosive fusion of Rossini’s subtle comedy and raving Russian madness. »
10 Apr 2005
Sex, religion and real estate: Put ‘em together, and you’ve got a plot that will bring out the best and the worst in any cast of characters. »
09 Apr 2005
Sieben von zwölf seiner Bühnenwerke sind nach einer Frau benannt. Puccini selbst wird der Satz nachgesagt: “Wenn ich nicht mehr verliebt bin, begrabt mich!” Was lag daher für Regisseur Stefan Herheim näher, als sich der “Madama Butterfly” aus dieser Perspektive zu nähern, die Bühne zeitweise zu einem Puccini-Museum zu machen. Mit stummen Auftritten von Tosca, Mimi und Manon Lescaut, aber auch dem Komponisten selbst. Ungewohnt auch Butterflys Ende: Sie muss in einem blutrünstigen Harakiri ihr Leben lassen. »
09 Apr 2005
Die Tote Stadt is often described as Erich Korngold’s masterpiece. An enormous success when first performed simultaneously in Hamburg and Cologne in 1920, it has become one of those pieces every opera fan has heard of, yet few have seen: it has never been staged in Britain. That makes the new production from Netherlands Opera a real collector’s item. Musically and dramatically, it does the work proud. What it can’t do, though, is turn a deeply flawed piece into a good one. »
09 Apr 2005
The CIM Opera Theater is offering two revelations this week, one old and one new. What a joy to experience Mozart’s neglected “La finta giardiniera,” which the precocious fellow wrote at the age of 18. The more recent discovery is soprano Jung Eun Oh, who was a sensation in the title role at Wednesday’s opening. »
09 Apr 2005
There is one conspicuous reason for reviving Rossini’s Tancredi in our time. Fortunately that reason — the availability of the Polish contralto Ewa Podles — underlay the Canadian Opera Company’s production of that work which opened Friday night for six performances at the Hummingbird Centre in Toronto. »
08 Apr 2005
Alcoholism, depression and loneliness were a few of the things that killed Modest Mussorgsky in 1881. He was 42 years old. He left behind the unfinished piano score of Khovanshchina, a vast historical opera that was, among other things, a criticism of Tsar Peter I. »
08 Apr 2005
Mignon at OONY turned out to be a mixed experience last night. Eve Queler is controversial as a conductor and last night’s opera did not play to her strengths or do anything to conceal her deficiencies. The overture began in a plodding fashion and only came intermittently alive in the conclusion based on the coloratura showpiece for Philene. Throughout, Mignon has some really lovely arias and ensembles but a lot of note spinning as well and not just during the recitatives (the opera was presented in Thomas’s second of three scores, the one in which he suppressed most — not quite all — of the spoken dialog and wrote his own recits). Ms Queler provided almost nothing to enliven, vary or give grace and charm to these conventional passages. »
07 Apr 2005
For opera conductors, the Ring cycle remains the professional Everest. So the fact that Andrew Davis has just completed his first Ring at the Lyric Opera in Chicago marks not merely a career peak for one of this country’s most important conductors, it is also a major event for British music – even if it is taking place thousands of miles from home. »
07 Apr 2005
Humor is not a quality normally associated with Verdi. He was a dour fellow, dubbed “the bear of Busetto” by his long-suffering wife. His first comic opera, “Un giorno di regno,” was a crashing failure, and “Falstaff,” his final work for the stage, looks more intently into the abyss than most commentators care to admit. »
06 Apr 2005
Jack Winsor Hansen's 520-page biography of Sibyl Sanderson (1865 - 1903) is packed with romanticism and gossip that will delight and titillate true worshipers of operatic divas and inquisitive opera fans. It also fills a gap in the music-historical writings about opera at the end of the 19th century. »
06 Apr 2005
While ruminating about “Madama Butterfly” in these pages the other week, I mentioned that the de facto premiere of the work was not in Italy at all but rather New York, since the David Belasco play originally opened on Herald Square. In the case of “Girl of the Golden West,” both the Belasco theatrical piece and the Puccini opera were launched in Manhattan, the latter under Toscanini in 1910. »
06 Apr 2005
Four years after the initial concert performances, English National Opera’s Ring cycle has reached its Wagnerian summit. It is not a triumph of the kind that the young company enjoyed with its first-ever cycle in the 1970s, but at least the staging is complete, with cast and production team intact, as planned. Other, more prestigious companies have achieved less. »
06 Apr 2005
Just how good is the Canadian Opera Company’s current Hummingbird production of Il Trovatore? Good enough, that we wouldn’t be all too surprised to find opera buffs donning hard hats and workboots to pitch in down at the corner of Queen and University, just to ensure that this world class company finally has a home that is worthy of it. »
06 Apr 2005
Es gab was zu feiern am Ostersonnabend in der Semperoper, und das Publikum feierte gern mit: 274 Jahre nach der Uraufführung stand erstmals wieder „Cleofide“ im Rampenlicht. Die wieder entdeckte Oper des früheren Dresdner Hofkapellmeisters Johann Adolf Hasse (1699-1783) hatte einst den Ruf Dresdens als Opernmetropole begründet. Klar, dass sich die Staatskapelle besonders ins Zeug legte, um dem barocken Kleinod wieder Leben einzuhauchen. »
05 Apr 2005
Donizettis “Liebestrank” ist sonst eine gern gepflegte Repertoire-Bank. Diesmal war jedoch alles anders. Gleißendes Scheinwerferlicht schon beim Betreten der Oper: Der ORF war angetreten, um das Ereignis für die Nachwelt zu bannen. Solches passiert eher selten im Repertoire-Alltag. Selten passiert es aber auch, dass der Besucher eine derart adrett aufpolierte und klingend besetzte Staatsopernaufführung einfach unterm Jahr serviert bekommt. Sogar Außenministerin und Star-Tenor lauschten in der Loge. Der Grund? Anna Netrebko, der schöne, junge russische Sopranliebling, war als Jungbäuerin Adina angesetzt. »
05 Apr 2005
Conventional wisdom has it that Puccini’s operatic tale of the wild West, “La Fanciulla del West,” is too melodramatic to be fully credible – a reason it hasn’t joined his “Tosca,” “La Bohème” and “Turandot” in the top-most echelon of audience favorites. And it’s true that there are lots of things in it that seem silly today (like a bunch of weepy, childlike gold miners singing in Italian) or even offensive, like American Indians whose pidgin vocabulary frequently includes “ugh!” »
05 Apr 2005
In 1934, John Christie launched an institution of English musical life with Fritz Busch and Carl Ebert: The Glyndebourne Festival. Since 1951, the Festival has staged four productions of Mozart’s opera seria Idomeneo (1781), the most recent being in 2003. »
04 Apr 2005
Of the three Baltic States, both Latvia and Estonia are better known for choral music than Lithuania. Yet, Osvaldas Balakauskas, born in 1937, could be one of the finest lesser known modernist composers of the 20th century. Resisting both the neoclassical Soviet aesthetic of Prokofiev and a trendy nationalist folk identity, Balakauskas embraced the avant garde developments of Western Europe. Composing from dodecaphonic tonal modes and complex rhythmic constructs, he can most accurately be compared to Olivier Messiaen. »
04 Apr 2005
I ended last week with three very different operas here in Boston. On Thursday, the Boston Conservatory of Music put on a nicely designed, lovingly directed production of Britten’s Albert Herring. Based loosely on a Guy de Maupassant short story Albert sends up English small town blue stockings who stage an annual May Queen pageant, finding themselves unable to find a young woman of acceptable virtue in the immediate area. Their choice falls on a May King in the person of Mamma’s boy Albert Herring who is mortified by the whole experience. Albert proceeds to use the cash part of his prize to go off on a toot, stay out all night to return home a happier, wiser and far more independent young man, to the chagrin of all. »
04 Apr 2005
This new release from Hänssler Classics presents an anthology of live and studio performances by the Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin (1873-1938), undoubtedly one of the greatest singers in recorded history. The title of the album, “Feodor Chaliapin sings Russian Folk Songs,” is somewhat misleading. Apart from traditional songs such as “Mashenka,” “Eh, Van’ka,” and “Down the Volga,” the recording includes arrangements of 19th-century popular songs such as “Dubinushka,” “Down the Peterskaya,” and the perennial Gypsy favorite “Black Eyes,” as well as a selection of salon romances, art songs, and ballads by Mikhail Glinka, Alexander Dargomïzhsky, Anton Rubinstein, and Modest Musorgsky, among others. Most of the selections on the new CD have been previously released on various labels, with the possible exception of “Dubinushka,” which I have not been able to find among the recordings currently available. Hence, avid Chaliapin collectors should be aware that the Hänssler release offers little if anything new to them. Those music lovers still unacquainted with Chaliapin’s art, however, or those whose exposure to this singer has been limited to his opera recordings, would find this album a great insight into a spectacular voice and a unique artistic persona. »
03 Apr 2005
Monserratt Caballé’s journey to La Scala and the Metropolitan Opera was truly a road of talent, dedication, and will. One of the most beautiful and athletic voices of our generation, declared as Callas’ successor, Caballé dominated both the dramatic spinto and bel canto arenas, transcending the realm of the opera world to influence the popular masses. »
02 Apr 2005
Cage's music is like Einstein's theorem: most people know it exists, know it's important, but beyond these facts know nothing about it (count me in this category when it comes to Einstein). »
02 Apr 2005
As a live occasion, the gala format allows for a festive atmosphere — a variety of singers trot back and forth across the stage, usually performing a series of “opera’s greatest hits” with no distractions, if one may, in the way of costume, set, or dramatic context. Recorded for posterity, such gala events can lose, for many viewers, the attractions of the live atmosphere and become rather labored exercises. »
02 Apr 2005
Donald Runnicles, the longtime music director of the San Francisco Opera, has been earning excellent reviews for his conducting of Strauss’s “Rosenkavalier” at the Metropolitan Opera, a run that ends with a matinee performance today. But New Yorkers also know of him as the principal conductor of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. Wearing that hat he appeared at Carnegie Hall for a program on Thursday night titled, rather too cutely, “Postcard From Prague.” »
01 Apr 2005
Most operas are about love, but Tchaikovsky’s ‘’Eugene Onegin” is a special case because the composer took the subject so personally. Tchaikovsky’s own life was tracing the plot of Pushkin’s verse novel, with catastrophic consequences, and the music is full of yearning, passion, pain, and regret. »
01 Apr 2005
Three of the greatest composers of art songs — Schubert, Schumann, and Hugo Wolf — also harbored operatic ambitions. All of them wrote operas and set great store by them, but none has ever gained a foothold in the repertory. »
01 Apr 2005
Bleak but uproarious, bawdy but singed with hellfire, Mozart’s opera “Don Giovanni” is just as elusive as its title character. Philosopher Søren Kierkegaard identified Don Giovanni with music and desire: “a force, a wind, impatience, passion,” forever ungraspable. »
01 Apr 2005
New operas by Russian and Soviet composers once played a prominent part in the repertoire of Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater. But nearly 26 years have passed since the theater last produced an operatic world premiere. On Wednesday, the long drought finally ended with the staging of “Rosenthal’s Children,” a work fresh from the pens of St. Petersburg composer Leonid Desyatnikov and writer Vladimir Sorokin. »
01 Apr 2005
LA SCALA this past week has been like the Kremlin during the putsch against Mikhail Gorbachev. For days on end, no-one knew who was in charge or what was going on. The only certainty was that the world would never be the same again. »
01 Apr 2005
Es wird nicht mehr lange dauern bis zur Forderung, Filmleute generell von Opernbühnen fernzuhalten. Nicht nur wegen der jüngsten Fehlschläge an großen Häusern, bei denen Filmregisseure und Kinoproduzenten mit Neuinszenierungen dilettierten – sogar in der sich charmant bemühenden Stadttheaterprovinz grassiert nun offenbar das cineastische Virus. »
31 Mar 2005
This latest release in the collaborative project to record the complete songs of Johannes Brahms focuses on four opus numbers, among the last groups of Lieder to be so designated by Brahms. The present recording represents typical songs from the so-called mature composer, most of these having been written between 1883-88. Each of the opus numbers includes a mix of texts drawn from the works of contemporary, well known poets and from the milieu of popular folk-songs. As an example of this mix, the songs from op. 97 comprise settings of poems by Reinhold, Alexis, and Groth, as well as two songs for which the source is simply given as Volkslied. As in most of the previous releases of this project, the singers Juliane Banse and Andreas Schmidt divide the repertoire and are accompanied by the pianist Helmut Deutsch. »
31 Mar 2005
Valhalla proved to be a failed paradise for Wotan and his band of doomed gods and goddesses in Wagner’s epic set of four related operas, “The Ring of the Nibelung.’’ But Lyric Opera of Chicago audiences are experiencing the real thing this week as the company opens the first of three weeklong revivals of its production of the “Ring’’ unveiled in the 1990s. »
31 Mar 2005
Schlecht war der erste Eindruck. Einen ganzen Akt lang häuften sich nur Probleme, Missverständnisse und verpuffte Pointen. Ein neuer Figaro mit Höhenproblemen, ein Hausdebütant als Graf, der ständig Gefahr lief, über sein Kostüm zu stolpern – und das ganze Ensemble immer wieder ehrlich überrascht von Jun Märkls Tempi und Zäsuren. Dass die Sänger desto besser wirkten, je länger und genauer sie Ponnelles bald 30 Jahre dienende Inszenierung bereits kannten, stellte der Probensituation an der Staatsoper wahrlich kein gutes Zeugnis aus. »
30 Mar 2005
The title piece, Lux aeterna (light eternal), a five-movement work by American composer Morton Lauridsen (b.1943), is intended to be an “intimate work of quiet serenity.” The composer’s quest for texts that express “hope, reassurance, faith and illumination in all of its manifestations,” results in a free compilation from various liturgical observances or feasts: the Introit from the Requiem; select verses of the Te Deum, sung at the end of Matins on Sunday or in thanksgiving for a special blessing, interpolated with a verse from the Beatus vir (Ps. 111:4); verses from O nata lux, the Lauds hymn for the feast of the Transfiguration; Veni sancte spiritus, the sequence for Pentecost; and the Agnus Dei and Communio from the Mass for the Dead with an “Alleluia” tag added by the composer. Admittedly, the work is non-liturgical. Still, the fashioning of these texts causes the work to be viewed by some as a “Requiem” or quasi “German Requiem.” Indeed, it is neither a Requiem nor a Mass for the Dead, in spite of the opening and closing movements. As a meditation on “light eternal,” texts other than those from the Requiem could have been used. One need only read the Exsultet, which overflows with the symbols and imagery of “the Light” that conquers death, and which dispels darkness. Further, the theme of the texts used in the three inner movements is more Trinitarian (Te Deum = God the Father; O nata lux = God the Son; Veni sancte spiritus = God the Holy Spirit). Unfortunately, their importance and strength is reduced to the occurrence of the word “light” in their verse. That being said, the texts are not what the ear remembers in this work; it is the music. The words are merely the vehicle for the vocalists. »
30 Mar 2005
Florian Leopold Gassmann must have been a gas. There is nothing funny about his other 21 operas but L’Opera Seria is a scream. Everything is lampooned, from squabbling stage mammas to brainless tenors. We know little about the piece’s 1769 premiere, but the audience at Vienna’s Burgtheater must have hyperventilated. »
30 Mar 2005
NEW YORK – Few cosmic mistakes have ever been so glaring: Soprano Aprile Millo, who embodies the traditional operatic values that Philadelphians hold dear, hasn’t sung here in nearly 20 years. »
29 Mar 2005
Years ago I remember reading a commentary on Verdi by a respected critic — Conrad L. Osborne — to the effect that most of early Verdi could have been written by Donizetti except for the first great success, Nabucco, that could have been written by Rossini. If one accepts that proposal, it would mean that Rossinian operas bracketed Verdi’s career, for surely Falstaff, at the very end, reflects the energy, elegance, joyousness and sophistication of Rossini from one end to the other. »
29 Mar 2005
The legend of Maria Callas has transcended her death, and after more than twenty five years, titans of opera still proclaim her the ultimate Diva: artist, actress, musician, lover and woman. Iambic Productions and BBC’s 2004 DVD, Maria Callas: Living and Dying for Art and Love, is a fascinating look at the life of Callas from the perspective of her final role and performance at Covent Garden, Tosca. »
29 Mar 2005
Knowledge and the unknowable are the keys needed to unlock the 19th-century perception of the Faust myth. The modern idea of a deal with the devil for financial or carnal supremacy is completely irrelevant, and speaks volumes about the difference between 20th-century thought and that of its antecedents. In breaking free of the restrictions of formalism and established religion, however, the Romantics in literature incorporated some cautions of their own. »
29 Mar 2005
WASHINGTON, March 27 – “The Maid of Orleans” was to have been Tchaikovsky’s international coming-out party. The Russian landscapes of his previous operas were left behind. His subject would be Joan of Arc. Tragic romance and history would circle each other in the grand French tradition of Meyerbeer. »
29 Mar 2005
Like any masterpiece, Bach’s St Matthew Passion can be approached in different ways. Interpretations have varied from austere meditations on the crucifixion to music dramas of almost tragic implacability. Richard Hickox’s Good Friday performance with the City of London Sinfonia and the BBC Singers veered towards the latter, presenting us with an almost operatic experience, characterised by wide emotional fluctuations rather than contemplative homogeneity. »
29 Mar 2005
Rape, alcohol abuse, lesbianism and gratuitous violence: these are the themes of both Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci, as Calixto Bieito sees it. Odd. They were also the themes of the last opera he staged. And the one before. Can it be coincidence or did Mascagni, Leoncavallo, Mozart and Verdi all write operas featuring fisting? »
28 Mar 2005
I grew up during the Age of LP and compared with CD’s the size had its disadvantages but there were some distinct gains as well, especially in the field of artwork. Collectors may have the same set on CD but they will rarely separate from those glorious RCA-Soria recordings like Carmen (Price, Corelli) or Otello (Vickers, Gobbi) with their lavish booklets. Though there are no colour photographs in this set under review I nevertheless was reminded of those old glories. This 4Cd-set is so wonderfully packed and designed into what looks like a small hard cover book that just paging in it gives one already some joy. Of course, neither performance is a great discovery for the collector. The Böhm-set already appeared twice on LP and twice on CD. The Furtwängler only has one LP- and one CD-reissue, which is quite understandable as the conductor led exactly the same cast the same year for a commercial recording on HMV (3 LP’s) and with all spoken dialogues cut as if producer Legge didn’t trust the singers to speak their lines. At the time he was not alone in this false belief. The next commercial Fidelio (Fricsay) came out on DG with actors for the dialogues; an even more ridiculous solution as one could clearly hear the differences in timbre between actors and singers. »
28 Mar 2005
If any opera lover feels daunted by the many biographies and analytical tomes dedicated to the life and art of Giacomo Puccini, Norton has done that reader a tremendous favor with the publication of The Puccini Companion. Tightly organized, this series of essays details the life, discusses the operas, and provides a wealth of supplementary information about the composer. »
28 Mar 2005
Sacred music from the Spanish Baroque deserves to be held up next to the finest Italian examples of the same period. Equally celebratory in nature, the music written for use in Catholic Vespers services on this recording is an example of the mixed concertante style developed in Venice. While not as monumental as Claudio Monteverdi’s conglomerate Vespers of 1610, the Vísperas Completas de Nuestra Señora by Juan Garcia de Salazar (1639-1710) contrasts polyphonic and homophonic choruses with plainchant, monody, instrumental pieces, and organ improvisation. »
28 Mar 2005
The explosion of research into the music of J. S. Bach allows for innumerable interpretations of his works. Scholars meticulously study the musical source material, letters and writings from the 17th and 18th centuries, and anything else that could possibly lead to an insight into Bach’s musical practice. Invariably, each interpreter achieves new conclusions and raises new questions forming their own distinctive ideal. In the last decade and a half, the dialogue over Bach’s choral music has been particularly active and fierce with proponents of massive romantic proportions and those who prefer single singers and instrumentalists on a part. »
28 Mar 2005
Her occasional home-coming always turns into a music event in her native Bulgaria. This time Krassimira Stoyanova appeared at the Rousse March Music days in a recital including twenty melodies and songs by opera composers: Gounod, Donizetti, Puccini in the first part and Tchaikovsky and Rahmaninov in the second plus two “encores” by Bulgarian composers Dobri Hristov and Liubomir Pipkov. She performed this same recital at Carnegie Hall on January 18, 2005, accompanied by Yelena Kurdina. »
28 Mar 2005
Ringheads, rejoice! The end of the world is nigh.
So, for that matter, are the flying Valkyries, swimming Rhinemaidens, spinning Norns, fearless heroes, empowered heroines and all the other mythic characters that make Richard Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen” (“The Ring of the Nibelung”) the greatest, most monumental fairy tale ever composed. »
28 Mar 2005
Here is a splendid curiosity – a three-act operetta by Offenbach, written as the 1874 Christmas panto blockbuster for the famous Alhambra Theatre in Leicester Square and never subsequently staged in its original form. All credit to the tirelessly exploratory semi-professional University College Opera for its worthwhile revival. »
28 Mar 2005
“Die spart (Partitur, Anm.) von der hälfte einer Messe, welche noch in der besten hoffnung da liegt”, erwähnt Mozart 1783 in einem Brief an seinen Vater. Bei der Hoffnung sollte es bleiben: Sein rätselhaftes Gelöbnis, die c-Moll-Messe zu vollenden, hat Mozart nicht gehalten. Das ehrgeizige Projekt einer umfangreichen Kantatenmesse im Stile von Bachs Schwesterwerk in h-Moll blieb ein Torso. Nur Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus und Benedictus hat Mozart abgeschlossen, nicht alles davon ist jedoch in zweifelsfreier Form erhalten. Vom zentralen Credo existieren gar nur zwei Sätze, noch dazu voller offensichtlicher Instrumentationslücken. »
26 Mar 2005
Susan Bullock is widely regarded as the finest dramatic soprano to have emerged in the UK for some years. She is an exceptional Wagnerian and many would question why she is not singing Brünnhilde in one of the Rings-in-progress at Covent Garden or English National Opera, particularly since she is already established as an interpreter of the role abroad. »
26 Mar 2005
Handel had his troubles with sopranos as people. There’s a story that he once grew so enraged he tried to throw one of his divas out the window. On the other hand, no composer has written more knowledgeably and lovingly for the soprano voice than Handel did. »
26 Mar 2005
NO BETTER time than Easter to plead the cause of Benjamin Britten’s chamber opera. Forged in the same white fire of creative energy as Peter Grimes, Lucretia can remain problematic because of the apparent moralising of the framing Chorus. But watching this play of passion in a week of Passions certainly put things into context. »
26 Mar 2005
When opera singers reach a certain level of fame and stature, they almost invariably express the desire to present song recitals as well. Often the problem is that they have little training in this specialized art and too much practice in their own stylistic niche. As a result, many highly publicized evenings at Carnegie or Alice Tully turn out to be woeful disappointments, proving only the lack of adaptability of many of our best singers. »
25 Mar 2005
Mit noblem Herrschergestus rückt der feine junge Herr im weissen Anzug fürs Schlusstableau die Opernwirklichkeit zurecht. Unvermittelt angeschmachtet von der Liebsten und scheinbar ohne Rücksicht auf den eben ausgefochtenen tragischen Höhepunkt des Familienzwists, von dem hier im Heldenton einer Opera Seria drei Stunden lang die Rede war, darf Fernando alias Sosarme die Totgeglaubten wieder aufrichten und dann, ganz cleverer Familientherapeut, die Sache mit einer zeitgeistigen Aufstellung zu Ende bringen. »
24 Mar 2005
Among the leading figures in music in twentieth-century America, the composer Samuel Barber and the soprano Leontyne Price are notable for various reasons, not the least of which is the fact that they worked together at various times. »
24 Mar 2005
A controversial new production of Wagner’s “punk” Parsifal, by Bernd Eichinger, film-maker and writer of Downfall, provoked outrage when it was premiered in Berlin last Saturday. Here he defends his production.
A lot of critics complained that it was staged too close to the orchestra. But that is not a failure – that is exactly what I wanted to do. In a Wagner opera, you have to understand that there are more than 100 musicians; it is a big orchestra, big music. In order that the singers can really be appreciated you have to bring the action forward, closer to the audience. If you put them too far away in the distance of the stage you hear less. »
24 Mar 2005
The Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier is supposed to be no older than 32 – sensitive, sensual and emphatically sensible. Richard Strauss told us so. She is seldom played that way. Over the decades, the role has become the specialty of well-upholstered divas of a certain age who stress regal pathos at the expense of erotic allure. It wasn’t like that, however, on Friday at the Met, where Angela Denoke basked in revisionist revelation. »
23 Mar 2005
Handel’s opera “Orlando” is a seductive broadside against love, and New York City Opera’s new production makes this distaste for romance seem irresistible for a while.
When the titular knight goes soft, the magician Zoroastro intervenes to warn him away from the vagaries of passion. Better, he counsels, to stick to such sensible, manly stuff as vengeance, mayhem and murder: Make war, not love. »
23 Mar 2005
IT’S STRANGE that such a basically fine performance can leave so many question marks, but that is perhaps the peculiarity of Madama Butterfly. Puccini’s shabby little shogun shocker contains some of the composer’s greatest music, yet it is put to such shallow, manipulative ends that anyone who likes their opera to be more than a high-class musical is likely to come away feeling unsatisfied. At least the Royal Opera’s latest revival is musically rewarding, and boasts one of today’s leading interpreters of the title role, but the picture-book production shows little willingness to tackle the problem. »
23 Mar 2005
To this day, many sophisticated music lovers dismiss Puccini as a panderer or even a hack. But his supreme craftsmanship is the best refutation of this position. So dedicated was he to creating just the right effect for “Tosca” that he came before dawn one morning to the Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome and faithfully recorded the actual pitches of all of the church bells that can be heard there throughout the early hours, including those of the Basilica of Saint Peter’s. »
22 Mar 2005
The words of Symphonic Fairytales are not by a musician, but by one of the 19th century’s most extraordinary writers: Hans Christian Andersen. The Danish fairy-tale author’s bicentenary falls on 2 April this year and a worldwide project is under way to celebrate him in music. Ten Danish composers have been commissioned to write pieces based on his stories; as part of this, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO), Chorus and Youth Chorus has achieved quite a coup with a new work from Per Norgard, Denmark’s musical éminence grise, which they will premiere on Andersen’s birthday at Symphony Hall. »
22 Mar 2005
THE curtain rises on Black-adder-land — epicene monarch, black-clad baddie, hooped ladies and preening hero — and you think, hmm, three hours of trying to turn opera seria into comedy could be a bit wearing. Worst fears aren’t entirely realised, but if you don’t trust Handel to hold an audience with a serious exploration of relationship and motivation, why bother?
The London Handel Festival has brought us some notable rarities from among the man’s operas, and this one too has seldom been seen; but if the performance falls short, it’s not because the piece is rubbish. »
22 Mar 2005
Salzburg zur Osterzeit steht heuer ganz im Zeichen Benjamin Brittens. Nun ist “Peter Grimes”, die Festspiel oper Anno 2005, auch schon 60 Jahre alt, aber von einer Verankerung im internationalen Repertoire kann, wenn überhaupt, erst in allerjüngster Zeit die Rede sein. Jetzt, da das Stück von der Tragödie des Individuums in der Zeit der Vermassung aktueller denn je scheint, setzen es die meisten großen Häuser auf den Spielplan. Zeit also, bei einem Festival ein mustergültige Produktion zu präsentieren, scheint das Kalkül Simon Rattles gewesen zu sein, der damit den Festspielgedanken so unzeitgemäß wie richtig interpretiert. Zumindest in der Theorie. Man muss vielleicht ein bisschen weiter ausholen, um zu definieren, warum eine Inszenierung, wie sie Trevor Nunn im großen Festspielhaus vorgestellt hat, in diesem Fall ein wenig zu kurz greift. »
22 Mar 2005
As a seasonal concert, with a mildly ecumenical touch, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra played a concert of sacred music in the Medieval Sculpture Hall at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Sunday evening (with a repeat tonight). The principal offering was Pergolesi’s dramatic, deeply emotional setting of the Stabat Mater. It was preceded by string arrangements of six pieces by Salamone Rossi, a Jewish composer who worked in Mantua, Italy, around the same time as Monteverdi, and wrote Hebrew Psalm and prayer settings in a lively madrigal style. »
22 Mar 2005
“Es werde Lichter”, sprach der Libretto-Dichter und ließ die Buffa-Puppen tanzen. Keine Charakter, sondern Typen, irgendwie geboren im ganz normalen Uraufführungswahnsinn italienischer Opernhäuser im frühen 19. Jahrhundert; fest am Faden hängend und ganz nach Bedarf herumgeschoben von ihren Schöpfern. Dieser Poeta in Gioachino Rossinis “Türke in Italien”, der sich und seine Erfindungsnöte vorlaut zum Thema einer komischen Oper macht, ist ein ziemlich einmaliger Fall. Und deshalb immer öfter ein gefundenen Fressen als Alter Ergo für seine Regisseure. »
22 Mar 2005
Lyric Opera has been a tease this season. It’s now offering a preview of the delights that will be available March 28, when the company revisits one of opera’s most daunting challenges, Wagner’s cycle of four interrelated works, “The Ring of the Nibelung,” in three cycles through mid-April. »
22 Mar 2005
One of the greatest challenges in compiling a recording of J. S. Bach’s cantatas must be choosing which cantatas to group together. For his Harmonia Mundi release, Weinen, Klagen…, Philippe Herreweghe selects three cantatas that represent the human experience of “desolation and comfort.” These two themes are so central to Lutheran theology they could in fact be found in any number of Bach’s cantatas. Nevertheless, the three cantatas on this recording reflect the variety across Bach’s output. “Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen” BWV 12, comes from Bach’s period in Weimar, the double cantata, “Die Elend sollen essen” BWV 75, was the first work Bach presented at his new post in Leipzig, and “Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir” BWV 38 is based strictly on the chorale tune throughout the entire work. Despite their differences, all of these works make the theological transition from earthly desolation to eternal comfort. »
21 Mar 2005
Sous le nom des Ours du Scorff, un quintette breton spécialisé dans les airs folkloriques destinés aux enfants de 4 ans et plus. En douze ans d’existence, cette formation est devenue une référence de la chanson jeune public, régulièrement invitée par les festivals spécialisés (Mino et, samedi 19 mars, celui de Magny-les-Hameaux, dans les Yvelines). L’explication de cette réussite tient en un mot : tradition. Non comme forme de réaction, mais comme désir de transmission. »
21 Mar 2005
TOKYO (AFP) – Une cantate profane longtemps perdue de Jean-Sébastien Bach a été ressuscitée ce week-end à Tokyo, en première mondiale, sous l’inspiration et la direction du chef américain Joshua Rifkin. »
21 Mar 2005
Dmitri Hvorostovsky is one of the finest singers we have, whether in opera, in song, or in oratorio. (Instead of oratorio, I should say Russian liturgical music – that is one of his real strengths.) We even hear Mr. Hvorostovsky in Italian popular songs. They’re not especially Italian, but they’re enjoyable. »
21 Mar 2005
The Danish composer Poul Ruders is one of contemporary music’s free agents—a lover of sweet melodies with a yen for dark chords, a comedian with a flair for apocalypse. His previous opera, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” made sonic thunder out of Margaret Atwood’s novel of a dystopian America ruled by Christian fundamentalists. His major orchestral pieces—“Thus Saw Saint John,” the “Solar Trilogy,” a First Symphony subtitled “Rejoicing from the Heavens, Grieving Unto Death”—unfold hypnotically wayward narratives that reel from antic joy to frozen despair. (There are excellent recordings on the Bridge and Da Capo labels.) Ruders has a special knack for reinventing familiar tonal harmonies and styles; he uses them sometimes to mourn lost worlds, sometimes to suggest otherworldly innocence, sometimes to convey the banality of evil. All these devices are hurled at the audience in his latest work, “Kafka’s Trial,” which had its première on March 12th at the Royal Danish Theatre. »
21 Mar 2005
So often we get wrapped up in today’s world of great performers that we forget the performers of the past who, directly or indirectly, influenced these performers and shaped the characters they play. Not one singer today can boast working side by side with Richard Strauss or living in Puccini’s heyday, but Maria Cebotari (1910-1949) could. Thanks to a brilliant re-mastered recording by Hänssler Classic, we are now able to take part in signature performances of a woman who is known as the “predecessor” to Maria Callas. »
21 Mar 2005
OF all the times Beverly Sills was host of the “Tonight” show, her favorite was in 1977, when her guests were three of her closest confidantes: the comedian Carol Burnett, the perky singer and television host Dinah Shore and the pop chanteuse Eydie Gorme. The women got into a spat over who was whose best friend, then kidded the wholesome Ms. Shore about her current beau, the heartthrob actor Burt Reynolds. »
20 Mar 2005
Schön ist, dass sich das Werk Einordnungen entzieht. Monumentalen Aufgipfelungen wie im “Tuba mirum” steht ein opernhafter Gestus gegenüber, volkstümliche Ausgelassenheit (“Quam olim Abrahae”) kontrastiert zu einem charakteristischen, herbstlich verhangenen Tonfall. Und verklammert wird alles durch ein immer wiederkehrendes, kurzes Motiv. Eine Umspielung des Tones “F”, Seufzer und sehnsuchtsvolle Gebärde zugleich. »
20 Mar 2005
IN this splendid concert version of Giordano’s most widely performed opera, Sir Richard Armstrong, the orchestra and chorus of Scottish Opera and an outstanding team of soloists provided some of the best moments of operatic verismo I have heard in an age. »
20 Mar 2005
The central image in Mark Lamos’s production of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” is a traditional Japanese house, magnified to the size of the New York City Opera stage. With its sliding doors, clean lines and open spaces, this set, designed by Michael Yeargan, is the very picture of clarity. And for Butterfly, everything within it – her life with Pinkerton, then the memory of that life and the promise of its resumption – is entirely clear. It’s the more complicated world outside that has turned murky, and by avoiding the clutter that often accrues to a “Butterfly” staging, Mr. Lamos has emphasized that tragic delusion. »
19 Mar 2005
Une tristesse flottait sur Venise en ce jour de la première de Parsifal à La Fenice, nouvelle production du chef-d’œuvre wagnérien depuis celle de Pier Luigi Pizzi en 1983. Temps instable au-dehors, vent de la révolte à l’intérieur : le syndicat autonome Libersind et les personnels du théâtre appelaient à la grève générale, le mardi 15 mars, pour protester contre leurs conditions de travail. »
17 Mar 2005
Dans le Faust à l’affiche de l’Opéra de Lille, le véritable diable, c’est le metteur en scène écossais David McVicar. Grâce à son habileté méphistophélique, sa production peut plaire à tout le monde : à ceux qui rêvent de voir l’histoire racontée comme au bon vieux temps, sans relecture conceptuelle, et à ceux qui pensent qu’un tel morceau de patrimoine a besoin du second degré pour ne pas basculer dans le kitsch. Car dès le début de sa mise en scène, l’ironie règne en maître, même si l’on n’en prend conscience qu’à mesure que son bel univers se dérègle. Une loge de l’Opéra de Paris fait face à une tribune d’orgue d’église gothique : nous sommes bel et bien au théâtre, et si Méphisto a effectivement «la plume au chapeau et l’épée au côté», il les réajuste devant un miroir en pied avant de jouer ses tours. Des sortilèges qu’il extrait d’une malle à accessoires, tandis que Faust change d’aspect dans sa loge, face à une coiffeuse éclairée par des ampoules. »
17 Mar 2005
Zuerst viele Jahre lang Schweigen. Dann einige Aufführungen hintereinander: Frank Martins Schicksal ist symptomatisch für die Repertoire-Restriktionen in Wien. Immer dieselben Dinge verkaufen sich. Bei einem Werk wie Martins Passions-Oratorium “Golgotha” verlassen Abonnenten den Goldenen Musikvereinssaal bei erster Satzpausen-Gelegenheit. Die Bereitschaft, sich zur gegebenen Zeit mit anderem als den Bach-Passionen auseinander zu setzen, ist enden wollend. »
17 Mar 2005
Cast off the shores of Normandy, the tiny isle of Guernsey lies isolated between the two European powers of England and France. Guernsey, however, has remained independent since 1204, and its government, the Bailiwick of Guernsey, comprises the inhabited islands of Guernsey, Alderney, Sark, Herm, Jethou, Brecqhou and Lihou. Rich in an abundant culture and history, Guernsey is well-known for its sea ports, mystic pagan rituals, potent cider, and poetry. »
16 Mar 2005
You don’t expect absurdity in a concert of Mozart arias and instrumental music, but in bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff’s concert with the period-instrument Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, the highlight was a work of Pythonesque weirdness. »
16 Mar 2005
HOW refreshing, you think, as Les Arts Florissants bounds on stage, to see an early-music combo whose contracts appear to contain no clauses forbidding visits to hairdresser, shoe-shop and dressing-table, no injunctions to wear nothing but sacking and zit cream. How delightful, how French. With William Christie’s band, as Emcee in Cabaret might say, “Even ze orgestra is beaudiful.” »
15 Mar 2005
British director Mark Dornford-May’s daring transposition of Bizet’s opera to a South African township has landed him a major film award – and a new wife. He talks to Jasper Rees »
15 Mar 2005
Last week in the Danish capital city, still chilly after freezing weather and heavy snow, the spirits were raised by two contrasting but equally fulfilling events in the shape of the Danish Royal Opera’s revival of Francisco Negrin’s production of Handel’s “Giulio Cesare” featuring the return of star European countertenor Andreas Scholl in the title role, and the debut appearance in the city of his American counterpart, David Daniels, in a concert performance of Bach and Vivaldi. Both singers were in fact enjoying indulging their talents in their less well known fachs: Scholl is rarely seen on the opera stage and admits to feeling less than completely at home there. Daniels, on the other hand, fresh from yet another Handelian triumph at the Metropolitan Opera (Bertarido in the sumptuous new production of “Rodelinda”) is not known as a Bach specialist, but was essaying his second concert performance in Europe of the great cantata BWV82, “Ich Habe Genug”, reviewed elsewhere. »
13 Mar 2005
IT IS easy to sniff at English National Opera’s decision to stage Leonard Bernstein’s first, unashamedly Broadway musical. Unlike some of his later work it has no “operatic” pretensions. But the Broadway musical was a continuation of opera by other means, and Bernstein maintained to the end of his life that, if opera had a future (which he doubted), it would be intimately tied up with the Broadway idiom that he helped to create. »
13 Mar 2005
Leo Slezak is generally regarded as a German tenor, although he was actually born in what is now the Czech Republic. But, Moravia, where he is from, was Austrian at the time, and had a significant German speaking population, with German the dominant language of the middle and upper classes. He made his debut in Brno (then Brunn), at a time when most opera performances were sung in German, and, to the best of my knowledge, all of his recordings were in that language or Italian (the great majority being in German). He made over 400 records from a wide repertory of German, Italian and French operas, as well as many Lieder and some operetta. His two published discographies list no records from Czech operas. The arias he recorded most frequently include 11 versions each of the Preislied and “Celeste Aida”, nine of the “Ah, fuyez douce image” and seven of the “Roi du ciel” from Le prophète. His stage repertory could probably be divided into four more or less equal parts. Verdi predominated, with 133 performances of Radames, 130 of Otello, 91 of Manrico, and at least 41 of Riccardo. He also sang Ernani and the Duke in Rigoletto. Wagner and grand opera (comprising Elèazar, Raoul, Jean in Le prophète and Assad), were probably tied for second and third, with other composers, including Mozart, Boieldieu, Gounod, Puccini, etc. coming in fourth. His career was largely centered on Vienna, but also included an important stint at the Met, some stays in Brno, Breslau and Berlin during his youth, and guest appearances in many other centers. He has been described as everything from a “Heldentenor” (in many sources) to a large voiced lyric tenor (by Michael Scott, in his books on great singers). I would split the difference, calling him the German equivalent of a French “fort tenor”, who could sing everything from Mozart to the lighter Wagner roles, and did. »
12 Mar 2005
Il existe des appartements où vous ne pouvez brancher à la fois la machine à laver, le téléviseur et le sèche-cheveux sans faire tout disjoncter. C’est un peu l’impression que l’on avait jeudi soir à Notre-Dame, pour la Passion selon saint Matthieu, dirigée par John Nelson. A peine le chef avait-il salué le public, que les projecteurs s’éteignirent soudain. Il fallut une demi-heure pour les rallumer un par un, et lorsqu’à 20 h 33, le dernier spot fut enfin rétabli, le courant sauta derechef ! Ce n’est qu’à 20 h 40 que le grandiose double choeur introductif put faire résonner les colonnes de Notre-Dame. On n’a pu qu’admirer le sang-froid des artistes, restés en scène tout du long, soumis à une pression que certains exorcisaient en plaisantant, d’autres en maintenant leur instrument au chaud ou en se concentrant. »
12 Mar 2005
Nearly a century ago, the great pianist and intriguing composer Ferruccio Busoni declared that the duty of the performer is to liberate music “from the deadness of the printed page and bring it to life again.” »
12 Mar 2005
If you’re going to attend one Toronto Symphony Orchestra concert this year, make it this one. There’s nothing like leaving Roy Thomson Hall with your feet six inches off the ground — especially when it’s snowing. »
11 Mar 2005
A spare and yet splendid masterpiece, Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings doesn’t seem to make it into concert halls as often as it deserves. In the recording studio, however, it has fared well. Besides the classic recordings from the composer and his partner Peter Pears, esteemed versions from Anthony Rolfe-Johnson, Robert Tear, Ian Bostridge, and others have a place in the catalogue. »
11 Mar 2005
The new production of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Tale Of Tsar Saltan, which premiered at the Mariinsky Theater on Tuesday, is like a happy child’s dream: placid, multi-colored, entertaining – and it has a happy ending. »
11 Mar 2005
The Mascagni and Leoncavallo double bill was the very first staging ever undertaken by Welsh National Opera in 1946 and sentiment decreed that it should be played in the company’s inaugural season at its new home. Elijah Moshinsky’s production was created for WNO’s jubilee and has done sterling duty. It has proved a glorious vehicle for both chorus and orchestra. And the moment when the battered truck that brings Pagliaccio’s touring troupe on to the stage is emblematic. »
10 Mar 2005
Anna Christy plays Cunegonde in NYC Opera’s ‘Candide.’
Monty Python fans waiting for “Spamalot” tickets can warm up happily at “Candide,” City Opera’s spring season opener at Lincoln Center. »
10 Mar 2005
Emmerich Kálmán’s name may be familiar primarily to music lovers d’un certain âge, but between the world wars his operettas were as popular as those of Léhar and Strauss on both sides of the Atlantic. Die Csárdásfürstin (The Gypsy [or Czardas] Princess), which premiered in Vienna in 1915, is his best known, and for good reason. Its book by Leo Stein and Béla Jenbach sparkles and delights, but with reversals of fortune that leave the audience wondering until the last minute how love’s complications will be resolved. The Budapest-born Kálmán (1882–1953; his fellow composition students included Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály) apparently was weaned on his homeland’s melodies and czardas, which he mixes generously with Austrian waltzes to create a glorious portrait of the twilight years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The piece played the New Amsterdam Theater in New York in 1917 as The Riviera Girl, with a new book by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse and added numbers by Jerome Kern. »
08 Mar 2005
An der Wiener Staatsoper ist Wagners “Ring des Nibelungen” derzeit in der Inszenierung von Adolf Dresen zu sehen – das nächste Mal am 12., 17., 24. April und am 1. Mai unter der musikalischen Leitung der Australierin Simone Young. Wer der altbacken und teilweise lächerlich wirkenden Produktion überdrüssig ist, muss bis 2007 warten: Am 2. Dezember hat Sven-Eric Bechtolfs Neuproduktion der “Walküre” in Wien Premiere, am Pult steht Franz Welser-Möst. Die beiden sind ein eingespieltes Team. Bis 2009 wird der Regisseur, der am Burgtheater den “Reigen”, “Cyrano de Bergerac” und “Leonce und Lena” inszeniert hat, auch die drei anderen Teile der Tetralogie in Szene setzen. Zu seinem Konzept wollte er noch nicht viel verraten. Er sehe Wotan aber nicht “mit Aktenkoffer” über die Bühne wandern und kann sich auch Walhall “nicht als Großraumbüro” vorstellen. Bechtolf spielte damit auf die heftig gescholtene Bayreuther Ring-Inszenierung von Jürgen Flimm an, die im August 2004 das letzte Mal über die Bühne gegangen war. »
08 Mar 2005
Any production of Wagner’s Ring cycle needs some kind of coherence, so it is logical for a staging of Die Walküre to continue where the previous instalment, Das Rheingold, left off. In the case of the Royal Opera’s new production, though, that turns out to be not such a good thing at all. »
08 Mar 2005
Benjamin Britten is usually thought of as a musical dramatist on a large, operatic scale, but the instinct (or perhaps the inner necessity) to capture psychological conflict in music burst through in his smaller musical forms as well. His five canticles (not to be confused with the church parables) mirror Britten’s artistic growth in his operas and other large-scale works from the late 1940s until shortly before his death. »
08 Mar 2005
This last in the contributions of Anonymous 4 to the performance of medieval music is a selection of thematically related texts – most by Hildegard von Bingen – dealing with a spiritual or religious fire. Those renditions of traditional hymns, such as “Veni Creator Spiritus” and “Veni Spiritus eternorum alme,” are interspersed with works of Hildegard’s composition. Some of these are based on her prose visions, e.g. “Et ego homo non calens,” identified topically as “The fire of creation,” a depiction of which is also used for the cover illustration. The prose texts are provided with musical adaptations of plainsong by Anonymous 4. “The fire of creation” was performed using plainchant, and Hildegard’s vision “The fiery spirit” was adapted to a two-voice lection tone from Christmas matins of Polish origin. »
08 Mar 2005
In 1847, Giuseppe Verdi revised his opera I Lombardi alla prima crociata (1843) into a work for the Parisian stage. This “new” composition, featuring extensive plot changes, new music, and the requisite ballet, is considered better than the original upon which it was based. A reverse fate awaited Verdi’s next work for Paris, the grand opéra Les Vêpres Siciliennes, which premiered at the Opéra in 1855. Although it was performed there, with minor changes, until 1863, attempts to get the work past censors in Italy failed, for tales of successful revolutions simply were not permitted on the Risorgimento stage. After a poor translation of the opera entitled Giovanna de Guzman made the circuits, Verdi revisited the score in 1856, and, removing the ballet, created I vespri sicilani. This inferior version, which employs much of Giovanna de Guzman’s text, is unfortunately the one that has remained in the repertory. »
08 Mar 2005
GROUCHO MARX once quipped: “I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.” Bizarrely, that flashed through my mind as I was gripped, ravished and finally moved to tears by this early Handel oratorio. Here was George Frideric before he became, if not a virgin, then something even more pious: the stately, sedate cheerleader for the Hanoverian dynasty. »
07 Mar 2005
Much current popular culture assumes that its audience is knowledgeable of the American musical. References to, and parodies of, specific musicals are frequently a part of episodes of The Simpsons and South Park, and ads for companies as diverse as The Gap and the World Wrestling Entertainment promotion recently have restaged numbers from West Side Story to plug their products or events. Rarely, if ever, are the sources acknowledged; it is simply taken for granted that a general audience will understand the quotations and parodies. »
07 Mar 2005
Film freezes time and even serves to transport an enrapt viewer into its temporal world. Viewers of the recent DVD release of a December 1980 performance of Strauss’ operetta classic, Die Fledermaus, may not be quite as ecstatic as the local audience, but resistance is futile. Have some champagne ready for the curtain calls. Lovers of this art form will rejoice, and even the operetta-resistant (of which your reviewer is one) must succumb to the energy, star power, and sheer good will of all involved. »
07 Mar 2005
The Fromm Music Foundation has been a resident at Harvard for 32 years, commissioning new works and underwriting new-music activity in several venues, including Tanglewood. »
07 Mar 2005
“Don Carlo” is Verdi’s “Hamlet.” It’s always an event when the Metropolitan Opera brings back John Dexter’s striking 1979 production of this long, complex, musically profound and psychologically perceptive work, based on Schiller’s play about the indecisive young crown prince Don Carlo and his brutish father, Philip II of Spain, during the madness that was the Inquisition. »
07 Mar 2005
PRACTICALLY my first assignment as a cub critic was to review Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting Zurich Opera’s production of The Coronation of Poppea. That was in 1978, but I still recall the elation I felt at hearing this great Baroque pioneer sweep centuries of dust from Monteverdi’s masterpiece. »
07 Mar 2005
Essen. Es ist keine Sternstunde für das erfolgsverwöhnte Essener Aalto-Theater. Warum Generalmusikdirektor Stefan Soltesz Giacomo Puccinis Jugendwerk “Manon Lescaut” ins Programm hob, ist rätselhaft. Denn es liegt mit der gleichnamigen Oper des französischen Komponisten Jules Massenet ein qualitativ weitaus anspruchsvolleres Werk vor. Und hätte er den Mut zur Gegenwart gehabt, hätte sich Hans-Werner Henzes “Boulevard Solitude” angeboten. Ob dies erklärt, dass Soltesz bei der Premiere gleich der 1. Akt zum verhetzten Parforce-Ritt missriet? Immerhin wusste er im weiteren Verlauf den Essener Philharmonikern doch noch die feineren Harmonien zu entlocken, an denen es hier ja nun nicht völlig mangelt. »
06 Mar 2005
Die zwei Pärchen in Mozarts “Entführung aus dem Serail” haben ohnehin genug Schwierigkeiten zu überwinden, bis sie endlich auf ihrem Schinakel gen Westen fahren dürfen. Vor dem mutigen Versuch des “Letzten Erfreulichen Operntheaters”, das Singspiel nur mit Klavier, Oboe und Flöte instrumentiert auf ihre Kellerbühne zu stellen, türmte sich bei der zweiten Vorstellung ein weiteres Hindernis auf: die Grippe-bedingte Absage des Osmin-Darstellers. Gerade aus dem dadurch nötigen Provisorium erwuchsen dem Abend aber die besten Momente. »
06 Mar 2005
In the resonant, garishly lighted basement of Trinity United Methodist Church, art is imitating life. »
06 Mar 2005
Human beings will always be good for a laugh, especially when they’re in full pursuit of sex. »
06 Mar 2005
Even for a jaded reviewer like this one who has seen innumerable Bohème’s all over the world, there comes a moment in the third act when music and production simply take precedence over intellectual curiosity: the old magic works again and one is moved by the fate of these youngsters. High praise indeed for the famous Zeffirelli-production, born in 1963 at La Scala together with a juicy scandal when Di Stefano was ousted and replaced by Gianni Raimondi. »
06 Mar 2005
Beethoven’s “Fidelio” is an opera about freedom that is shackled by a limited libretto. A great performance can unlock its treasures. A mediocre one can feel like prison, as the Collegiate Chorale’s performance on Thursday night at Carnegie Hall underlined. It was a long and murky night, although there were many glints of bright light that tantalizingly shone through. »
05 Mar 2005
The operas of the Austrian composer Alexander von Zemlinsky (1871-1942) continue to fascinate audiences with their combination of carefully composed music and well-selected librettos. After using fairy-tale elements in his early operas, such as Sarema (1897), Es war einmal (1900), and Der Traumgörge (1905-6), Zemlinsky turned to Renaissance settings for Eine florentinische Tragödie (1917) and Der Zwerg (1922). In fact, Zemlinsky’s Florentinische Tragödie is based the dramatic fragment A Florentine Tragedy, by Oscar Wilde, whose works intrigued other composers of the time. Beyond the provocative drama Salome set by Richard Strauss, Franz Schreker used a story by Wilde as the basis for his ballet Die Geburtstag der Infantin (1908). »
05 Mar 2005
Schoenberg for lovers. Sounds like an oxymoron, but in fact there is enough passion in the too seldom heard Gurrelieder to make even Valentine blush. We know Schoenberg largely from the atonal and dodecaphonic later works (and most listeners know of these mostly by inaccurate rumor). But we forget all too often the fact that Schoenberg had an early period, much of which is readily accessible to conservative tastes. Gurrelieder is the sort of diamond in the crown of this period, a long cantata-like adventure, some two hours in full. Scored for an enormous orchestra, four choirs, and speaker, and five soloists, the work is the logical conclusion of the nineteenth-century penchant for Texas-style excess when it comes to orchestration: you can’t get any bigger than this without havin’ to build a second story. »
04 Mar 2005
SARASOTA — Many operas are all about the music, but in “Stiffelio” composer Giuseppe Verdi paid a lot more attention than usual to the words. »
04 Mar 2005
On paper, Ravel’s mock-Spanish “comédie musicale” (1904) and Poulenc’s mock-everything “opéra bouffe” (1944) should make a toothsome double bill. Less than an hour each, elegantly funny in quite different veins – and excellent for the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, for no heroic voices are required. But the team’s Ravel proved a lame affair, and its Poulenc – sung in English, with the same director (Stephen Langridge) and conductor – a delight. »
04 Mar 2005
Since Brian Dickie arrived as general director, Chicago Opera Theater has become the place to catch Handel’s operas staged with a bold theatrical flair that’s fresh and cutting-edge. The company began its 2005 season with a beautiful and inspiring production of a Handel rarity, “La Resurrezione,” Wednesday night in the Harris Theater for Music and Dance at Millennium Park. »
03 Mar 2005
Richard Westenburg led his 36-member Musica Sacra chorus and a small orchestra in works by Bach and Mozart at Carnegie Hall on Tuesday evening, and for the occasion, he revived one of the group’s hits from the 1970’s – the rarely heard early version of Bach’s Magnificat (BWV 242a) [sic]. »
03 Mar 2005
Er ist ein Bühnenmensch. Durch und durch. Schon ein Interview mit ihm ist eine äußerst unterhaltsame Dar bietung: witzig, inspiriert und sprühend lebendig. “Ich wollte immer alles darstellen,” sprudelt es aus dem 33-jährigen Mexikaner hervor. Mit Kindereien hat er sich dabei nicht aufgehalten. Bereits mit elf Jahren gehörte sein literarisches Interesse Camus und Kafka. “Die Figuren aus den Romanen waren für mich real, ich wollte so sein wie sie.” Das hat er bisweilen im Extrem ausgelebt. Die Biografie Gandhis hat den Jugendlichen später so fasziniert, dass er mit runder Brille und Glatze zur Schule ging. Das überbordende Ausdrucksbedürfnis entdeckte auch bald den Gesang. Vorerst unter der Dusche, am liebsten die Songs von “Perhaps Love”, Placido Domingos Cross-over-Album mit dem Popsänger John Denver – beide kann Villazón heute noch köstlich imitieren. »
02 Mar 2005
Am Anfang die Frage: Ist’s Bach, ist’s Koopman? Von Johann Sebastian Bachs Markus-Passion ist nur der Text erhalten geblieben. Der Holländer Ton Koopman hat nach einer gängigen Kompositionsmethode Bachs – der Wiederverwendung eigener Werke – die Arien und Choräle der Passion gesetzt und die Rezitative dazwischen neu komponiert. Man könnte sagen, einen handwerklich bearbeiteten Bach erschaffen. An dieses ganz besondere Stück wagte sich nun Philipp Amelung mit seinem Bach-Ensemble und bescherte damit dem Publikum im Münchner Herkulessaal einen äußerst spannenden Abend. »
02 Mar 2005
After opening its brief Barbican residency with Rimsky-Korsakov, the Mariinsky Theatre moved on to less regular territory for the company, with performances of Shostakovich’s The Nose and a Stravinsky double bill. Although the two Stravinsky works – the “choreographic scenes” of Les Noces and the “opera-oratorio” Oedipus Rex — were first performed (both in Paris) just four years apart, in 1923 and 1927 respectively, they belong to different musical worlds, for Les Noces had been conceived much earlier, in the immediate aftermath of The Rite of Spring, and Stravinsky took a decade to perfect its formal shape and scoring. »
02 Mar 2005
"I particularly want to reach newcomers" writes Anthony Tommasini, Times chief classical music critic, in his preface. I do not think they will be helped very much by this book. A rookie who picks it up and reads the subtitle may expect something more than two operas by Bellini, two by Donizetti, one Gounod (not Faust), one Massenet (not Manon) and no Lohengrin. »
01 Mar 2005
Wagnérien passé à la postérité grâce à une espagnolade (España) représentative du brio orchestral français, Emmanuel Chabrier a suscité l’admiration de Ravel et de Stravinsky avec Le Roi malgré lui, dont l’Opéra de Lyon présente une nouvelle production. Pourtant, cet opéra-comique repose sur un livret que peu de commentateurs ont apprécié avec bienveillance. A commencer par le compositeur, aigri par les multiples remaniements du texte : “Une bouillabaisse de Najac et de Burani, que fait cuire Richepin et dans laquelle je colle quelques épices.” »
01 Mar 2005
Einen Schubert-Liederabend im Großen Musikvereins-Saal zu veranstalten, ist eigentlich eine Schnapsidee. Umso mehr, als ein so persönlicher und intimer Liedzyklus wie die “Schöne Müllerin” auf dem Programm stand, zu singen von Ian Bostridge mit seinem zarten, schlanken Tenor. Immerhin konnten dem Publikum auf diese Weise zwei Schubert-Experten auf einen Schlag präsentiert werden: Bostridge, der zuletzt mit seiner Einspielung der “Winterreise” für Aufsehen sorgte, und Mitsuko Uchida, sicher eine der führenden Schubert-Interpretinnen unter den Pianisten. »
01 Mar 2005
Angela Brown has attracted the attention of those eager for the appearance of the next great Verdi soprano, and she continues to live up to the high expectations. Appearances with the Opera Company of Philadelphia as Leonara in Il Trovatore, Elisabetta in Don Carlo, and Strauss’s Ariadne evoked high praise from local and national critics, and her recent debut as Aida at the Metropolitan Opera was well received. All have noted the powerful and richly expressive voice in early bloom as well as Brown’s commanding stage presence. So this recent recording of spirituals, sung only with guitar or piano accompaniment (they all three contribute to the final “Ride Up in the Chariot”), is an interesting release. Brown is minimizing resources in search of what, in the liner notes, she calls an “intimate recording” of “songs of personal introspection.” The results are a little more mixed than her operatic reception. »
01 Mar 2005
This Andante release is a marvelous compilation of two recordings of Verdi’s Falstaff performed at the Salzburg festival, the first conducted by Arturo Toscanini in 1937, the second by Herbert Von Karajan in 1957. The juxtaposition and accompanying extensive program notes encourage the aficionado to compare, contrast and delight in the music through the lens of time. Falstaff was a favorite of the maestri and both took professional chances with it. Toscanini performed Falstaff during his first season at La Scala in 1898; Karajan perplexed his German-speaking audience by programming Falstaff in Aachen during his final season in 1941-2. »
28 Feb 2005
Robert Craft has begun an ambitious project of recording Stravinsky’s oeuvre with two of the best dramatic works, Oedipus Rex — a sort of melodrama in a fever — and Les Noces (The Wedding), which simply defies any generic classification. The two make an ideal pairing, Rex as high drama told at a breakneck crawl, Noces as a kind of musical Polaroid camera that churns through frozen snapshots with a mind numbing velocity. Craft was a close confidant and collaborator with Stravinsky, and was responsible for many premiers and other definitive statements. For better or worse this fact brought down upon his head a certain amount of critical skepticism on the part of academics. This can be set to one side in these recordings, which are certainly reliable in a workaday sense, if a little tepid in terms of insight and energy. »
27 Feb 2005
Vivica Genaux hasn’t been singing long enough for the whole world to recognize it, but she is one of the greatest singers of our day.
Genaux returned Friday to the Florentine Opera, to sing the title role in Rossini’s “La Cenerentola.” Her voice was huge, and as dark and rich as a profound red wine. Rarely do voices with such weight come to roles such as this, which are loaded with quick, tricky ornaments and aerobatic coloratura tangents. For all its power, Genaux’s singing seems effortless, and her voice is incredibly agile. She articulated every note with utter clarity and accuracy, even in the fastest runs and at the extremes of her range. »
27 Feb 2005
From an artistic standpoint, Chicago Opera Theater’s inaugural season last year in the new Harris Theater for Music and Dance in Millennium Park couldn’t have been more successful.
Productions of Monteverdi’s “The Coronation of Poppea,’’ the haunting Chicago staged premiere of Benjamin Britten’s “Death in Venice’’ and a version of Rossini’s whimsical “Il viaggio a Reims’’ set in the American Wild West were outstanding on both musical and theatrical levels. »
27 Feb 2005
This is the triumph of style over content certainly, but in Fledermaus everything triumphs over content.
The director, Lindy Hume, with designers Richard Roberts and Angus Strathie, has transposed 19th-century Austro-Hungarian imperial decadence onto 20th-century American imperial decadence, marrying brash New York energy with creaking Viennese charm. »
26 Feb 2005
Sie inszenieren die sechste „Salome“ seit der Dresdner Uraufführung 1905 – empfanden Sie die Tradition des Stücks als Last?
Da ich die Oper zum ersten Mal anfasse, dominierte die Lust. Eigentlich habe ich ja für „Salome“ Regie-Verbot, welches mir Mitte der 70er Jahre die Strauss-Erben aussprachen. Seinerzeit hatte ich vor Gericht mit der Frankfurter Oper um Urheberrechte an einer Inszenierung von Wagners „Götterdämmerung“ gestritten – und den Prozess gewonnen. Aufgehoben ist das Verbot nicht. Die Erben haben aber auch nicht interveniert. »
26 Feb 2005
Kurzweilig und mit pointierten persönlichen Anmerkungen verfeinert eröffnete Bariton Thomas Hampson seinen vierteiligen Amerika-Zyklus: Er ließ das Publikum im Neuen Saal an seiner Spurensuche nach dem “amerikanischen Lied” teilhaben, zog verbindende Fäden von der Alten in die Neue Welt. So sprach etwa der Mahler-Zeitgenosse Edward MacDowell fließend deutsch und wurde von Franz Liszt hoch geschätzt. Seine wonnig-traurige Seefahrer- “Ballade” brachte Hampson dann im Großen Saal darstellerisch raffiniert zur Geltung. Auch Charles Griffes (1884-1920) europäische Wurzeln – er war mit Engelbert Humperdinck befreundet – wurden nachvollziehbar, so in “Des Müden Abendlied”. »
26 Feb 2005
“Master of the famous Mr. H. Purcell”: Die Gedenktafel in der Westminster Abbey zeigt deutlich, dass John Blow, geboren 1649, schon für Zeitgenossen ein wenig im Schatten seines um zehn Jahre jüngeren Kollegen im Hofdienst und mutmaßlichen Schülers Henry Purcell stand. Dabei war Blows Karriere als Organist, Komponist und Chorleiter vielfältig und verantwortungsvoll. 1683 schrieb er “Venus und Adonis”, eine “Masque for the entertainment of the King”. Eine Oper im Taschenformat sozusagen, aus der Tradition des höfischen Maskenspiels emporgewachsen zum musikdramatischen Meisterwerk – nur mehr ein Schritt trennt es von Purcells “Dido and Aeneas” (1689). »
25 Feb 2005
This CD collaboration between the early music viol ensemble Fretwork and vocalist Emma Kirkby is devoted to songs of William Byrd composed in the vernacular to be sung with string accompaniment; interspersed with these is a selection of short instrumental pieces in various genres. As a composer whose work was associated especially with the English Catholics, many of Byrd’s compositions from the last quarter of the sixteenth century were based on sacred Latin texts. The less familiar English consort songs chosen for this recording represent a mix of both secular and religious themes. Topics in the song texts include the constancy of Penelope, the narrative of a pet dog who meets an unexpected end, an elegy on Sir Philip Sidney, and the execution of Mary Stuart as bound up with the vicissitudes of Fortune in this world. This selection is further balanced by vernacular songs of an overtly religious character focusing on topics such as the vanity of earthly pleasure and possessions, the Nativity, and a lengthy prayer for divine grace. Finally, some of the song texts draw on a thematic complex of both sacred and profane. »
25 Feb 2005
Through a felicitous quirk of its touring schedule, Nicholas McGegan and his period instrument ensemble, the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, performed a program devoted mostly to music by Handel on Wednesday evening, the 320th anniversary of Handel’s birth. »
25 Feb 2005
In 1998, New York’s Metropolitan Opera staged a new production of Le Nozze di Figaro with a glorious cast that included Bryn Terfel as Figaro and Cecilia Bartoli as Susanna. The recent revival employed singers who are less well known, but it none the less came close to being a perfect night at the opera. »
25 Feb 2005
Die heutzutage gern gepflegte Diskussion über die Frage “Darf man Bach auf ,modernem’ Instrumentarium aufführen?” ist dümmlich. Dass sie überhaupt geführt wird, beweist nur, wie wenig adäquate Bach-Aufführungen es heutzutage gibt. Wer die von Franz Welser-Möst geleitete Wiedergabe der Hohen Messe im Musikverein hörte, hat sich garantiert keinen Augenblick lang mit solchen Lappalien beschäftigt. Er hatte keine Zeit, denn da wurde Musik gemacht, auf jenem Niveau, mit jener Dringlichkeit, die von Takt zu Takt signalisiert, welche inneren wie äußeren Höhenflüge des Geistes sich in dieser Partitur vereinigen. »
24 Feb 2005
A decade ago, Ian Bostridge’s recording of Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin, with Graham Johnson, played a major part in boosting his nascent career. These days, though, the tenor is more often found collaborating with pianists who are soloists in their own right. His second recording of the song cycle has seen him developing a partnership with Mitsuko Uchida – and it might be his most fruitful so far. »
24 Feb 2005
IN pursuing its theme of transcendence, the Perth Festival has brokered some imaginative collaborations, such as the Tura New Music concert at the Art Gallery of WA, featuring Morton Feldman’s music inspired by the paintings at the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas. . . . »
24 Feb 2005
The apes have landed. The Duke of Mantua is a gorilla. Monterone is an orang utan, surrounded by hairy baboons. The cult film director Doris Dörrie is monkeying with Verdi’s Rigoletto at the Bavarian State Opera. »
24 Feb 2005
It is strange how easily Raymond Gubbay manages to fill the Royal Albert Hall for opera, when less than a year ago his Savoy Opera company collapsed because he could not sell enough seats in a theatre a fraction of the size. How irrelevant that ill-starred venture and its demise seem now. »
23 Feb 2005
Though a sizable contingent of opera connoisseurs and critics have long considered Saint-Saëns’ “Samson et Dalila” a musically tepid melodrama, this 1877 opera has been an enduring favorite with audiences. It’s not hard to understand why. »
23 Feb 2005
A qui s’adresse le compositeur d’un Requiem ? Au défunt, que sa musique doit accompagner dans une ultime transcendance, ou à la communauté endeuillée, qui se voit ainsi rappeler son état de mortel ? Dans le cas de Verdi, agnostique déclaré mais chantre du sacré à l’opéra, la réponse ne fait aucun doute. La Messa da Requiem, créée en 1874 à la mémoire du compositeur Rossini et de l’écrivain Manzoni, est destinée à tout être humain sensible au pouvoir des sons. »
23 Feb 2005
Eine groß angelegte, staatstheaternde Rettungsaktion sollte es sein. Und dass Doris Dörrie jene Verweigerer, die Oper doof statt dufte finden, an die Hand nehmen will, um sie heim in die Hochkultur zu holen, ist ja prinzipiell in Ordnung. Dabei pflegt die Filmregisseurin nur zu gern mit ihrem Nichtwissen in Sachen Musiktheater zu kokettieren, um augenzwinkernd nach Kumpanen zu suchen: Oper, die mischen wir mal so richtig zeitgeistig auf. »
23 Feb 2005
Like picking a growth stock, the Opera Company of Philadelphia showed shrewd judgment by engaging sopranos (for two of its four 2004/05 productions) who promptly became media darlings. »
22 Feb 2005
Some years ago, those of us who are aficionados of pre-1750 repertory – and all the more so, those of us who are privileged to be able to teach it – were happy to have any recording of the music we hold so dear. We were happy to excuse wooden-ness or sloppiness of performance because, well, some idea of the sound of pre-Classical repertories was better than none at all. Over the last couple of decades, with the proliferation of phenomenal performers and ensembles who specialize in early music, this resignation faded: we now are spoiled by having our choice of many polished performances, and the privilege of comparing their relative merits. »
22 Feb 2005
The early music movement has come a long way since the 1970s. Or has it? Zurich Opera’s new L’incoronazione di Poppea invites comparisons. This opera house’s Monteverdi cycle three decades ago changed the way the world thought about the composer. Now it’s time for the remake. Same conductor, different directors. Klaus-Michael Grüber staged a spare, emotional Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria three years ago. For Poppea, it’s Jürgen Flimm’s turn. »
22 Feb 2005
München – Idee ungewöhnlich, Experiment gescheitert: Unter dieser Kurzformel könnte man Doris Dörries erste und von großem Medieninteresse begleitete Münchner Opern-Inszenierung zusammenfassen. Giuseppe Verdis 1851 in Venedig uraufgeführten Opernklassiker «Rigoletto» auf dem «Planeten der Affen» anzusiedeln, diese Vorstellung fand bei der Premiere im Münchner Nationaltheater wenig Freunde. »
22 Feb 2005
Es ist eine der kürzesten Sterbesze nen der Operngeschichte: Ein schnoddrig verkündetes Todesur teil, jemand wuselt mit einem Strick herum, dann ist die intrigante Königs-Nichte auch schon tot. In Prokofieffs Märchen-Oper “Die Liebe zu den drei Orangen” wird schnell gestorben: Auch die den ersten beiden Zitrus-Früchten entsprungenen Prinzessinnen verdursten rasch, wenn auch klagend – eines der Details, mit denen sich der Komponist/Librettist Prokofieff vom Verismo abgrenzt. Keine naturalistische Darstellung, keine opulent auskomponierten Szenen voller Gefühlsüberschwang; statt dessen: Märchen und absurdes Theater, kurze Sequenzen, die einander fast überholen. »
22 Feb 2005
Zuweilen begnügt man sich auch mit Details. Wenn das Ganze so gar nicht stimmen mag, gelingt es viel leicht dem einen oder anderen der beteiligten Künstler sozusagen gegen den Strom schwimmend, eine herausragende Leistung zu modellieren. Im Falle der “Werther”-Premiere darf Elina Garanca das künstlerische Freischärlertum für sich in Anspruch nehmen. Sie sollte die Charlotte singen, wurde von Regisseur Andrei Serban jedoch gezwungen, eine Art Grace-Kelly-Parodie abzuliefern, denn das Stück spielt von Inszenierungs-Gnaden in den fünfziger Jahren des 20. Jahrhunderts. »
22 Feb 2005
Yesterday [19 February 2005], I went to the concert hall in Göteborg, where Anne Sofie von Otter and Bengt Forsberg held a recital. It was the first time I actually heard them live, and I must confess that I was apprehensive! I have listened to them so much on recordings and taken so much influence from them, especially when it comes to my repertoire — what if I didn’t like them in concert? The concert hall was full — 1200 seats, imagine that for a recital… I have a hard time getting jobs at all because it is so hard to attract audiences to recitals. But, they are world famous and that, of course, attracts a large audience. »
21 Feb 2005
This new disc, from Hänssler’s “Living Voices” series, divides essentially into two parts. The first four tracks are “Potpourris” from Léhar’s Paganini and Das Land des Lächelns, Suppé’s Bocaccio, and Johann Strauss’s Wiener Blut. Recorded in 1939 and 1940, these “Potpourris” feature tenor Rupert Glawitsch and a very young Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (b. 1915). The remaining eight tracks include excerpts from Schwarzkopf’s early-50s EMI complete mono recordings of Die Lustige Witwe and Land das Lächelns. »
21 Feb 2005
In the mountains of the vast Auvergne country near the south of France lays the inspiration of Canteloube’s Chants D’Auvergne. Marie-Joseph Canteloube, born in 1879 at Annonay, spent his childhood in the countryside of Malaret in the south of Auvergne. It was these roots that instilled his love for folk-music, consuming much of his compositional output and research. He wrote Les chants paysan s’élève bien souvent au niveau de l’art le plus pur, par le sentiment et l’expression, sinon par la forme. (The songs of peasants very often reach the level of the purest art in feeling and expression, if not in form.) »
21 Feb 2005
The title of this most worthwhile CD is, I’m afraid, somewhat misleading. The charismatic German bass-baritone, Michael Bohnen, sang at the Metropolitan Opera from 1923-1932. One might expect this CD to only document roles that Bohnen sang there, if not provide transcriptions of actual Met performances.
In fact, the disc includes excerpts from several roles that Bohnen never sang at the Met. Of the twenty tracks on this CD, twelve, by my count, are souvenirs of Bohnen Met roles (Tonio, Rocco, Caspar, Mephistopheles, Wotan, Wolfram, Sachs, and Francesco in Schilling’s Mona Lisa). »
21 Feb 2005
FIRST nights of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck are not traditionally sellouts, but then this was anything but a traditional first night.
As the main event of Welsh National Opera’s inaugural weekend in its new home, the Wales Millennium Centre at Cardiff Bay, Saturday night’s performance sent out a volley of positive signals that will stand the company in good stead as it builds new audiences. There are more seats to fill than in WNO’s old house, but a strong forthcoming season combined with adventurous pricing policy should prolong the buzz. »
21 Feb 2005
Time stands quite still in John Adams’ opera The Death of Klinghoffer.
The pulsing orchestra, the explanatory choruses, the shifting viewpoints, and, above all, the tacit understanding that the events of 20 years ago are being replicated now with no measurable change give the work the feeling of complete stasis. »
21 Feb 2005
Welsh National Opera’s first performance in its new home could so easily have been a disaster. But nowhere was the return of its former musical director Carlo Rizzi more crucial than in this revival, as he transformed the shoddy Traviata of last May into an emphatic restatement of the musical values that have traditionally been at the core of the WNO. Rizzi conducted with authority and passion, and with such care for his singers that where terminal decline had beckoned, he seemed to have effected a miracle cure. »
21 Feb 2005
A tale of everyday mortals and gods entranced a nearly full house at beleaguered Scottish Opera last night with the same clever mix of pathos, wit, drama and humour that has kept nations’ favourite soaps at the top of the viewing and listening schedules for decades. And it was the visual elements as much as the vocal and musical that clinched the success of this premiere performance last night. Director John la Bouchardiere (of “The Full Monteverdi” fame) worked with a light touch that engagingly mixed some pretty unusual elements into a confection that finally had the audience calling its approval. Likewise, young Christian Curnyn on the podium brought his Early Opera Company experience and love of truly modern stagings of Handel to bear, and managed to persuade the SCO orchestra to eschew both vibrato and swooping lines without adding any extra period instrumentalists, save a harpsichord. Apart from a slightly unconvincing first 10 minutes (of more later) they played with increasing verve and apparent conviction throughout. »
21 Feb 2005
If you had to name an opera you thought Seattle music lovers were dying to see and hear, what would be your guess? “Carmen”? “Madame Butterfly”? Maybe the ever-beloved story of ill-fated young lovers, “La Boheme”? »
21 Feb 2005
During the latter half of the 19th century, and much of the 20th, countless opera companies, mostly Italian, but also some French and an occasional German, toured much of the Southeast coast of Latin America. Cities visited most frequently included Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Rio de Janeiro, and Sao Paulo, with occasional swings inland (Rosario and Cordoba), but sometimes going as far West as Santiago and Valparaiso. »
19 Feb 2005
Ce ne sont pas des notes qui jaillissent de la baguette de Valery Gergiev, c’est un foudroiement : une tempête d’air, d’eau, de feu qui déchire l’espace et fige d’horreur le chœur des Chypriotes massés au port pour le retour vainqueur d’Otello. Une puissance dévastatrice, métaphysique. »
19 Feb 2005
Krzysztof Penderecki’s A Polish Requiem is a monumental work expressing the struggles of 20th century Poland against oppression. Written over the course of several years in the 1980s and 90s, sections of A Polish Requiem memorialize significant events in Poland’s history. The Lacrimosa was written for Lech Walesa and his Solidarity movement as a memorial to Gdansk dock-workers who died in a conflict with authorities. The Agnus Dei was composed as a memorial tribute to the Polish religious leader, Cardinal Wyszynski and the Recordare marks the beatification of Father Maximilian Kolbe who sacrificed his life at Auschwitz so that another man and his family could live. In addition, the Dies Irae was written to mark the 40th anniversary of the Warsaw uprising against the Nazis. In its whole, A Polish Requiem is a work of piety as an expression of Penderecki’s devout Catholicism and a conviction of the human ability to triumph over evil. »
19 Feb 2005
Renée Fleming sang the Boston leg of her current recital tour last night at Symphony Hall accompanied by the distinguished German pianist Hartmut Höll. Not only was Ms Fleming in free, shimmering and beautifully controlled voice, but last night’s program of Purcell, Handel, Berg and Schumann was some of her most disciplined work in a very long time. »
18 Feb 2005
"New musicology" is the cultural study, analysis and criticism of music, which proffers the belief that music has societal, religious, political, personal, and sexual agendas. Consequently, new musicology, much like the discussion of such topics at social gatherings, can be polarizing. »
17 Feb 2005
NABUCCO. Music by Giuseppe Verdi, libretto by Temistocle Solera. Metropolitan Opera, James Levine conducting. Through March 8 at Lincoln Center. Call 212-362-6000 or visit www.metopera.org.
Biography can be a distorting lens through which to view art. A case in point is Verdi’s “Nabucco” (1842), his first great success, which followed the deaths of his children and wife between 1838 and 1840 and the humiliating failure of his second opera. »
17 Feb 2005
For San Diego Opera conductor Karen Keltner, returning to the score of Mozart’s opera “Cosi fan tutte” is like slipping on a pair of well-worn leather gloves. The music fits snugly with the vocal parts, and the luxurious feel of the piece improves with each wearing. »
17 Feb 2005
In Scottish Opera’s early days, Handel was not a high priority. Debussy, Verdi, Mozart and Mussorgsky were the composers with whom the company made its name. As a Handel conductor, Alexander Gibson – like Pierre Boulez – went no further than the Water Music. In his role as administrator, Peter Hemmings was forthright and forbidding. Handel’s operas, he declared, were the kiss of death. »
16 Feb 2005
Faced with Wagner’s marathon symphonic poem with voices, it is easy to see why producers are panicked into hyperactivity. Olivier Py’s new staging does just that. Wagner whittled down the characters to the bare minimum, to present an unadulterated account of doomed passion. Py, a promising, provocative talent in France but on this evidence short on maturity and focus, elects to flood the stage, literally in act three, with supernumeraries and hackneyed symbolism that feeds on Shakespeare and Arthurian legend. »
16 Feb 2005
There is an honesty to Elijah Moshinsky’s four-year-old production of Verdi’s “Nabucco,” which returned to the Metropolitan Opera on Monday night. No excuses are made for the opera’s creaky theatrical state, no attempts to bring up-to-date relevance to what became a symbol of revolution and national unity for Italians 160 years ago. »
16 Feb 2005
AN ODD thing about David McVicar’s productions is the way they improve with time. When this show first appeared it was too po-faced by half, full of regard for the pomposities of the piece but hardly at ease with its lightness, enchantment and childish simplicity. »
16 Feb 2005
Hamburg – These. Antithese. Synthese. So einfach ist das manchmal. Anstatt ein sehr abstraktes, gern auch sehr allegorisches Genre wie die Barock-Oper in ein um Wirklichkeit bemühtes Regie-Korsett zwingen zu wollen, das ihren schillernden Typen das Entrückte, Allgemeingültige nehmen würde, geht Karoline Gruber bei “Giulio Cesare in Egitto” einen ganz eigenen, ganz cleveren Regie-Weg: Zuerst wird auf Pointe komm raus gealbert und überdreht. Dann auf Gedeih und Verderb geliebt. Im dritten Akt ohne Wenn und Aber geläutert. Die Katharsis kommt spät, aber gewaltig. »
15 Feb 2005
“Making a pact with the devil’’ is one of those expressions that have gotten diluted with overuse. Nobody really means it when they say it, unless maybe they happen to be talking about Charles Gounod’s opera Faust, where the music is as transcendently lovely as the story line is dark. »
15 Feb 2005
WHY IS IT we feel so comfortable with the Handel who wrote such pot-boilers as the Hallelujah Chorus, Arrival of the Queen of Sheba, Music for the Royal Fireworks or Water Music, yet dread the thought of sitting through one of his many operas? »
15 Feb 2005
This is the way the art of ballet will end, with a sentimental whimper, an easy tear in its eye, and not a squeak of true life as theatrical dance. If the novelisation of successful movies is thought a pretty bogus form of literature, how much worse is a balletisation of an opera masterpiece such as Verdi’s La traviata. »
15 Feb 2005
Odd that Opera Colorado would encourage ticket-buyers for its production of Julius Caesar to “Bring your Valentine . . . and witness a love so great it changed the course of history.”
This, be advised, is not your typical love story, nor is it a date opera. Just as the production that opened Saturday at the Buell Theatre is hardly your basic, by-the-book staging. For starters, Handel’s legendary leading lovers, Caesar and Cleopatra, are both sung by women. And, yes, they do smooch – sort of. »
15 Feb 2005
Recitals should be about something, I always say. So I should have been delighted that “dans ce vague d’un Dimanche,” on a dreamy Sunday (a line from Debussy’s song “L’échelonnement des haies”) at Alice Tully Hall, José van Dam, the excellent Belgian bass-baritone, perfectly suited his delivery to words like “parcourent en rêvant les coteaux enchantées/ où, jadis, sourit ma jeunesse” (“wandering dreamily across the enchanted slopes where, once, my youth smiled”), a line from Fauré’s “Automne.” »
15 Feb 2005
Leonard Bernstein’s Candide may only have been written 50 years ago, but it presents as many problems of texts and editions as any baroque opera that mouldered in an ecclesiastical library for three or four centuries. The idea of turning Voltaire’s scabrously satirical novella into an operetta was originally Lillian Hellman’s, but five other writers eventually contributed to the piece, while for the rest of his life Bernstein carried on worrying away at it too. »
15 Feb 2005
Le metteur en scène français Olivier Py a conçu une nouvelle production de Tristan, de Wagner – la première depuis vingt ans à l’Opéra de Genève. A pari téméraire, réussite exemplaire : le metteur en scène, auteur et comédien français réalise une magistrale version du chef-d’œuvre wagnérien, plastique et superlativement musicale, intelligente et hautement sensible. Un Tristan tiré au cordeau que magnifient les ingénieux décors de Pierre-André Weits, les lumières d’Olivier Py et une direction d’acteurs aboutie. »
15 Feb 2005
Es gibt CD-Aufnahmen mit Roberto Alagna, auf denen erkennt man seine Stimme nicht wieder. Entspannt und schmiegsam klingt sie da, ebenmäßig und mit sehr dezenten Nuancierungen – genauso also, wie im dritten “Tosca”-Akt an der Bayerischen Staatsoper. Das “E lucevan le stelle” behandelte der München-Debütant ganz behutsam, nicht als Nummer eines Schlagerabends, sondern wie eine versonnene Erinnerung an Vergangenes – also der Situation kurz vor dem tödlichen Schuss durchaus angemessen. »
14 Feb 2005
The CD entitled Schöne Wiege meiner Leiden contains a selection of music by three friends who composed Lieder: Robert Schumann, his wife Clara, and their colleague Johannes Brahms. Their friendship is well known, and this recording is an attempt to pay tribute to what Berner calls “the manifold interactions between this artistic trinity” by presenting music by each of them; the pieces include Robert Schumann’s Liederkreis, Op. 24, seven Lieder by Clara Schumann, and ten of Brahms’ Deutsche Volkslieder, WoO 33. »
13 Feb 2005
The new Chandos recordings present Valeri Polyansky and the Russian State Symphony Orchestra in two little-known Russian operas of the early twentieth century, Sergei Rachmaninov’s The Miserly Knight (1905), and César Cui’s A Feast in Time of Plague (1900), the latter recorded for the first time. Each work is a setting of one of Alexander Pushkin’s Little Tragedies (1830), a series of four short plays in blank verse that elaborate on popular literary topics: “Don Juan, or The Stone Guest,” “The Miserly Knight,” “Mozart and Salieri,” and “A Feast in Time of Plague.” Sharply penetrating psychological portraits of people consumed by their obsessions – passion, greed, jealousy, and fear – Pushkin’s “dramatic scenes” have enjoyed a near cult status among the classics of Russian literature over the past 175 years. So has the first attempt to set one of them to music – a radical 1869 word-for-word setting of The Stone Guest by Alexander Dargomyzhsky (1813-69). Cast almost entirely as a continuous arioso, the work was proclaimed a revolution in operatic style by the Russian Five whose unbridled enthusiasm contributed to its enduring reputation. »
13 Feb 2005
Of today’s opera stars, tenor Rolando Villazón may be the “hottest” (if readers will allow that Entertainment Tonight term). He has gone from being an Operalia winner a few years back to assuming leading roles in the major houses of Europe and the U.S. His second major label recital disc has just been released to even higher praise than his first received, which appeared on many “best of the year lists” for 2004. Wherever he appears, major profiles and interviews appear in the local papers. He’s so hot he may be contributing to global warming. »
12 Feb 2005
Groß war das Interesse für Deborah Polaskis erste Wiener Isolde. Und rasch machte sie klar, wie sie diese Rolle versteht: als kraftvoll gesteigerte Euphorie. Da hatte sie in Peter Schneider am Pult des gut disponierten, mit fabelhaften Soli bei Streichern und Bläsern aufwartenden Staatsopernorchesters einen gleich gestimmten Partner. Denn auch er setzte auf kräftige Farben, heizte die Dynamik und die Emotion der Sänger an, ohne dabei auf die lyrischen Stellen der Partitur zu vergessen, auch wenn man diese schon feinnerviger modelliert in Erinnerung hat. Dennoch, zu einem spannenden Ganzen wollten sich die einzelnen, noch so intensiv musizierten Mosaiksteine nur schwer fügen. »
11 Feb 2005
Born in Florence, Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) came to France in 1646 as an Italian tutor to Louis XIV’s cousin Anne-Marie-Louise d’Orléans. Thanks to her, Lully became acquainted with French music, and got to study with several eminent musicians in Paris. In early 1653, he was asked to play several roles in the spectacular Royal Ballet of the Night. His performances caught the eye of King Louis XIV, who immediately appointed the young musician to the post of “Instrumental Music Composer.” Soon, Lully became Louis XIV’s favorite musician — he was appointed to the post of “Master of Music of the Royal Family” in 1662 — and the most important composer in France. Today, Lully is known primarily as the first major composer of French opera. (Unfortunately, he is also remembered for the way he died. In January 1687, Lully stabbed his foot with a cane that he used to beat time, and he succumbed to infections that resulted from this injury.) »
11 Feb 2005
Gounod’s Faust is often billed in Germany as Margarethe. The frivolous Frenchman’s melodies should not be confused with Goethe’s masterpiece. That would be blasphemy.
Frankfurt Opera, not a house given to frivolity, has chosen a new critical edition of Faust. Minus the usual cuts, plus intervals, the evening lasts four hours. Add Johannes Debus on the podium, drawing plump, earthy sounds from the orchestra, and you start to hear Gounod with an earnestly German accent. »
11 Feb 2005
A scene from the Mariinsky Theater’s production of Tchaikovsky’s opera The Enchantress. Pyotr Tchaikovsky, arguably Russia’s most popular composer, is being celebrated with a festival of his work at the Mariinsky Theater. The event, which kicks off Saturday with David Poutney’s production of “The Enchantress,” runs through Feb. 20 and features over two dozen performances of Tchaikovsky’s operas, ballets and chamber music.
The Mariinsky’s artistic director, Valery Gergiev makes just one appearance during the festival, to conduct “The Enchantress” on the opening night. »
10 Feb 2005
True to the intent of its series, Il Salotto, Opera Rara offers in this seventh volume a delightful sampling of art songs from the mid- to late-nineteenth-century repertory. Performing them are sopranos Elisabeth Vidal and Laura Claycomb, mezzo Manuele Custer, tenors Bruce Ford and Willliam Matteuzzi, baritone Roberto Servile, and bass Alastair Miles, accompanied on piano by David Harper. »
10 Feb 2005
The singers marched on stage with near-military precision, the hem of each purple choir robe at the same distance from the ground. When they opened their mouths to sing, an even wall of sound emerged: words clear, notes true. But more than that, the notes were felt. As the music moved through the rows of singers, their bodies swayed like a field of long grass in the wind. »
10 Feb 2005
The most recent recording by England’s premier performers of Renaissance vocal music, the Orlando Consort, features a selection of works by the renowned fifteenth-century composer Antoine Busnois, works that represent the major genres of music composition of the time — mass, motet, and chanson. The performances are what we have come to expect from the fine singers of the Orlando Consort: warm, vibrant, and precise. »
10 Feb 2005
Die bedeutenden Komponisten der Musikliteratur, Claudio Monteverdi und Kurt Weill, suchten sich als literarische „Partner“ Größen der Weltliteratur, un- ter anderen Torquato Tasso und Bertolt Brecht. Und so ist es nicht verwunderlich, dass eine sensible Behandlung der Sprache bei beiden Komponisten in ihren Musiktheaterstücken oberste Priorität hat. »
10 Feb 2005
Es gibt Termine, die sind für einen Liederabend in der Oper Frankfurt eher ungünstig. Dazu gehört der Fastnachtsdienstag. Zwar dürften sich die Zielgruppen einigermaßen unterscheiden. Aber zartbesaitete Menschen trauen sich an den tollen Tagen kaum aus dem Haus. So war die Oper, die normalerweise mehr als tausend Personen fasst, beim Gastauftritt der britischen Sopranistin Amanda Roocroft mit Iain Burnside als Klavierbegleiter enttäuschend schwach besucht. Und möglicherweise lag es am Blick auf die vielen leer gebliebenen Plätze, dass Amanda Roocroft ihr Programm zunächst nicht übermäßig engagiert anging und ihr Potential oft mehr durchscheinen ließ als zeigte. »
10 Feb 2005
Hugo von Hofmannsthal bemerkte 1921, dass der “Rosenkavalier gar nichts sei, wenn nicht ein Dokument der österreichischen Wesensart”. Dieses Diktum schien die Maxime der Grazer Neuproduktion gewesen zu sein. Marco Arturo Marelli, verantwortlich für Inszenierung, Bühne und Licht, ist überhaupt ganz offensichtlich ein genauer Kenner von Hofmannsthals Meisterlibretto. Den innersten Fasern und Nuancen des Textes folgend, gelang es ihm mittels eines riesigen, schräg über der Bühne platzierten Spiegels und einer hochsensiblen Lichtregie eine sinnlich-dichte Atmosphäre zu schaffen, eben genau jene spezifisch österreichische “Lebensluft”, um die es Hofmannsthal zeitlebens so intensiv zu tun war. »
10 Feb 2005
Une vague forme humaine étendue dans la pénombre – gisant, dormant ? C’est Leporello. A côté, le fameux livre de comptes de Don Giovanni – mille et deux conquêtes. Quelque part, la mille troisième est en train de se faire “inscrire” : Donna Elvira. La voilà d’ailleurs qui surgit, hors d’haleine, tâchant de démasquer son violeur.
Entre rêve et réalité, monde intérieur et espace externe, Brigitte Jacques-Wajeman, qui signe là sa première mise en scène d’un opéra du répertoire, a choisi de confronter le désir vital à l’inconscient mortifère (les mortes eaux de décors en noir et blanc). »
10 Feb 2005
On March 11 1829 a marker was set down in musical history, when the 20-year-old Mendelssohn realised an ambition to give the first performance in “modern” times of Bach’s St Matthew Passion – a scheme dismissed by his elders as the fantasy of a couple of “snotty-nosed brats”. »
09 Feb 2005
“Classy” is not a word we have come to associate with English National Opera in recent years. Populist, perhaps. Attention-seeking, certainly. But with Mozart’s late opera seria, ENO returns to the old-fashioned virtues of ensemble, intelligibility, beauty, truth. They should be obvious, shouldn’t they? But we rarely encounter them in harmony, as we do here in a production directed by David McVicar, conducted by Roland Böer and shared with the Royal Danish Opera. »
08 Feb 2005
The Boston Conservatory of Music gave two performances, each with a different cast, of Philip Glass’s Akhnaten last week five years to the day after the work’s Boston premiere by the Boston Lyric Opera in February 2000. Aside from the pleasure of being able to hear a big contemporary work again so soon, the two productions were so radically different from one another that a whole new perspective on Glass’s work could be had. »
08 Feb 2005
When you hear a stage prince sing, “Dear orange, we’re finally alone together, just you and me,” you know you’re not listening to the usual grand-opera fare.
But, then again, Opera In Concert is not about presenting the Opera America Top 10 list. »
08 Feb 2005
Even if you have heard a countertenor sing before – and judging from intermission chatter Saturday in Libby Gardner Hall, not many people have – you’ve never heard anyone sing like David Daniels.
Daniels, credited with helping revive interest in early operas as well as the countertenor voice, wowed the Libby Gardner crowd with his versatility, stage presence and genre-transcending musicianship. Mozart’s Lieder, Fauré art songs, arias by Handel and Purcell, American folk songs and contemporary music: Daniels brought something distinctive and compelling to them all. »
08 Feb 2005
In the early days of the early music movement, ensembles and artists competed with one another over who knew the most about performance styles of the Baroque and Classical eras. The authenticity sweepstakes still goes on. But such insight takes you only so far.
I’m sure the musicians of the renowned Freiburg Baroque Orchestra from Germany are as informed about early music performance practices as comparable ensembles. But what made their concert on Sunday afternoon at Alice Tully Hall so gratifying was the vitality and imagination of their playing – qualities that transcend any era. »
08 Feb 2005
Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito was written to celebrate the coronation of the Habsburg emperor Leopold II as king of Bohemia in 1791. The date, two years after the French Revolution, is significant. Depicting a botched attempt to assassinate the Roman Emperor Titus, and his subsequent refusal to execute the conspirators, the opera examines the implications of the idea of benevolent autocracy and draws the conclusion that enlightened government necessitates absolute solitude and emotional isolation. »
08 Feb 2005
Ist so Wagners Isolde angezogen? Schwarzes Kleid, darüber blaue Kittelschürze. Bequemstiefel, Gummihandschuhe. Aber nein. Nina Stemme ist jetzt Marguerite in Gounods “Faust” in Frankfurt am Main. Ausgerechnet. Wagner hätte das nicht gefallen. Noch dazu ein Gretchen als verdruckste, sich an ihr Kruzifix-Kettchen klammernde Saaltochter in einem schmuddeligen Demenzpflegeheim.
Isolde, das wird wieder im Sommer sein. In Bayreuth. Wo Nina Stemme freilich bereits auf dem Grünen Hügel debütiert hat: 1994 als Freia im “Ring”. Jetzt wird sie als irische Maid in Christoph Marthalers Inszenierung zurückkehren. Vielleicht sogar in Kittelschürze? Mal sehen, was der Kostümbildnerin Anna Viebrock so einfällt. »
07 Feb 2005
Beste Stimmung im Nationaltheater. Und das nicht nur, weil auf der Bühne jahreszeitlich korrekt der Fasching tobte. Nein, nicht die bunten Luftschlangen und närrischen Hütchen peppten den Abend auf, sondern die Sänger. Sie heizten mit ihrem Totaleinsatz die x-te Repertoirevorstellung von Richard Strauss’ “Arabella” so an, dass das Abo-Publikum seine helle Freude hatte. Münchner Opernalltag, der im großen Jubel endete. »
07 Feb 2005
While a number of fine recent recordings of Mahler’s Lieder with orchestral accompaniment have been released in recent years, his songs are also of interest in the versions the composer made for voice and piano. In presenting the songs with piano accompaniment, Stephan Genz and Roger Vignoles bring out details that can become apparent only in this setting. Genz is known for his fine recordings of Lieder, include the award-winning CD of Beethoven’s Songs, as well as various recordings of Hugo Wolf’s Lieder (all on Hyperion). In this recording of Mahler’s music, he performs with Vignoles three complete sets of Lieder, that is, the cycles Lieder eines farhrenden Gesellen and Kindertotenlieder, as well as the set of Fünf Rückert-Lieder and, further, seven selections of settings from Mahler’s early publication of Lieder und Gesänge. »
06 Feb 2005
Stephanie Blythe recalls exactly where she was 10 years ago when she fully grasped the power of great acting in opera.
Then an apprentice artist at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, the mezzo-soprano was standing offstage about 25 feet from famed tenor Placido Domingo as he sang a love duet in “Die Walküre” with soprano Deborah Voigt. »
06 Feb 2005
IT would come as a shock to opera-goers if the cast of Carmen were suddenly to break into a chorus of Sisters are Doing it for Themselves.
They might be forgiving, however, once they heard the gospel-tinged tones of American mezzosoprano Andrea Baker, who sings the title role in the Opera Australia production that begins a six-week run under the baton of Russian conductor Alexander Polianichko at the Sydney Opera House tonight. »
06 Feb 2005
It may not have been the best of times or the worst of times, but it was certainly among the naughtiest of times.
Restoration England, which marked the end of Cromwell’s Puritan regime with the accession of merry monarch Charles II, was an era that makes Paris Hilton seem like a convent girl and “Sex and the City” like a school picnic. In Charles II’s reign, all the prohibitions of Cromwell’s era were repealed; the theaters were reopened, low-cut lace replaced buttoned-up wool, and the royal motto was evidently “thou shalt party hearty.” »
06 Feb 2005
Für Edita Gruberova hat die Staatsoper eine konzertante Fassung von Vicenzo Bellinis “Norma” aufs Programm gesetzt.
Endlose Begeisterung, Blumen, Stan ding ovations dankten Edita Gruberova und ihren Mitstreitern für einen packenden Opernabend, der die szenische Aufbereitung keinen Augenblick vermissen ließ. Gerne verzichtete man darauf, die zeitgebundene Schauerromantik der Druiden und ihrer Opferriten anno 50 v. Chr. leibhaftig vor sich zu sehen. Und mehr noch: Keine Regie-Eitelkeit lenkte von der puren Musik ab. »
05 Feb 2005
Ein buntes Schaubudenprogramm, anmoderiert von zwei Damen in knackigen Kostümen, so präsentieren sich die fünf Kurzopern von Karl Amadeus Hartmanns “Das Wachsfigurenkabinett” in der Münchner Reaktorhalle (Regie: Stefan Spies). Der Inszenierung des ersten Stücks “Der Mann, der vom Tode auferstand” fehlt noch Witz und Schwung. Die Geschichte vom reichen Fabrikanten, der vor seinem Radiogerät einschläft und das Hörspiel von der Arbeiterrevolution für Wirklichkeit hält, leidet an den Schaufel schwingend auftretenden, plump marschierenden Arbeitern. »
05 Feb 2005
Stale marzipan it may be, but given the appropriate set of protagonists, Charles Gounod’s ponderous 1867 adaptation of Shakespeare’s youthful tragedy still has the power to arouse the senses and engage, if not engulf, the soul. In Rolando Villazón and Anna Netrebko, the Los Angeles Opera has found doomed lovers who are as much star material as “star cross’d”. Whatever else is lacking in the first west coast production of the opera here in 18 years, the Mexican tenor and Russian soprano radiate youthful ardour, stylistic sophistication and sheer theatrical magic. »
05 Feb 2005
Here's a serious niche book, a relatively slender volume dealing with a topic at once both arcane and surprisingly central to some of the major controversies in opera production today. I think it has major problems but it has become for me the pebble dropped into the pond that sends ripples to unexpected places, raising interesting questions in the process. »
04 Feb 2005
How is it possible that a new opera crammed with hot-button subjects—political corruption, ecclesiastical self-satisfaction, feminism, homosexuality—could be a blandly inoffensive entertainment? “Democracy: An American Comedy,” by composer Scott Wheeler and librettist Romulus Linney, commissioned by the Washington National Opera and given its world premiere last weekend, was disappointingly safe. Its provocative themes were smothered by a talky libretto that alternated between earnest exposition and sitcom jokes, set in smoothly tonal, insipid musical language. »
04 Feb 2005
There are many profound experiences to be had in a concert hall, but an evening of soprano and mezzo duets isn’t one of them. Still, on the disc they brought out last autumn, Barbara Bonney, Angelika Kirchschlager and accompanist Malcolm Martineau managed to pick out some of the more interesting numbers in this frothy repertoire. Many of those made it into this recital – along with lashings of sugary charm, a few girly hugs and a line in the programme from Kirchschlager about how it wasn’t only their voices fitting together but their souls, too. Yeuch. »
02 Feb 2005
Surely the reader of this reviewer is passionate about opera – why else, faithful one, have you found yourself at the fount of information and wisdom knows as Opera Today? Therefore, the need for an outfit such as Premiere Opera need not be belabored – true opera lovers know that there sometimes arises a need to have a performance that cannot easily be obtained, and that need may trump the desire to have the recording, (whether only audio, or visual as well, as in the case of this DVD) be of optimal quality.
So what we have here is a performance of April 7, 2002, at the Teatro Cuyas in the lovely Canary Islands. The opera is Bellini’s I Capuleti e I Montecchi, and the star gracing the stage as the lovely young Capulet is Cristina Gallardo-Domas. Perhaps it is her fans who will be most grateful to Premiere Opera for making available a record of the performance. Not to be slighted, however, is her imposing Romeo, a mezzo/trouser role. Daniela Barcellona is a rising star, and the reasons why are evident here. And Bellini lovers, as your reviewer knows well, are apt to want most any document of the master’s work, as the operas get performances but not as often as his fans might wish. »
01 Feb 2005
Düsseldorf. Das Lied gehört zu den konzentriertesten Kunstformen überhaupt. Es ist einerseits, wie Thomas Mann sagte, “eine ganze Welt”, andererseits nimmt es nur wenig Zeit in Anspruch und bedarf lediglich zweier Musiker. Text und Musik vereinigen sich zu einer synchronen Sprache, die menschliches Empfinden in potenzierter Intensität ausdrückt. Aber das Lied ist auch eine für die Ausführenden anspruchsvolle Gattung. »
01 Feb 2005
Dreizehn als Glückszahl: Das 13. Festival Alter Musik wird in die Annalen des Wiener Konzerthau ses als besonders geglückt eingehen. Das kenntnisreich zusammengestellte Programm deckte nahezu alle wesentlichen Epochen, Nationalstile und Klangmöglichkeiten Alter Musik ab; fast durchwegs gut gewählt waren die Interpreten, und der Almanach könnte so manches historische und musikgeschichtliche Handbuch ersetzen. »
01 Feb 2005
The season’s first performance of Puccini’s “Tosca” at Lyric Opera on Monday night brought an authentic slice of operatic history to the Civic Opera House: The vintage production director Franco Zeffirelli mounted in 1964 for London’s Royal Opera to lure Maria Callas out of semi-retirement. Tito Gobbi, the great Scarpia of his generation, was her co-star.
The well-worn staging has done honorable service for more than 40 years, having seen 38 revivals and 242 performances before it was finally retired in July. The classic production was promptly bought lock, stock and battlements by Lyric Opera, which is dedicating it to Gobbi’s memory. »
01 Feb 2005
Verdi demanded three qualities for his “fallen woman”: looks, anima (soul) and a good stage presence. What he did not want was a glossy prima donna. The part broke convention not just histrionically, in its depiction of a contemporary prostitute, but also vocally. It needs a soprano agile enough to throw off the Act 1 coloratura, and strong enough to meet the dramatic requirements of Acts 2 and 3. That’s asking a lot, and most sopranos fall short. So it was fascinating, at the Royal Opera’s latest revival on Saturday, to come across Norah Amsellem. She has period looks, a pretty smile, a malleable physiognomy. She knows how to adapt her whole demeanour to Violetta’s changing situation, so that the figure we behold on stage is not an opera singer but a human being with the power to disarm us emotionally. That may be a gift of acting, but it also reflects Amsellem’s complete identification with the music. Her soprano is a bit one-dimensional, especially at the top, and she proved a surprisingly plain letter-reader. In all other set-pieces she had the theatre spellbound. “Dite alla giovine” and “Addio, del passato” were especially effective: Amsellem sang them in a beautifully controlled half-voice, stretching the tempo to its very limit. Some might call it self-indulgent; to me it sounded like the truth. »
31 Jan 2005
So this was how a Forza would have sounded in the fifties and sixties in one of the better Italian provincial houses. At that time those extinguished species (lirico-spinto tenor and soprano) were still in abundant supply and one could easily hear nowadays forgotten names like Zambruno, Mori, Vicentini, Borso on the male and Mancini, De Osma, Barbato etc on the female side: big booming voices, maybe not always very subtle but steeped in the Verdian tradition and not afraid to give unstintingly all of their voices as if there is no tomorrow. »
30 Jan 2005
Among the recent publications on opera, The Cambridge Companion to Grand Opera, edited by David Charlton, breaks new ground with its systematic and thorough exploration of grand opera, a specific part of the genre which played an important role in the musical culture of the nineteenth century. »
30 Jan 2005
Interest in the music of “New Spain” (the Spanish colonies in the Americas) has blossomed in the last decade, with a number of fine recordings of sacred music composed by musicians who emigrated to the New World in support of the mission of the Catholic church. A parallel interest in the music of those who stayed in Spain – indeed, who set the tradition that was exported to the Americas – has been slower to build, so this recording is especially welcome, since it provides an opportunity to hear a tradition seldom performed outside of Spain, whether in the Baroque era or in the present. »
30 Jan 2005
How narrow-minded can one be ? Very much so in the case of Richard Wagner who succeeded in not mentioning once the name of Verdi in all his writings. And is not his decision to banish his early youth works from the Bayreuth-barn rooted in that same mentality ? Of course during his lifetime he was the subject of many attacks and maybe he feared to be the victim of ridicule with critics dissecting every bar of Die Feen, Das Liebesverbot and Rienzi and looking for influences of other composers. Rienzi and Liebesverbot had been staged while he lived but Die Feen was only known by a few selections and he never took pains to have his first opera performed at a time when he could easily have done it. Die Feen was premiered 5 years after his death and then led a rather undistinguished life of a few performances. Still the amount of bigotry of his successors is even greater, considering that Siegfried Wagner himself was a composer of fairy tales and should not have respected his father’s wish not to perform Die Feen. The grandchildren complied as well though one can understand their motives. As Wagner lost some of his hallowed reputation during the fifties and the sixties, the stock of Verdi rose very high indeed and maybe it was not in the Wagners’ interest to show the more amateurish trials of granddaddy. Eva Wagner, Wolfgang’s estranged daughter who should have succeeded him long ago, was the first to offer a business plan for a new New Bayreuth where Die Feen, Rienzi and even the operas of composers who influenced the maestro would have their place. And then music lovers could at last hear and see what the fuss is all about if there is something to be excited about.
Well, there is. The overture is a gem, all of its 11 minutes and almost worth the purchase of the set. Yes, it’s easy to trace the influence of Mozart and especially Weber but 20-year Wagner had a voice of his own as well, different from that of his contemporaries. Wagner was twelve years younger than Lortzing who could easily have treated the same fairy subject but one immediately hears the far richer orchestration, the ease Wagner has in composing more complicated arias and ensembles. And one regrets somewhat that the mature Wagner gave his best tunes to the orchestra instead of sticking with the singers like the youthful composer still did in the old tradition. »
29 Jan 2005
Rénové en 1997 avec un luxe inouï, le Teatro Real de Madrid ne lésine pas non plus sur la qualité des productions. Du rare Osud de Janacek en 2003, marqué par la qualité de la mise en scène de Bob Wilson, de l’orchestre et de la distribution vocale, ne reste que des souvenirs et des photographies, faute de producteurs intéressés par la réalisation d’un DVD. Ce ne sera pas le cas de ce nouveau Barbier de Séville, dévoilé il y a quelques jours, diffusé par Arte dans une semaine, et bientôt dans les bacs. En filmant trois représentations successives, l’ambition est d’offrir le meilleur Barbier en DVD du marché. »
28 Jan 2005
The elegantly regilded Hippodrome Theatre could be mistaken for an old-world opera house. On Wednesday night, for three hours at least, that’s exactly what it was.
Teatro Lirico D’Europa — administratively based in Hunt Valley — presented a fully staged production of Don Giovanni that offered sufficient entertainment value and demonstrated the theater’s flexibility. »
28 Jan 2005
Parisians do not like camp. David McVicar’s production of Monteverdi’s last opera was jeered in October at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées and now David Alden has met the same fate. This is unfair because his use of radical kitsch is altogether more sophisticated and his manipulation of the singers faultlessly choreographed. In any case, this classic staging dates from 1997, when it was first seen in Cardiff and Munich. McVicar’s approach now looks like a pale copy of an industry template. »
27 Jan 2005
In 2004, festivals and concerts commemorated the 50th anniversary of the death of Charles Ives, an insurance executive from Danbury and arguably America’s greatest native-born composer. Tonight and Sunday at Wesleyan University’s Crowell Recital Hall, the tribute will continue with the first of several recitals surveying Ives’ 129 songs. »
27 Jan 2005
Richard Wagner loathed the first performances of Der Ring des Nibelungen, which he scrabbled together at his own theatre in 1876. “Next year we’ll do everything differently,” was the mildest comment he had to offer, and the most convenient for directors eager to distinguish their Ring productions from all others. »
27 Jan 2005
Following its disastrous staging last April of Georges Bizet’s “The Pearl Fishers,” I had high hopes that Novaya Opera would get itself back on track by turning to a classic of Russian opera for its next production. But, at its debut last Sunday, the theater’s new version of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Tsar’s Bride” proved, if not a disaster, at least a major disappointment, due mainly to the muddled stage direction of Yury Grymov and the theater’s decision to discard as much as a third of the opera’s music. »
27 Jan 2005
Nearly a century separates the two beguilements installed at the Music Center in recent weeks: Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida of the 1870s and Luciano Berio’s Laborintus II of 1965. Nobody would mistake the style or purpose of the one for the other; they are both shrewdly welded to the taste of their respective times. Something grander links them – an innately Italian sense of theater that unites all the arts of the region into a single onrush of word, music and movement. To the north, Richard Wagner made a great fuss as he dreamed up his “total artwork” concept with ream upon ream of explanatory philosophy. To the Italian spirit, that unity of the expressive arts was simply a form of breathing. Petrarch, Monteverdi, Tintoretto, Berio . . . just the names by themselves take on a theatrical dimension. »
25 Jan 2005
New artists are taking greater chances with repertory, looking for niches to call their own. Dawn Upshaw explores new music, Cecilia Bartoli eighteenth-century Italian song, and in this live recording up-and-coming artists Eva Mei and Rainer Trost take on the lead roles in Schubert’s Alfonso und Estrella. Mei and Trost’s sympathetic singing with the orchestra and chorus of the Teatro lirico di Cagliari conducted by Gérard Korsten breathes life into this choppy opera, which Liszt famously condemned as a work of only historical interest. »
25 Jan 2005
Ihre Ruh’ ist hin, ihr Herz ist schwer. Die junge Frau im gelben Sommerkleid duckt sich in ihrem Stuhl, drückt die Hände in den Schoß, blickt nach oben.
Diesmal ist es nicht Goethes Gretchen, das hier – um im jüngsten Grass-Jargon zu bleiben – “verthalheimert”, sprich: auf ihr sprachliches und inhaltliches Gerüst skelettiert wurde. Es ist die Kaufmannsgattin Katja Kabanova, die ihre einzige Sehnsucht, die Liebe zum schwächlichen Boris, mit dem Leben bezahlt und in die Wolga geht. So steht es in Alexander Ostrowskis Theaterstück “Das Gewitter” von 1859 geschrieben. Welches Michael Thalheimer, der kühlkopfige Minimalist unter den tonangebenden Theaterregisseuren, sicherlich auf das Wesentliche zurechtzustutzen vermocht hätte. Ohne russische Folklorismen und Nebenhandlungen, nackt, statisch, als pure Versuchsanordnung. »
25 Jan 2005
The opening-night audience for Houston Grand Opera’s revival of Il Trovatore had one thing on its mind: grabbing every chance to cheer the familiar tunes that propel Verdi’s dramatically awkward piece.
As soon as soprano Sondra Radvanovsky finished Leonora’s first big aria, the bravos let loose — far more intensely than usual in the middle of a performance.
The ache to approve a style of music many people view as true “grand” opera continued right up to the curtain calls. Then, the crowd unleashed cascades of applause and yells. »
24 Jan 2005
This volume has long been regarded as the definitive work on the subject, and has been quoted in countless later works whenever a reference was required to the performance histories of individual operas. Taken as a whole, especially when one considers the state of library science when the book was first written, it is a magnificent piece of work, and belongs on the bookshelf of every researcher in the operatic field. »
24 Jan 2005
Robert Schumann hat seine Spitzenposition in der Musikhistorie: herrliche Symphonien, wunderbare Kammermusik, großartige Lieder. Doch er hat auch eine Oper hinterlassen: Genoveva. Eine Komposition auf ein eigenes, ungelenkes Libretto, das durch die Zeiten geistert und weder sanfte Ruhe noch dauerhafte Wiederbelebung erfahren kann. »
24 Jan 2005
Neun Tage lang darf sich Wien jetzt wieder als Welthauptstadt der Alten Musik fühlen. Zum 13. Mal locken die “Resonanzen” ein begeisterungsfähiges Publikum mit einer wohlabgewogenen Mischung aus bewährten und für Wien neuen Künstlern ins Konzerthaus. Das Motto “Metropolen” hebt sich wohltuend von der zuweilen etwas aufgesetzt wirkenden Wahl vergangener Jahre ab: Sinnvoll ordnen sich die Abende zu einem Reigen europäischer Musikzentren zwischen Padua, London und Paris.
So schon “Rom”, das stürmisch akklamierte Eröffnungskonzert im Großen Saal: Keiner könnte die musikalische Pracht der Ewigen Stadt im Barock besser personifizieren als Alessandro Scarlatti mit seinen fast 40 Oratorien – die Gattung erlebte dank des jahrzehntelang aufrechterhaltenen päpstlichen Opern-Verbots eine Hochblüte. “La Vergine dei Dolori” (1717) ist ein Spätwerk; ablesbar an der bis ins Letzte verfeinerten Ausdrucksskala, der preziösen Führung der Singstimmen, der extravaganten Harmonik namentlich in den Rezitativen. Die Seelenqualen der Gottesmutter angesichts der Passion werden so in immer neuen Farben ausgemalt. »
24 Jan 2005
On revoit encore William Christie, l’été dernier, inquiet de la tournure qu’allait prendre son travail avec Peter Stein pour Le Couronnement de Poppée prévu à Lyon cet hiver : le metteur en scène allemand avait, en effet, très envie de se débarrasser des scènes comiques qui, selon lui, viennent comme un cheveu sur la soupe, alors que c’est justement ce mélange des tons qui fait la grandeur de la pièce ! Ce qui devait arriver arriva : on apprit bientôt que Stein avait jeté l’éponge, remplacé par Bernard Sobel. Et c’est bien avec le fondateur du Théâtre de Gennevilliers que vient d’avoir lieu la première du chef-d’oeuvre de Monteverdi à l’Opéra de Lyon. Sobel apporte ainsi sa pierre à l’engouement actuel pour cet opéra fascinant, après McVicar, au Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, et avant David Alden au Palais Garnier.
Après la lecture pléthorique et riche en clins d’oeil de McVicar, façon sitcom hollywoodien, Sobel mise sur l’humilité et la lisibilité. Dans le décor unique mais mouvant de Lucio Fanti, un enchevêtrement de figures géométriques bleues tachées d’étoiles et formant une voûte, les personnages évoluent dans des costumes accentuant le drapé des toges à l’antique. Pas de transposition ici, mais une allégorie plus intemporelle qu’actuelle. On est parfois à la limite du kitsch et de la naïveté, comme ce sacre final par un angelot ailé, à la lueur de la lune. »
24 Jan 2005
Last May, Opera Boston general director Carole Charnow saw a production of Andre Previn’s operatic version of ‘‘A Streetcar Named Desire’’ in Washington, D.C. She knew immediately she had found the director she wanted for the collaborative production of Gluck’s ‘‘Alceste’’ that Opera Boston and Boston Baroque will present this week. »
24 Jan 2005
Maybe Camille Saint-Saens should’ve chosen his friends more carefully. When he marshaled a singer to treat them to two arias from an opera he was working on – about the biblical tale of Samson and Delilah – they scoffed. »
24 Jan 2005
Two of Beethoven’s most difficult yet most inspiring masterpieces, “Fidelio” and “Missa Solemnis,” are making Chicago the epicenter of a grand Beethoven festival.
Each work is a heroic undertaking that tests the performers’ mettle to the utmost. And yet, with soprano Karita Mattila leading Beethoven’s only opera to triumph at Lyric Opera, and, the Chicago Symphony and Chorus delivering a strong and stirring performance of the “Missa Solemnis” this weekend at Orchestra Hall, one comes away exalted, grateful to have heard these pieces performed at the highest level. »
23 Jan 2005
Der kabarettistisch freche Ton der Pariser Moderne der Dreißigerjah re ist es, der Kurt Schwertsik fes selt. Das bekannte er jüngst im Gespräch. Dieser Ton weist ihm offenkundig auch den Weg in Gefilde des Musiktheaters, die nichts mit den erdschweren, klangwuchernden Experimenten der deutschen und österreichischen Moderne der Nachkriegszeit zu tun haben, sondern sich am moralisierenden Unterhaltungstheater der Zwischenkriegszeit orientieren, das nicht nur von den Franzosen – in einer durchaus konsequent aus dem ursprünglichen, sozialkritischen Operetten-Esprit eines Jacques Offenbach – entwickelt wurde. »
23 Jan 2005
WHEN a programme contains music by Gregor Aichinger, Philipp Friedrich Böddecker, Daniel Bollius and Johann Christoph Pezel, to name only four (or is it ten?), an auditorium less than full might, unfortunately, be suspected. These are 17th-century German worthies known largely to scholars alone. But why can’t audiences be more adventurous? In that century you’re bound to get memorable tunes, catchy rhythms, enticing counterpoint: I don ’t see what the problem is. »
22 Jan 2005
You cannot blame this longtime lover of Debussy’s “Pelléas et Mélisande” for being suspicious when L’Opéra Français de New York announced that it would present a staged production of the work in its “original version” for voices and piano. No orchestra? Wasn’t this small company simply producing the opera on the cheap?
The L’Opéra Français production opened on Wednesday night at the French Institute Alliance Française on East 59th Street, and it was a revelation. »
22 Jan 2005
Mag sein, manch einer findet die forsche Gangart, die Julia Jones bei Mozart einschlägt, ein wenig zu schnoddrig. Doch erweist sich: Die Dirigentin weiß in jeder Phase einer Aufführung, was sie will, behält die Übersicht über die Dramaturgie und hält Orchester und Bühne immer fein zusammen – und das in raschem Lustspielton. Alles Eigenschaften, die heutzutage offenkundig auch in der Wiener Staatsoper rar geworden sind. »
21 Jan 2005
For the last couple of decades, the “concept production” has been a controversial presence on opera stages, generally director-driven and decried by traditionalists as detracting from the essence of opera which they define as “voice, voice, voice.” Here’s a refreshing and overdue variant, a production concept that is conductor-driven, devoted to rethinking the sound and casting principle appropriate for French grand opera by starting at the top with the grandest of them all.
The point is often made that we now lack heroic voices for the great works. John Eliot Gardiner’s casting argues, rather convincingly I think, that “heroic” is a concept relative to an opera’s overall style and the period in which it was written. He casts in the French tradition that knows the difference between a German heldentenor whose strength lies in the middle and bottom of the voice, and a French heroic tenor, of whom is demanded a free and brilliant top and the ability to soar over ensembles with precisely focused tone. Many in this cast are associated with music of the Renaissance, Baroque and early nineteenth century. Their voices are clearer and lighter than we have become accustomed to in Les Troyens and Gardiner surrounds them with a chorus that can not only move and act with distinction, but whose voices in ensemble have the required buoyancy, flexibility and brilliance for Berlioz’s demanding choral writing. »
21 Jan 2005
Among the often spurious partnerships beloved by musical history — Bach and Handel, Bruckner and Mahler, Britten and Tippett — that of Schumann and Brahms at least has the merit that the composers were not actually antithetical in style and manner. They were, if not a conscious partnership, a powerful joint force for the perpetuation of classical values in the 19th century, the elder — Schumann — the sponsor and active publicist of the other. Brahms was “discovered”, encouraged, sustained and venerated by Schumann. He, in turn, devoted his whole bachelor life to the succour of the Schumann family, giving rock-like support to Clara Schumann as her husband’s syphilitic madness took him over, and seeking to preserve Schumann’s oeuvre at its most illustrious and least clouded-over, withholding publication of some later works. »
21 Jan 2005
Perhaps the Tippett centenary has come too soon, and the seven years since the composer’s death have been insufficient for his achievement to be digested and for the anniversary celebrations to take on any real significance. But no matter how much time had passed, I doubt that his third opera, The Knot Garden, will ever seem more than a period piece, wedded to the late 1960s when it was written. »
21 Jan 2005
After some wild recent productions it comes as a surprise to find a Don Giovanni set in Spain, as Mozart intended. How many directors care to remember that Don Giovanni’s tally of women there numbered 1,003, as Leporello’s catalogue reminds us every time we see the opera? Having decided on a Spanish setting, Opera North’s new production tries to make the most of it. Photos of bullfights are flashed across a screen to draw a glib parallel with Don Giovanni the predatory sexual toreador. The cast gird their loins for some rather dubious Spanish dances. And — most important — the time is updated to the Spanish Civil War, bringing the class antagonism of the opera into modern focus. »
20 Jan 2005
Andante’s new mastering of famous live performances aims to capture what those performances might have felt like. This gives these recordings an automatic cachet of authenticity and a kind of cult status. However, much depends on the quality of the particular performance. The skill is to choose quality performances that really are interesting in themselves, and to remaster them in ways that do them justice. The Andante series comes impressively packaged, with luxuriously bound booklets, beautifully presented. However, in this case the music does not quite match the promise. Worthy as this performance is, and worthy it is indeed, it is not an ideal first choice. Artistically it is good, but best appreciated by those who know Abbado, Boulez, Dohnanyi and even Böhm’s later recording. While I’m one who listens for music, not for sound quality, in this case the sound quality is poor enough to distract – not enough to ruin listening, for it would take a lot to deter a genuine listener – but just enough to feel that you’re listening through an artificial medium. This may have been recorded live, but it doesn’t “feel” live, with the pops, crackles and occluded passages. Ultimately that defeats its own purpose. »
20 Jan 2005
'Fidelio' returns Lyric, cast rise above flawed Beethoven opera By John von Rhein Tribune music critic January 19 2005, 1:00 AM CST "Fidelio" has been missing in action at Lyric Opera for nearly 24 years, much too long for... »
20 Jan 2005
The level of Luciano Berio’s music was still on the ascent when he died two years ago at 77. “Stanze” – five poems for solo voice, chorus and orchestra – were his last pieces, and they shine with poise and quiet confidence. We are reminded that the possibilities of instrumental combinations are far from exhausted. The Philadelphia Orchestra under Christoph Eschenbach introduced New York to “Stanze” at Carnegie Hall on Tuesday night, adding Act III from Wagner’s “Parsifal” in concert form.
Paul Celan’s “Tenebrae,” the first poem, is accompanied by drifting, attenuated chords of extraordinary beauty. If Berio’s music moves slowly, or sometimes not at all, there is activity within: textures swelling and contracting like lungs, woodwind colors swimming and undulating. So striking are the sounds that high drama is unnecessary. »
20 Jan 2005
Renée Fleming came and conquered the full house Tuesday night at Benaroya Hall.
Now 45, the soprano is in her prime, not only with that voluptuous voice but her musical acuity and dramatic instincts.
When singers become as famous as Fleming, connoisseurs find something to criticize, often justified: a mannered style or lackluster ambition in terms of repertory, for instance. When the voice is as gorgeous and gleaming as Fleming’s, there is always the danger the singer will be content to deliver a pretty sound and little else. »
20 Jan 2005
NEW YORK Sigmund Freud’s seminal “Interpretation of Dreams” was published in 1900. But Claude Debussy had already poked around in the unconscious in his landmark opera “Pelléas et Mélisande,” which he had essentially composed (though not orchestrated) by 1895.
Of course, Maurice Maeterlinck, whose play Debussy adapted into his opera, had been treading through Freudian terrain even earlier. Maeterlinck, a leading figure in the Symbolist movement, which arose in the 1880s, espoused veiled emotions, mystery and indirection over realism. »
20 Jan 2005
What were they thinking?
The “Kirov Spectacular” — which opened last night at the Kennedy Center Opera House — proved the sort of celestial vaudeville that should have . . . well, gone out with vaudeville.
It seemed a generous program — some three hours of selections from ballets and operas performed by the Kirov Ballet, Opera and Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre, under the direction of Valery Gergiev. But the pieces had little to do with one another (indeed, they could almost have been chosen by lottery) and the musical performances were too often shopworn and lackluster — a scanty reward for those who managed to find their way to the Kennedy Center through the cold, clotted streets of pre-inauguration Washington. »
19 Jan 2005
Puccini’s “Manon Lescaut,” which Seattle Opera has produced only sporadically in its 40-year history, is a work that goes in fits and starts. Moments of genuine inspiration and compelling drama mark the composer as a man of genius, but in this early opera, his talent is not always consistent. The demands on the tenor are notoriously difficult.
So, with its eyes wide open, the company mounted the third production in its history to bring in the new year Saturday night at McCaw Hall. It succeeded more than many efforts without breaking the bank, using conventional but serviceable sets and costumes from Montreal Opera. »
18 Jan 2005
The latest volume of Hyperion’s comprehensive collection of the Songs of Robert Schumann is an impressive recording of Schumann’s Liederalbum für die Jugend, Op. 79 (1849). The songs are settings with children in mind, and not necessarily music for children to perform; the texts are by a number of poets, such as Goethe, Hebbel, Schiller, Rückert, Uhland, and von Fallersleben. In selecting the texts for this collection of Lieder, Schumann touched upon a variety of subjects, including topics associated with children, like Christmas, and verse about animals (“Marienwürmchen” and “Die Schwalben”); other texts deal with seasons, like Spring (“Frühlingsbotschaft” and “Frühlingsgruss”) and the fantastic, as occurs in “Vom Schlaraffenland.” »
18 Jan 2005
Il Teatro Lirico di Cagliari pur attraversando, come risaputo, un periodo difficile sotto il profilo strettamente finanziario da cui – con lo sforzo e l’impegno di tutte le maestranze e, soprattutto, di tutte le istituzioni pubbliche e private alle quali dovrebbero stare più a cuore le sorti e il bene della cultura musicale regionale e nazionale -, ci auspichiamo riesca anche con sacrifici ad uscire, ha inaugurato la stagione lirica e di balletto 2005 con “Oedipe”, tragedia lirica in 4 atti del rumeno George Enescu, su libretto di Edmond Fleg, in una nuova produzione dello stesso Teatro Lirico, in prima esecuzione assoluta in Italia e in versione originale francese.
I responsabili del Teatro hanno così voluto perseverare nel percorso iniziato con successo di pubblico e di critica nel 1998 con “le Fate” di Wagner, proseguito nel 1999 con “Dalibor” di Smetana, nel 2000 con “Gli stivaletti” di Cajkovskij, nel 2001 con “Elena egizia” di Strauss, nel 2002 con “Euryanthe” di Weber, nel 2003 con “Opricnik” di Cajkovskij e “Alfonso und Estrella” di Schubert, nel 2004. »
17 Jan 2005
Anna Netrebko stars as the passionate and poisoned Marfa in the Mariinsky Theater’s new production of “The Tsar’s Bride. The Mariinsky Theater’s famous blue curtain rises and Grigory Gryaznoi, the mighty commander of Ivan the Terrible’s feared bodyguards, the oprichniki, bemoans his unrequited love for young beauty Marfa Sobakina. Gryaznoi sits on a shabby bench in a place resembling one of the so-called Culture and Leisure parks that were a typical feature of the Soviet era.
A seashell-shaped summer theater with quiet alleys and a ferris-wheel in the background is the setting for a new production of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s 1899 opera “The Tsar’s Bride,” which premiered on Dec. 29 at the Mariinsky Theater. »
17 Jan 2005
Dans le cadre de la programmation de l’Orchestre national de Lorraine, nous avons le plaisir d’assister à une représentation de concert des Pêcheurs de perles, ouvrage d’un charme indéniable quoique légèrement suranné d’un compositeur de vingt-cinq ans, encore tributaire de certaines influences (mais certainement pas de l’influence wagnérienne dénoncée par certains critiques à la création !), en bénéficiant de l’acoustique exemplaire de la grande salle de l’Arsenal. Le concert permet d’oublier l’indigence d’un livret dont les auteurs (Michel Carré et Eugène Cormon) avaient été les premiers à regretter les faiblesses, pour se concentrer sur les qualités de la partition. En effet, si Bizet apparaissait encore prisonnier des conventions de son époque et laissait peu deviner du génie dramatique qui s’exprime dans Carmen, ses Pêcheurs de perles ne manquaient pas d’atouts, et Berlioz, critique aussi lucide qu’exigeant, prit d’ailleurs la plume pour défendre un ouvrage recelant selon lui “un nombre considérable de beaux morceaux expressifs pleins de feu et d’un riche coloris”. A l’aune du chef-d’oeuvre à venir, cela peut sembler peu, c’est certain ; pour autant, la partition ne mérite probablement pas le dédain qui lui est ordinairement réservé par une certaine élite intellectuelle autoproclamée dont le sectarisme continue à faire beaucoup de tort à l’art lyrique. Les Pêcheurs de perles ne sont certes pas visités par le génie, mais ils témoignent d’un métier très sûr au regard de la jeunesse d’un compositeur déjà habile à trousser la mélodie et à colorer l’orchestre pour composer un orientalisme sans doute désuet mais tout à fait séduisant. »
17 Jan 2005
Gut ein halbes Jahrhundert hat es gedauert, bis “Billy Budd”, Benjamin Brittens 1951 uraufgeführtes Meisterwerk, an der Bayerischen Staatsoper angekommen ist. Ein hochtheatrales Stück zwischen Seemannsgarn und Homoerotik, zwischen Kriegs- und Menschenrecht, zwischen verborgener (Zu-)Neigung und Pflichterfüllung. Ein Stück also, das “funktioniert” und berührt, wie der enthusiastische Premierenbeifall zeigte. Kein Buh, nicht einmal für Regisseur Peter Mussbach, dafür Bravi schon vor Beginn, als Kent Nagano, GMD ab 2006, den Graben enterte. »
17 Jan 2005
Auf dem Programmzettel liest man: 136. Aufführung in dieser Inszenie rung. Tatsächlich: Wenn der Vor hang sich hebt, erblickt der Staatsopernbesucher die altvertrauten Kulissen der einst von Franco Zeffirelli betreuten “Don Giovanni”-Produktion. Sie ist über 30 Jahre alt und ersetzt aus unerfindlichen Gründen schon wieder die erst vor zwei Jahren aus dem Theater an der Wien ins große Haus übersiedelte, jüngere Inszenierung. »
17 Jan 2005
When is an opera not an opera? The world premiere of Leonardo Balada’s “Death of Columbus”—performed in concert form Friday evening in Carnegie Music Hall—raises the question. It’s not just the lack of scenery, costumes and staging for this occasion, but the nature of the work itself. There was a feeling that scenery, costumes and staging might not have made much difference. »
15 Jan 2005
VIENNA, Jan. 14 – Sir Simon Rattle, arguably the leading conductor in the world, had never conducted at the Vienna State Opera until Wednesday night, when he made his debut with a bang, and with Wagner’s five-hour “Parsifal.”
“Parsifal” is commonly labeled Wagner’s Christian opera. At the very least it is a tale about redemption, and many conductors limn it in hovering clouds of mysticism. »
14 Jan 2005
Roger Scruton’s new book is an engrossing attempt, intensely argued throughout, to persuade the reader that Richard Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde is a religious work, not only in the vague sense that it elevates our feelings into an exalted condition that strikes the non-religious as “religious”, but in the precise sense that it incarnates, as the Eucharist incarnates the doctrine of Christianity, a doctrine that would give our meaningless lives a sufficient meaning if we were to believe and follow it. Nearly half a century ago, Joseph Kerman, in Opera as Drama, called Tristan “a religious drama” and suggested an analogy between it and Bach cantatas dealing with religious conversion and conveying religious experience. Twenty years later, Michael Tanner, a resolutely acute writer on Wagner, described Tristan and Bach’s St Matthew Passion as the two supreme examples of works “of which it is a prerequisite that one suspends disbelief . . . in the ethos which the work embodies and promulgates”. At the same time he admitted that the love unto death of Tristan and Isolde is not “a kind of living that can be rationally valued”. More recently and less cautiously, in his Wagner, he calls Tristan “the one work of Wagner’s which seems to be making an unconditional demand on our capacity to embrace a new, redeeming doctrine”. »
14 Jan 2005
Wagner, bloody Wagner; will we ever have done with the man? I don’t suppose that we’ll ever have done with his operas. For many of us, they are indispensable art; among the defining achievements of the Western tradition. “There is no music deeper . . . and no drama deeper either. (The Ring) is enough in itself to place Wagner alongside Shakespeare, Michelangelo and Mozart.” If you don’t think Wagner is that good, you won’t like Wagner and Philosophy, Bryan Magee’s new book about him. Whether or not he is that good, there is surely a problem that arises insistently about Wagner but not Michelangelo or Mozart or, least of all, about Shakespeare: that of getting the art clear of the artist. Shakespeare is notorious for disappearing from his plays, but Wagner is everywhere in his operas. You just can’t think about them and not think about him; nor would he conceivably have wished you to. »
13 Jan 2005
This release documents performances of Richard Wagner’s Die Walküre at the Munich National Theater in July of 2002. The cast includes several contemporary singers well known for their Wagnerian performances, as well as a famous conductor who has enjoyed a long and successful career, both in the concert hall and opera house.
Die Walküre is an opera that has been particularly well served on records, with several outstanding versions derived both from the studio and live performances. Unfortunately, this new Walküre does not stand up well to that formidable competition. »
13 Jan 2005
Now, who needs another Aida? There are (or there have been) available 65 complete recordings (commercially available pirates included) and I don’t take into account the staggering amounts of non-commercial recording now widely circulating among collectors. Another Aida therefore can only interest buyers interested in specific singers. Happily, this set indeed fills a gap and it is not centered upon il divo himself, as the nice sleeve notes make clear. This set is for the admirers of Julia Varady, though not only for them.
The Hungarian soprano has a reputation. As the fourth Mrs. Fischer-Dieskau she was undoubtedly helped in her career in the early seventies by this connection. But I presume this asset soon turned into a liability. Allow me to digress a few moments. »
11 Jan 2005
Cela arrive rarement, le souffle coupé dès les premières notes. Une minute entière à retenir sa respiration dans une apnée d’émotion totale pour recevoir la première phrase du Lamento pour contralto, de Johann Christoph Bach, d’après les Lamentations de Jérémie, son ascension douloureuse, ornée de sanglots, puis les deux accords d’une longue plainte instrumentale, avant l’entrée, magique, de la voix de Magdalena Kozena. “Ach, dass ich Wassers g’nug hätte.” “Ah, si ma tête était remplie d’eau, si mes yeux étaient une source de larmes.” L’insouciance a été jusqu’alors votre lot ? Vous, toi, nous tous, pécheurs, allons connaître ce que pèse le lourd fardeau de nos iniquités – et la récompense de cette connaissance : 7 minutes 22 d’une pure splendeur musicale. »
11 Jan 2005
Cosí fan tutte’s story is simple, its music transparent and its theme heartfelt and genuine: It’s “reality opera” in a far deeper sense of “real” than any bare-facts TV show.
Mozart’s 1790 opera about the maturation of romantic love requires a no-fuss production that gets at the heart of the story, and a cast that sings well without getting in the way of the characters. It needs exactly what Arizona Opera has given it in the Cosí that opened over the weekend at Orpheum Theatre. »
10 Jan 2005
Recorded in Tokyo on October 23, 1963, this live recording of Nozze di Figaro boasts fine sound, a top cast, and the leadership of a conductor of great skill and experience. The label, Ponto, has joined the ranks of such other companies as Opera D’oro and Gala in making available broadcast and in-house recordings at affordable prices. Sometimes these releases are not even worth the modest price asked for; this one may well have more to offer than higher-priced studio sets.
After a slightly hesitant first few moments, the sound quality settles down and becomes admirably strong and well defined. There is relatively little stage noise, the voices have a natural presence without being too forwardly placed, and Böhm’s orchestral control can be relished. His may be an old-fashioned reading, but it never lags or lacks for humor or beauty. The audience can be heard laughing from time to time at the stage antics; applause only interferes with the musical pleasures at the end of Non piu andrai, when unrestrained clapping covers a bit of Böhm’s ironically happy martial send-off. »
10 Jan 2005
Elsewhere on Opera Today readers can find a recent review of a live recording of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro from the Ponto label, a company that has joined the ranks of Opera D’oro and Gala in offering, at budget price, live recordings of various provenance. At their best, as with that Nozze, these recordings offer in acceptable sound (sometimes better) performances of such quality they rival their more expensive competitors. At less than the best, however, even the budget price becomes exorbitant.
This Tristan und Isolde, recorded on January 25, 1967, unfortunately belongs to the latter category. Unless one has a strong personal reason for wanting a keepsake of this company or the artists involved, the recording is unlikely to please most listeners. The primary reason is the sound. While not unlistenable, the recording is clearly an “in-house” affair, and probably from an audience member, as some of the coughing is more up-front than the singing. Worse, during the climax, some audience members are whispering as Isolde enters the Leibestod. One would love for a Jon Vickers to have been present to yell out, “Stop your damn whispering!” »
08 Jan 2005
'Verlaine and Rimbaud' has the poetry but not the passion By Richard Dyer, Globe Staff | January 8, 2005 Intermezzo: The New England Chamber Opera Series adventurously alternates standard 20th-century chamber operas with new works. The company opened its third... »
07 Jan 2005
William Bolcom is arguably the preeminent American opera composer of today. His third commission for Lyric Opera of Chicago, A Wedding, recently opened to mostly positive reviews. His previous work in the form, A View from the Bridge, had a successful run at the Metropolitan Opera following its premiere in Chicago. »
05 Jan 2005
Turandot, Metropolitan Opera, New York By Martin Bernheimer Published: January 5 2005 02:00 | Last updated: January 5 2005 02:00 Turandot remains a prime tourist attraction at the Met, lock, stock and chinoiserie. Even after 17 years, gasping crowds muster... »
04 Jan 2005
The title of this book, "The Cambridge Companion to Rossini" probably means different things to different people. »
04 Jan 2005
Il Trovatore Giuseppe Verdi, music and Salvatore Cammarano and Leone Emanuele Bardare, libretto TDK DVUS-CLOPIT Raina Kabaivanska (Leonora) Fiorenza Cossotto (Azucena) Plácido Domingo (Manrico) Piero Cappuccilli (Conte di Luna) José van Dam (Ferrando) Maria Venuti (Inez) Heinz Zednik (Ruiz) Karl... »
04 Jan 2005
On an accompanying CD and in the liner notes, interviewer Klaus J. Schönmetzler asks conductor Enoch zu Guttenberg, “Why another St. Matthew Passion?” This is a fair question considering the glut of recordings ranging from the overtly romantic to the idealized “authentic” (and mostly fast) Baroque editions. To his credit, Guttenberg responds to this question by acknowledging an aversion to interpreting Bach overly Romantically while desiring a Baroque sensibility. As a theologian, zu Guttenberg understands an undeniable conviction in Bach’s theology, particularly in the chorales, which he acknowledges can lead to a more Romantic interpretation. Zu Guttenberg’s attempt to capture this devotion coupled with the reality of twenty-first century instruments and performers, produces a St. Matthew stuck in a mediocre middle ground between a Baroque “ideal” and a Romantic interpretation. »
02 Jan 2005
Wow ! Les Trois Valses comme il faut in Liège Laurence Janot (Fanny Grandpré) and Jean-Baptiste Marcenac (Octave de Chalencey) For the year's end the Walloon Opera always offers some lighter fare. A few years ago we saw a very... »
02 Jan 2005
© Johan Jacobs De Munt's Christmas production plays into high summer and it is magnificent to behold. Scottish director David McVicar is somewhat of a cult director in Antwerp and Brussels. In Antwerp he directed a fine Idomeneo and an... »
31 Dec 2004
Una piccola ma scelta rappresentanza di questo esimio consesso ha assistito ieri sera alla terzultima rappresentazione de La Cenerentola al Regio di Torino. In una sala strapiena di un pubblico festoso, reattivo e soprattutto devastato dalla bronchite (propongo per il... »
30 Dec 2004
The imposing figure of Johann Sebastian Bach has loomed large for Magdalena Ko ená throughout her career. It was her first disc of Bach arias on Deutsche Grammophon’s Archiv label that brought the golden-voiced mezzo to the attention of the music world as early as 1997. Word then quickly went round that Magdalena was the perfect choice for Bach recordings. ”This disc that started my international career also was my introduction to the great Baroque conductors, including the wonderful scholar and musician Reinhard Goebel, with whom I’ve worked on my new disc, Lamento.”
Although the title may suggest wailing and gnashing of teeth, this is a sublime and eclectic mixture of music by J. S. Bach, his relations and contemporaries. ”There’s a very optimistic feeling to this CD,” says Ko ená. ”Although all these pieces are about how horrible it is on this earth, they are really celebrating how great it will be afterwards. There’s a message of hope throughout.” »
30 Dec 2004
Colour, wit and life abound with a star turn from the Rossini tenor of the moment Comte Ory Le Comte Ory is the first great French-language comic opera. A late work (Paris, 1828), sensuous, witty and exquisitely crafted, it has... »
30 Dec 2004
Don Giovanni: Leporello's Revenge Mozart's opera presented from the point of view of Don Giovanni's servant, Leporello. 55 minutes Color / Stereo Copyright Date: 2000 ISBN: 1-56029-885-5 Mozart's Don Giovanni is arguably one of his most complex, politically controversial, and... »
29 Dec 2004
Moskva, Cheryomushki, Opéra de Lyon, France By Francis Carlin Published: December 29 2004 02:00 | Last updated: December 29 2004 02:00 Wanted: a warm-up guy for chronically frigid audience. The first-nighters sat on their hands throughout Shostakovitch's easy-listening operetta (1959),... »
29 Dec 2004
Deux "Falstaff", à vingt ans d'écart LE MONDE | 27.12.04 | 14h05 Les amateurs d'opéra ont, généralement, un fort penchant pour l'écoute comparée des interprétations. L'éditeur Andante les comblera. Dans un somptueux livre-CD (224 pages avec notice et livret en... »
29 Dec 2004
Haendel in salsa mozartiana Acis and Galatea Pastorale in 2 atti di Georg Friedrich Haendel. (orchestrazione W. A. Mozart, K566) libretto di John Gay dalle Metamorfosi di Ovidio edizione Edizioni Barenreiter, Kassel (in Italia casa Musicale Sonzogno di Piero Ostali)... »
28 Dec 2004
Covent Garden: über 193 Stufen nach Walhall VON PETRA HAIDERER Mit "Rheingold" begann der neue "Ring"-Zyklus in Londons Covent Garden Opera - Bryn Terfel sang erstmals den Wotan. This is Covent Garden!", sagt die me lodische Frauenstimme in der Londoner... »
28 Dec 2004
Staatsoper: Neuer Versuch mit dem Kindsmord VON WILHELM SINKOVICZ Alfred Schnittkes "Gesualdo" wieder auf dem Spielplan: exzellent besetzt, aber nach wie vor problematisch. Das Stück wird nicht besser, wenn man es bis in die kleinsten Rollen mit edelsten Stimmen besetzt,... »
27 Dec 2004
Gesualdo Vienna State Opera By Larry L Lash Published: December 27 2004 02:00 | Last updated: December 27 2004 02:00 In a house where world premieres are rare and successful ones even rarer, I suspect the Vienna State Opera feels... »
27 Dec 2004
Gefahr für die Luftröhre Staatsoper: Neu besetzter "Troubadour" Eine Produktion mit Hustenreiz-Garantie. Denn wenn sich der Vorhang zum hochgradig verstaubten Staatsopern-"Troubadour" öffnet, dann sträuben sich in der Luftröhre die Flimmerhärchen. Für Stars auf der Durchreise taugt das müde Arrangement allemal:... »
26 Dec 2004
Tales of Hoffmann, Opéra de Marseille By Francis Carlin Published: December 23 2004 02:00 | Last updated: December 23 2004 02:00 We have surely not heard the last word on Offenbach's attempt to get back into the world of grand... »
24 Dec 2004
Haydn’s Creation couldn’t have been a more appropriate choice for the opening concert at The Sage Gateshead complex, although it must have felt more like “paradise found” for the Northern Sinfonia than Paradise Lost, the Milton poem on which the oratorio is based.
In the performances of the uninhibited soloists – Geraldine McGreevy, Thomas Walker and Michael George (placed, perhaps unwisely, behind the orchestra) – there was a sense of the architectural accomplishment and, more obviously, the human joy contained in Haydn’s great work. The one artistic achievement matched the other splendidly. »
23 Dec 2004
The Nose/Angers-Nantes Opéra, Théâtre Graslin, Nantes By Francis Carlin Published: December 22 2004 13:05 | Last updated: December 22 2004 13:05 Now merged with nearby Angers, Nantes is still flying the flag of artistic courage and digging out overlooked jewels.... »
22 Dec 2004
Zelmira Gioachino Rossini, music and Andrea Leone Tortola, libretto ORC 27 Scottish Chamber Orchestra Maurizio Benini, conductor Besides its Opera in English series on Chandos, Peter Moore's Foundation has sponsored the recording of many a fine bel canto rarity on... »
21 Dec 2004
The sigh of relief was almost audible during the short love duet after “La fleur que tu m’avais jetée”. Carmen started to strip down, fumbled a little bit with José’s pants and both started their love making. So after all, Bieito’s signature tune was being played. In reality apart from the many lewd gestures, both singers remained firmly and fully clothed. The only full nude was a male dancer during the prelude to the third act and even he was lighted in clair-obscur. Another Bieito-feature, horrible violence, was also somewhat muted. Granted, José gutted Carmen in the finale of the opera in plain sight and in the well-known way Islamists treat those poor people they can lay their hands on and therefore it was a bloody affair but still everybody knows “this is theatre”. »
20 Dec 2004
Janacek’s Kata Kabanova began this year’s run at the Met on Friday night with a very new cast including two important and highly successful debuts.
This is Janacek late in his career, writing on a Russian subject by the playwright Ostrovsky. His admiration for Russian culture and literature may also have led him to follow Anton Chekhov’s example — Kata moves swiftly with the sense that any extraneous word or note has been rigorously pruned away — it is an opera that speaks directly and powerfully to its audience. Last night’s audience — the Met was at least 90% full — reacted with enthusiasm that bordered on delirium when the final curtain rose again for beloved Finnish soprano Karita Mattila’s pride-of-place first solo bow. »
20 Dec 2004
THE slightly unsettling fervour of Wagner adepts as they look forward to the start of another Ring cycle is matched by a religious hush as we sit in the dark waiting — for a good 30 seconds — for the thing to begin. And then it does, soft, impossibly deep rumblings emerging from the void to become the longest E flat chord in history, and a single light lost in the blackness of the stage. You think: this better be good. »
19 Dec 2004
Kein Urweib, keine femme fatale – eine “ganzheitliche” Frau mit einem unbändigen Freiheitsdrang soll diese Carmen sein. So stellt sie sich Regisseurin Konstanze Lauterbach laut Programmheft vor. Was man auf der Bühne von Peter Schubert sieht, sind Genreszenen in einem faschistischen Land.
Das Eröffnungsbild schon zeigt einen Marktplatz, auf dem es vor lungernden Soldaten nur so wimmelt. Kinder sitzen in dem lindgrün-ockerfarbenen Geviert auf dem terrakotta-farbenen Steinfußboden für ihren Auftritt bereit. Gruppen von schwarz gekleideten Lorca-Frauen huschen über die Bühne. »
18 Dec 2004
Schwitters Agonistes: Opera Takes on a Radical By ANNE MIDGETTE Kurt Schwitters. Merz Picture 32A (The Cherry Picture). 1921. Cloth, wood, metal, fabric, cut-and-pasted papers, cork, gouache, oil, and ink on cardboard, 36 1/8 × 27 3/4" (91.8 × 70.5... »
17 Dec 2004
French soprano Natalie Dessay sings three roles, all quite different in character and personality -- from Zerbinetta in "Ariadne" to Zdenka in "Arabella" and Sophie in "Rosenkavalier." It is a delicious way to sample the pleasures of this great singer.... »
17 Dec 2004
Andromeda liberata, Barbican Hall, London By Richard Fairman Published: December 16 2004 02:00 | Last updated: December 16 2004 02:00 In his prolific career Vivaldi wrote about 38 solo cantatas, 20 motets and 45 operas, of which 21 survive more... »
16 Dec 2004
Brilliant, Starlit Night Metropolitan Opera's 'Rodelinda' grants Handel his due By JAMES JORDEN The Metropolitan Opera can be a pretty dreary place when presenting an under-cast and under-rehearsed revival. But their new production of Handel's "Rodelinda" on December 6 was... »
16 Dec 2004
Una spiaggia di sabbia, due muri ai lati, l'ingresso monumentale alla reggia di Itaca sul fondo. E' incredibile come questa scena fissa semplicissima sia riuscita a reggere per le tre ore e mezza di spettacolo, ma non solo, a renderlo... »
15 Dec 2004
Hard luck trails Hercules By David Stevens International Herald Tribune Wednesday, December 15, 2004 Handel opera falls short in Paris From left: Toby Spence, Joyce DiDonato and Malena Ernman in ''Hercules.'' (Eric Mahoudeau) PARIS Hercules had a lot of bad... »
15 Dec 2004
Bolcom's music humanizes Altman's sardonic 'Wedding' Movie-turned-opera by U-M composer William Bolcom opens in Chicago. By Lawrence B. Johnson / Detroit News Music Critic Image CHICAGO -- Think of the human condition as images in a funhouse -- where individual... »
14 Dec 2004
Falstaff, Opéra du Rhin, Strasbourg By Francis Carlin Published: December 14 2004 15:54 | Last updated: December 14 2004 15:54 The posters dotted around Strasbourg showed a figure trussed up in pillows and mattresses, to add more protuberance to waist... »
14 Dec 2004
Kritik Staatsoper: Sie war doch nur scheintot VON WILHELM SINKOVICZ Wie Erich Wolfgang Korngolds einstiger Sensationserfolg "Die tote Stadt" zum Repertoirestück wird. Wiederbelebungsversuche startet man seit geraumer Zeit mit vie len Werken, die unter der ära des Nationalsozialismus als "entartet"... »
14 Dec 2004
LA PIETRA DEL PARAGONE (La pierre de touche) Melodramma giocoso en deux actes de Gioacchino Rossini Livret de Luigi Romanelli (1751-1839) Créé à la Scala de Milan le 26 septembre 1812 Le comte Asdrubal est entouré de trois femmes qui... »
14 Dec 2004
One Touch of Venus, Grand Theatre, Leeds By Richard Fairman [Financial Times] Published: December 13 2004 02:00 | Last updated: December 13 2004 02:00 It is no surprise that Kurt Weill's One Touch of Venus was one of his bigger... »
14 Dec 2004
Sélection CD L'osmose de deux timbres rares LE MONDE | 13.12.04 | 15h33 First Encounter: Angelika Kirchschlager & Barbara Bonney Classique "Il y a très longtemps, raconte Barbara Bonney, que je fis connaissance avec Angelika Kirchschlager. Ce fut un dimanche... »
13 Dec 2004
Elektra in der Oper Duisburg: Ein Leben für den Tod Rheinoper: In Duisburg zeigen Stein Winge und Johannes Schütz Richard Strauss` "Elektra" in einer Welt, die Kopf steht. Duisburg. Alles ist erfüllt von den Abwesenden. An die Wände hängt Elektra,... »
13 Dec 2004
Lavinia la turca Lavinia fuggita Opera da camera in un atto di Matteo D'Amico libretto di Sandro Cappelletto, liberamente tratto dall'omonimo racconto di Anna Banti prima rappresentazione: Modena, Teatro Comunale 12 dicembre 2004 Teatro Comunale via del Teatro 8 Modena... »
13 Dec 2004
Altman opera a fitting renovation By Bill Gowen Daily Herald Classical Music Critic Posted Monday, December 13, 2004 It's rare that a film director has an opportunity for a do-over. But Robert Altman is no ordinary director, having created several... »
13 Dec 2004
Singer is entrancing in a demanding role By Wayne Lee Gay Star-Telegram Classical Music Critic After a weak start with Bizet's Carmen and a strong comeback with Janacek's Jenufa, Dallas Opera was on track for Rossini's La Cenerentola, or Cinderella,... »
12 Dec 2004
Anna Netrebko: Vom Aschenputtel zur Operndiva VON Tobias D. Höhn, 10.12.04, 12:30h Leipzig - Für viele ist sie die zweite Maria Callas. Wenn die russische Opernsängerin Anna Netrebko wie eine Ballerina über die Bühne schwebt, mit einem Lächeln und glockenheller... »
12 Dec 2004
Every CD collector faces the day (or days, in the case of the truly dedicated collector) when denial no longer suffices — the shelves are sagging and overflowing, and the time has come to purchase yet another storage unit. Perhaps others have done what I did once to forestall that day — I removed all the booklets from my opera sets (and cover boxes as well, of course) and stored them on that increasingly archaic furniture item, a bookshelf. »
12 Dec 2004
Alle Jahre wieder - Das Weihnachtsoratorium in der Thomaskirche, mit den Thomaner, dem Gewandhausorchester und Gästen Weihnachtsoratorien sind auch eine Jahrgangsfrage: Frei von der Diskussion um die Herrlichkeit Bachscher Noten, fixiert auf die individuelle Interpretation. Insofern ist Thomaskantor Georg Christoph... »
12 Dec 2004
Firenze, teatro Comunale. Si rappresenta il Don Carlo nell'edizione in cinque atti, con la ricostruzione dello storico allestimento di Luchino Visconti. A metà del secondo atto il sipario si chiude per il cambio di scena. Mezze luci in sala, Zubin... »
10 Dec 2004
With all of the festivities surrounding the reopening of La Scala, the production of Don Carlo at Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino was left in the shadows. The company is producing both the four-act and five-act editions, the latter being... »
10 Dec 2004
Altro che idiota! Vita con un idiota opera in due atti di Alfred Schinittke libretto di Viktor Erofeev Russkij Festival Auditorium Parco della Musica - Sala Petrassi Viale Pietro De Coubertin Roma 0680241281 10 dicembre 2004 Non è solo un... »
10 Dec 2004
We previously reported on the Manhattan School of Music production of Lee Hoiby's A Month in the Country. Here is Anne Midgette's review. A Russian Play, Reimagined by an American Composer By ANNE MIDGETTE "We've lost a few people," said... »
10 Dec 2004
Prodigal Son and a Brat, a Whimsical Pairing By BERNARD HOLLAND The Juilliard Opera Center's double bill on Wednesday made more nonmusical than musical sense. "L'Enfant Prodigue" by Debussy and "L'Enfant et les Sortilèges" by Ravel fit nicely into an... »
10 Dec 2004
Salieri promu chantre de l'Europe [09 décembre 2004] Le Napolitain Riccardo Muti a fait le bon choix avec cette Europa Riconosciuta de Salieri pour rouvrir le théâtre dont il est directeur musical depuis le départ d'Abbado en 1986. L'ouvrage avait,... »
08 Dec 2004
Paris Palais Garnier 12/04/2004 - et 6, 8, 11, 14, 16, 19, 22, 27 décembre 2004 Georg Friedrich Haendel : Hercules Joyce DiDonato (Dejanira), William Shimell (Hercules), Malena Ernman (Lichas), Toby Spence (Hyllus), Indela Bohlin (Iole), Simon Kirkbridge (Pretre de... »
08 Dec 2004
A triumphant 'Rosenkavalier' By George Loomis International Herald Tribune Wednesday, December 8, 2004 HELSINKI Far be it from me to foment rivalry between sopranos, but Finland has another who is fully worthy of the international acclaim already lavished on the... »
07 Dec 2004
How does it come about that "modern" productions date so quickly while "traditional" ones can go on for ages ? Probably, because ideas that once were fresh and innovative are immediately picked up by everybody in the business, copied (sometimes... »
07 Dec 2004
The House of the Sun Einojuhani Rautavaara, music and libretto Ondine 1032-2D Oulu Symphony orchestra Mikko Franck, conductor The recording company Ondine, based in Helsinki, has built itself an international reputation, at least arguably, by dedicating itself to the works... »
07 Dec 2004
A Masked Ball Giuseppe Verdi, music and Antonio Somma, libretto English translation by Amanda Holden Chandos 3116 (2) London Philharmonic Orchestra David Parry, conductor In an era where major record companies seldom produce complete opera sets (and those they do... »
06 Dec 2004
I spent a spectacular three days in Walt Disney Concert Hall taking in the magnificent music of Richard Wagner in what has been entitled The Tristan Project. At first, when this three day event was announced as part of... »
04 Dec 2004
Not strictly opera, but so full of the usual suspects . . . My experience of Berlioz's Dramatic Symphony Romeo et Juliette (R&J) came full circle last night at Boston's Symphony Hall. I had first heard the work live in... »
03 Dec 2004
Troubadour des temps modernes Avec toujours un meme gout pour l'éloquente clarté, Anne Sofie von Otter sait tout faire. Bete de scène inespérée, elle est récitaliste sans appret ni pose. Ballades ou mélodies, Lieder et songs, l'éclectisme du programme n'est... »
03 Dec 2004
Review: 'Rodelinda' at Met Is Masterpiece MIKE SILVERMAN Associated Press NEW YORK - George Frideric Handel's "Rodelinda" was a huge success at its London premiere in 1725, but it soon vanished from the stage and - like the composer's three... »
01 Dec 2004
Writing a history of an important and complex operatic repertory spanning three dynamic centuries is a daunting task, one that is perhaps better suited to several specialists than a single author. While an individual rarely possesses the scholarly breadth to write with expertise and authority on so much music, he or she can impart a unifying perspective and a consistent set of goals. But this advantage can also prove to be a limitation. »
01 Dec 2004
Australia forges a 'Ring' with confidence By Shirley Apthorp Published: November 30 2004 Where do the Valkyries meet between battles? At the Wunder Bar, of course. Schwertleite, Grimgerde and sisters are leather-clad punks with a crass sense of humour,... »
30 Nov 2004
OPéRA "Hayedée" à Compiègne Auber sort de l'oubli Jacques Doucelin [Le Figaro] [30 novembre 2004] Et de cinq ! Après Manon Lescaut, Gustave III, Le Domino noir et Les Diamants de la couronne entre 1990 et 1999, Pierre Jourdan vient... »
30 Nov 2004
On the Weill side of Venus Robert Thicknesse Opera North is reviving a "lost" work by the composer THINK of Kurt Weill and what do you get? Cigarettes, dim lights, fishnets; Lotte Lenya or Ute Lemper; Berlin, Brecht, Communism, cabaret... »
29 Nov 2004
Eine neue Oper von Peter Eötvös in Paris uraufgeführt Peter Eötvös, der ungarische Komponist und Dirigent, heuer sechzig geworden, fühlt sich schon seit je zum Theater hingezogen. Seine Musik hat dieses narrative, körperlich-gestische Element, das Bildhafte und Kommunikative, das guter... »
29 Nov 2004
Fleming gives what young singers need By Sarah Bryan Miller Post-Dispatch Classical Music Critic Sunday, Nov. 28 2004 "The Inner Voice: The Making of a Singer" By Renee Fleming Published by Viking; 222 pages; $24.95 This is the book I... »
29 Nov 2004
Opera: Don Pasquale Robert Thicknesse at Covent Garden JONATHAN MILLER certainly has it in for Covent Garden. A few weeks ago he hilariously described the crowd here as "Harrods Food Hall gives up its dead", and to continue the metaphor... »
27 Nov 2004
Clipping the wings of an apocalyptic epic (Filed: 27/11/2004) Rupert Christiansen reviews Angels in America at Theatre du Chatelet, Paris There are plenty of wonderful operas taken from good plays, and a few (Otello and Wozzeck, for example) taken from... »
27 Nov 2004
A fully American grand opera Los Angeles Opera stages the seldom-produced "Vanessa" By John Farrell Special to U-Entertainment Thursday, November 25, 2004 - Los Angeles Opera has been steering its productions the last few months right down the middle of... »
27 Nov 2004
Soaring Opera hits new heights in Tchaikovsky's 'Eugene Onegin' Joshua Kosman, Chronicle Music Critic Friday, November 26, 2004 Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin" is a story of strong emotion accommodating itself, painfully but with resigned acceptance, to external reality. Dreams of romantic... »
25 Nov 2004
THE INNER VOICE: The Making of a Singer Renée Fleming Viking Memoir ISBN: 0670033510 Renee Fleming evidently started out determined to write a different sort of opera singer's memoir. She calls her book "the autobiography of my voice" and tries... »
24 Nov 2004
Superb, if mixed, Fanciulla at OONY Last night's La Fanciulla del West at Carnegie Hall was the classic case of the whole being much better than the sum of its parts. It was a thrilling performance of Puccini's score and... »
23 Nov 2004
The Helikon Opera of Moscow is in residence for three weeks at Dijon. Its first production was Verdi's Nabucco. In ResMusica.com, Edouard Bailly reviews this production with lavish praise for its costumes and sets, as well as, for the most... »
22 Nov 2004
Macbeth and the darkness Madrid Teatro Real 11/10/2004 - Giuseppe Verdi: Macbeth Carlos álvarez (Macbeth), Paoletta Marrocu (Lady Macbeth), Aquiles Machado (Macduff), Guillermo Orozco (Malcolm), Carlo Colombara (Banquo). Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro Real, Jesus Lopez Cobos (Musical Conductor),... »
19 Nov 2004
Semele Robert Thicknesse at the Coliseum [Times Online, 20 November 2004] IT HAS to be the Prince of Wales's favourite opera. "Nature to each allots his proper sphere," avers Congreve's coolly brilliant libretto, and proceeds to itemise the results of... »
19 Nov 2004
Boris Trajanov, Evan Bowers and Marquita Lister Opernhaus Graz's new production of Tosca is a hit. According to Larry Lash of the Financial Times, A stage direction in my score of Tosca has Scarpia making a cup of coffee... »
19 Nov 2004
If 'Vixen' can find its balance, it'll be a charmer November 19, 2004 BY WYNNE DELACOMA Classical Music Critic Somewhere amid the nonstop bustle onstage and the flood of highly colored orchestral music from the pit, a charming production of... »
18 Nov 2004
La Fenice refaite à neuf lance sa saison avec une "Traviata" façon années 1970 LE MONDE | 17.11.04 | 18h19 Le théâtre vénitien, rénové après l'incendie de 1996, présente l'œuvre de Verdi dans sa version originale de 1853, transformée en... »
17 Nov 2004
Waiting for the End of the World
By HEIDI WALESON [WSJ]
November 17, 2004
San Francisco
Many listeners know Gyorgy Ligeti from the creepily futuristic orchestral music in the soundtrack of the 1968 movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.” His opera “Le Grand Macabre” (1978, revised in 1996), given its American premiere this month by the San Francisco Opera, is a thoroughly different creature, yet it is just as much an artifact of its time. Though carefully crafted and full of compositional references, the score is mostly an elbow-in-the-ribs accompaniment to a nihilistic black comedy. Beginning with an opening fanfare for car horns that sounds like Harpo Marx multiplied and continuing with a parody of the “Dies Irae,” the prophecy of the Day of Judgment, the opera is a soulless and often scatological joke. »
16 Nov 2004
More than meeting Bellini's demands Baltimore company sings 'I Puritani' with polish, precision and control By Tim Smith Sun Music Critic November 15, 2004 Bel canto - "beautiful singing." It's more common to hear that term spoken of than to... »
15 Nov 2004
Verdi à Las Vegas Venise : de notre envoyé spécial Jacques Doucelin [15 novembre 2004] Un de ces chats comme Venise en a le secret, trone impérial et méprisant au beau milieu d'une place ensoleillée, manteau mité, mais noeud papillon... »
15 Nov 2004
STRAUSS Der Liebe der Danae, op. 83 * Ulrich Windfuhr, cond; Franz Grundheber (Jupiter); Manuela Uhl (Danae); Hans-Jürgen Schöpflin (Mercury); Robert Chafin (Midas); Paul McNamara (Pollux); Cornelia Zach (Xanthe, Europa); Daniel Behle, Martin Fleitmann, Simon Pauly, Hans Georg Ahrens (Vier... »
15 Nov 2004
SPONTINI: Agnese di Hohenstaufen Lucille Udovick (Agnese), Dorothy Dow (Irmengarda), Franco Corelli (Enrico il Palatino), Francesco Albanese (Filippo), Enzo Mascherini (Re di Francia), Anselmo Colzani (Enrico il Leone), Gian Giacomo Guelfi (L'Imperatore); Florence Teatro Communale/ Vittorio Gui Myto 42084 [2CD]... »
14 Nov 2004
VERDI:Ernani with Giovanna d'Arco excerpts Georgio Merighi (Ernani), Piero Cappuccilli (Don Carlo), Augusto Ferrin (De Silva), Mara Zampieri (Elvira) Trieste Teatro Communale/ MolinariPradelli; Mara Zampieri (Giovanna), Renato Francesconi (Carlo), Ettore Nova (Giacomo) San Remo Symphony/ Buenza-Delil Myto 41288 [2CD] 148... »
14 Nov 2004
VERDI: Otello Mario del Monaco (Otello), Renata Tebaldi (Desdemona), Leonard Warren (Iago); La Scala/ Antonio Votto Myto 41083 [2CD] 140 minutes Tebaldi and Del Monaco twice recorded Otello together in the studio, and we've reviewed a number of bootlegs starring... »
14 Nov 2004
With a ghoulishly murky 'Dutchman,' Opera puts on a truly grim production Joshua Kosman, Chronicle Music Critic Friday, November 12, 2004 It was, yes, a dark and stormy night as the San Francisco Opera unveiled its new production of "The... »
13 Nov 2004
MERCADANTE: Emma d'Antiochia Nelly Miricioiu (Emma), Maria Costanza Nocentini (Adelia), Bruce Ford (Ruggiero), Roberto Servile (Corrado); Geoffrey Mitchell Choir, London Philharmonic/ David Parry Opera Rara 26 [3CD] 183 minutes I have long been on a campaign to revive the works... »
05 Nov 2004
JANáCEK Jenufa * Charles Mackerras, cond; Janice Watson (Jenufa), Josephine Barstow (The Kostelnicka), Nigel Robson (Laca), Peter Wedd (Steva), Neale Davies (Foreman); Welsh Natl Op O & Ch * CHANDOS 3106 (2 CDs: 121: 11) There is so much to... »
04 Nov 2004
John A. Rice's detailed account of the musical life of the Empress Marie Therese portrays a flourishing world of imperial patronage in its final years. The second wife of Emperor Franz II and namesake of her more famous grandmother Empress Maria Theresa, Marie Therese lived just long enough to see the collapse of the Empire before Napoleon's troops. »
04 Nov 2004
Kát'a Kabanová, Paris Opéra (Garnier) By Francis Carlin Published: November 4 2004 02:00 | Last updated: November 4 2004 02:00 After Salzburg, Brussels, Barcelona, Toulouse and several showings on TV, Christophe Marthaler's Kát'a Kabanova has at last turned up in... »
02 Nov 2004
Hommage à l'opéra français Christian Merlin [02 novembre 2004] Merci à l'Opéra de Vienne d'avoir osé ce à quoi Paris ne s'est pas encore risqué : ressusciter Don Carlos dans sa version originale archicomplète, en cinq actes et en français.... »
01 Nov 2004
Guilio Cesare in Egitto, Boston Baroque By George Loomis Published: November 1 2004 02:00 | Last updated: November 1 2004 02:00 One of the many virtues of Handel's Guilio Cesare in Egitto is that the roles of Caesar and Cleopatra... »
31 Oct 2004
by Jan Neckers Let's start with the main assets of the new Mefistofele in Amsterdam: the singers. Gidon Saks has one of the biggest booming bass voices that ever sounded in an opera house (yes, I heard Ghiaurov but Saks... »
28 Oct 2004
L'Incoronazione di Poppea Barbican Hall, London By David Murray Published: October 28 2004 03:00 | Last updated: October 28 2004 03:00 This was the third glorious concert-performance of a Monteverdi opera at the Barbican - his 1643 Coronation of Poppea... »
25 Oct 2004
La vestale, Wexford Festival By Andrew Clark Published: October 25 2004 03:00 | Last updated: October 25 2004 03:00 The compacting of operatic history into a performable repertoire leads us to make all kinds of false assumptions. One is that... »
22 Oct 2004
Don Carlos, Vienna State Opera By Larry L Lash Published: October 22 2004 03:00 | Last updated: October 22 2004 03:00 Despite character motivation and plot development of revelatory clarity and depth, top-notch singing, gorgeous orchestral playing and insightful conducting,... »
22 Oct 2004
Julie Taymor -- and Mozart Too By HEIDI WALESON [Wall Street Journal] October 14, 2004; Page D7 New York The Metropolitan Opera usually showcases singers, not star directors, but the Met's newest production is most definitely the "Julie Taymor 'Zauberflote'"... »
22 Oct 2004
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE AND PERSONAL EXPERIENCE Thomas Quasthoff Sings Sacred Cantatas by Bach by Jürgen Otten It would be easy to describe or appraise the art of bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff by evoking the title of an exquisite lied by the Romantic... »
15 Oct 2004
Unbearably Good Classical Music BY JAY NORDLINGER [New York Sun] October 14, 2004 Is there any opera more shattering than "The Dialogues of the Carmelites," when it's done well? On Tuesday night, City Opera did it well. It was... »
15 Oct 2004
L'Incoronazione di Poppeia, Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Paris By Francis Carlin [Financial Times] Published: October 15 2004 03:00 | Last updated: October 15 2004 03:00 If you liked David McVicar's staging of Agrippina, you may like his new Poppeia. Or... »
14 Oct 2004
Pelléas et Mélisande, Deutsche Oper, Berlin By Shirley Apthorp [Financial Times] Published: October 14 2004 03:00 | Last updated: October 14 2004 03:00 Yniold wants to know why these sheep huddle together and why they are so silent. We know... »
14 Oct 2004
An Introduction in 5 Languages By ANNE MIDGETTE [New York Times] The powers that be in the opera world are desperate to discover the next hot male phenomenon. On Monday, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Temple of Dendur, Rolando... »
12 Oct 2004
Elektra, Frankfurt Opera By Shirley Apthorp Published: October 12 2004 03:00 | Last updated: October 12 2004 03:00 "Everywhere, in all the courts, there are dead bodies, all who are alive are smeared with blood, yet all are smiling," sings... »
11 Oct 2004
La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein, Châtelet, Paris By Francis Carlin Published: October 11 2004 03:00 | Last updated: October 11 2004 03:00 Were the Brits in the audience the only ones to get the allusion? Felicity Lott's Grand Duchess is... »
10 Oct 2004
La réhabilitation pour Salieri Au TCE, Cecilia Bartoli se fait l'éblouissante avocate d'un musicien dont la postérité retiendra avant tout les soupçons d'empoisonnement sur la personne de Mozart : Antonio Salieri. Elle consacre l'intégralité d'un récital à celui que Gluck... »
10 Oct 2004
La mise en apesanteur divine de "Saint François d'Assise", SDF de la foi LE MONDE | 08.10.04 | 15h02 A l'Opéra Bastille, les tableaux franciscains d'Olivier Messiaen par Stanislas Nordey. Avec cette nouvelle production du Saint-François d'Assise de Messiaen -... »
09 Oct 2004
Voznesenskaya - only too human by Neil McGowan La Voix Humaine (concert performance) Vremena Goda Festival Vremena Goda Orchestra/Bulakhov 29 September 2004 Bringing down the curtain on the Vremena Goda Festival this year was the Festival's first-ever operatic offering -... »
08 Oct 2004
George Loomis reports on Wagner opera, Russian-style. By George Loomis Published: October 8, 2004 Last spring the Metropolitan Opera gave three complete cycles of Richard Wagner's four-opera saga, "Der Ring des Nibelungen" (The Ring of the Nibelung). It was business... »
08 Oct 2004
Georges Bizet’s Carmen has a distinguished recording history in both complete performances and excerpts. From this ever-popular work, as well as the composer’s Les pêcheurs de perles, there are considerable lessons to be learned from the early decades of recording in terms of balancing dramatic urgency with the needs of the drama. Many singers have gotten by in Bizet with beauty at the expense of text, but a Solange Michel or a Charles Dalmorès demonstrates indisputably that Bizet does not come alive unless the text is commanded in depth. »
07 Oct 2004
I well remember my first performance at the Met. It was a not very distinguished La Bohème with Malfitano and Lima, Domingo conducting, in the winter of 1985. But at last I had made it to the Met. This was the company of Caruso, Gigli, Ponselle, Tibbett and Melchior. This was the house where Corelli and Price had given of their best. So in a sense this is my house too, because the Met is too big, too important to belong to the New Yorkers alone, witness the overwhelming majority of the subscribers to Opera News (circulation around 120,000) who are living elsewhere, a lot of them people in Europe like myself. Therefore anything concerning the Met concerns all opera lovers. »
06 Oct 2004
Tamerlano, Opéra de Lille By Francis Carlin Published: October 6 2004 03:00 | Last updated: October 6 2004 03:00 There should be a golden rule for producers: don't make life difficult for yourself and the audience. In Lille's magnificently restored... »
30 Sep 2004
FESTIVAL Marc-Antoine Charpentier à Ambronay Triomphe de la jeunesse Gérard Corneloup [30 septembre 2004] En cette année du bicentenaire de la mort de Marc-Antoine Charpentier, occasion unique de le sortir de l'ombre que lui fait encore Lully, le festival d'Ambronay... »
30 Sep 2004
Die Frau ohne Schatten, Tiroler Landstheater, Innsbruck By Larry L Lash Published: September 29 2004 03:00 | Last updated: September 29 2004 03:00 It was a strange match: Richard Strauss's hugest, most difficult opera - with one of the largest... »
30 Sep 2004
Rameau : Platée Paul Agnew Platée, Mireille Delunsch La Folie & Thalie, Yann Beuron Thespis & Mercure, Vincent Le Texier Jupiter, Doris Lamprecht Junon, Laurent Naouri Cithéron & a Satyr, Valérie Gabail L'Amour & Clarine, Franck Leguerinel Momus, Orchestra and... »
28 Sep 2004
Die Walküre, Metropolitan Opera, New York By Martin Bernheimer Published: September 28 2004 03:00 | Last updated: September 28 2004 03:00 For the past couple of decades at the Metropolitan Opera, Die Walküre was the exclusive property of James Levine,... »
27 Sep 2004
La Rondine, New York City Opera By Martin Bernheimer Published: September 27 2004 03:00 | Last updated: September 27 2004 03:00 La Rondine certainly isn't Puccini's easiest or most successful opera. Completed in 1917, it flutters - sometimes elegantly, sometimes... »
21 Sep 2004
Don Giovanni, Lyric Opera, Chicago By Andrew Patner Published: September 21 2004 03:00 | Last updated: September 21 2004 03:00 A half century ago, a trio of twentysomething operaphiles offered Chicago what they dubbed a "calling card" production of Mozart's... »
20 Sep 2004
Faust, Hong Kong Cultural Centre By Ken Smith Published: September 20 2004 13:25 | Last updated: September 20 2004 13:25 Hong Kong's opera lovers, lacking a full-time opera house and gaining a standing company only in the past year, have... »
17 Sep 2004
The Greek Passion, Royal Opera House, London By Andrew Clark Published: September 17 2004 03:00 | Last updated: September 17 2004 03:00 All human life is here: prayer and pageant, self-sacrifice and self-righteousness, humour and hypocrisy, feast and famine. Opera... »
16 Sep 2004
Tobias and the Angel, English Touring Opera, St John's Church, London By David Murray Published: September 16 2004 03:00 | Last updated: September 16 2004 03:00 The composer Jonathan Dove may have called his Tobias, now touring cathedrals and churches,... »
15 Sep 2004
Ariadne auf Naxos Music Center, Los Angeles By Allan Ulrich Published: September 15 2004 03:00 | Last updated: September 15 2004 03:00 William Friedkin's mounting of the Strauss-von Hoffmannsthal comedy handsomely and wittily confirms the general director Plácido Domingo's belief... »
15 Sep 2004
Debussy tout feu tout glace La critique de Jacques Doucelin [15 septembre 2004] Une salle qui tousse à gorge déployée en été, hors de toute épidémie de grippe, au mieux manque d'attention, au pire s'ennuie. Voilà le résultat du transfert... »
14 Sep 2004
Ariadne auf Naxos, Welsh National Opera, Cardiff By Richard Fairman Published: September 14 2004 03:00 | Last updated: September 14 2004 03:00 The Prologue to Ariadne auf Naxos is all about the backstage shenanigans before a performance - a bit... »
13 Sep 2004
CRITIC'S PICK | ANNE MIDGETTE A Star to Shed Light on Janacek's Bleak Operatic Landscape OPINIONS may differ as to what constitutes a highlight at the Metropolitan Opera these days, but few disagreed last season about Karita Mattila's performance as... »
10 Sep 2004
Daphne New York City Opera By Martin Bernheimer Published: September 10 2004 03:00 | Last updated: September 10 2004 03:00 It took 66 years for Richard Strauss'sDaphne to reach a stage in New York. We must be grateful for belated... »
10 Sep 2004
The Comeback Composer Opera World Taps Handel To Woo New Audiences; Cleopatra in Gold Lamé By HEIDI WALESON The last time Michael Goodman had season tickets to the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, Gerald Ford was president and pet... »
09 Sep 2004
By David Murray Published: September 9 2004 05:00 | Last updated: September 9 2004 05:00 Jukka-Pekka Saraste conducted the UK premiere of Kaija Saariaho's grand new Orion followed by Bártok's Duke Bluebeard's Castle. Though the works have nothing in common,... »
09 Sep 2004
In the September 2004 issue of International Record Review, Simon Heighes reviews Orazio Vecchi's L'Amfiparnaso, a new DVD under the Chandos Chaconne label. Composed in 1597, L'Amfiparnaso is a realization of commedia dell'arte consisting of a prologue and three acts.... »
08 Sep 2004
PACIUS Die Loreley * Osmo Vänskä, cond; Cornelius Hauptmann (Hubert); Soile Isokoski (Lenore); Riikka Rantanen (Bertha); Raimo Sirkiä (Otto); Topi Lehtipuu (Reinald); Arttu Kataja (Leupold); Lahti SO; Dominante Ch * BIS-CD-1393/1394 (2 CDs: 125:02 &) Live: Lahti, Finland 9/2003 Fredrik... »
08 Sep 2004
Charpentier en majesté Jacques Doucelin [08 septembre 2004] Bien avant d'imposer la victoire définitive de la vague baroque avec Atys, de Lully, William Christie s'était attelé à la redécouverte de Marc-Antoine Charpentier, son rival à la cour, dont le public... »
07 Sep 2004
Enough to Make Handel Reach for His Walkman By ANTHONY TOMMASINI During the late 1720's Handel had two rival prima donnas in the London opera company he ran: Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni. From all reports both were superb sopranos... »
03 Sep 2004
Summer in Santa Fe The most difficult tickets to obtain at Santa Fe this summer were for Vincenzo Bellini's seldom performed opera, La sonnambula. It was a great pleasure to hear the sumptuous long melodies of this lyrical work, which... »
23 Aug 2004
When modern dance meets the Underworld KELLY APTER Orfeo ed Euridice by Opera North and Emio Greco WHEN International Festival director Brian McMaster invited Italian dancer Emio Greco to Edinburgh in 2000, he was squeezed into a late-night, post-opera slot... »
