Recently in Recordings
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. »
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. »
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. »
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. »
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. »
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. »
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. »
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. »
01 Dec 2010
Philip Glass has achieved a level of success that places him in a very select group of composers of serious music. »
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. »
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. »
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. »
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
Kirsten Flagstad’s voice remains connected to the music of Richard Wagner through the recordings that continue to bring her performances to new audiences. »
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. »
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. »
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. »
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. »
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. »
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. »
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. »
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
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
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. »
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
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
Does this Tan Dun opera prove or disprove that for East and West, the twain shall never meet? »
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. »
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. »
27 Jun 2010
What sort of production would be optimal for an opera that with more style than content? »
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. »
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. »
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. »
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. »
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. »
20 Apr 2010
Previously released on DVD, the Netherlands Opera recording of
Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk »
