Leaflets distributed this week outside La Scala opera house in Milan announced the world premiere of “an opera of a few minutes (because that’s enough)”, composed by the theatre’s audience. The music consisted of loud heckling whenever members of La Scala’s orchestra appeared. The libretto was curt: “Don’t touch the maestro. Riccardo Muti belongs to art. He belongs to us!”
Month: March 2005
Handel’s Sosarme at Theater St. Gallen
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.
Moscow Celebrates the Golden Mask Festival
In all the years of its existence, the Golden Mask Festival has been nothing if not a study in contrasts—no other Russian festival embraces as fully the multiplicity of the performing arts. Once a year, for just over two weeks in the spring, the best Russian opera singers, ballet dancers, dramatic actors, directors, conductors, puppeteers and other sundry performing artists gather to show their stuff and compete for the coveted Golden Mask award.
Operatic Detritus
In an introduction to the score for his “Darkbloom: Overture for an Imagined Opera,” which will have its premiere with the Boston Symphony Orchestra tonight, John Harbison calls the piece the remnant of a misguided project, an “unproduceable” opera based on a “famous and infamous” American novel.
U Carmen E Khayelitsha Premieres
As the limousines arrive at the premiere of an award winning film version of Carmen, U Carmen E Khayelitsha, they have to slow down for a group of barefooted children pushing shopping trolleys filled with scrap metal across the road.
Trouble at the Bolshoi
MOSCOW, Russia (CNN)—Russia’s Bolshoi Theater has sparked outrage by putting on an opera that some lawmakers and a pro-Kremlin youth group say is pornographic.
The opera, “Rosenthal’s Children,” is about a scientist who clones five great classical composers—Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Wagner, Mussorgsky and Verdi.
The scientist then dies, and the cloned musicians—unprepared for life on their own in the 1990s—end up on the street.
Sometimes It’s The Little Things
A new wave of distinctive 21st-century concert halls is changing the look and feel of classical music performance in the U.S. These halls have impressive architectural pedigrees and price tags—Frank Gehry designed the $275 million Disney Hall in Los Angeles; Rafael Viñoly, the $265 million Kimmel Center in Philadelphia; Santiago Calatrava, the coming $300 million Atlanta Symphony Center. Most of them, like architect William Rawn’s $99 million Strathmore Music Center in Bethesda, Md., shun the gilded, red-velvet opulence of traditional European models in favor of Modernist simplicity. They also strive for heightened spatial intimacy between audience and performer: Disney Hall, home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, has terraced seating areas surrounding the stage.
Four Operas at the Budapest Spring Festival
FOUR operas, more than four reasons to go. The operas: Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, Péter Eötvös’s The Balcony, Wagner’s Parsifal, and Handel’s Semele.The reasons to go: great music, top performers, the best conductors, inventive directors, and two truly excellent performance spaces.
Leontyne Price & Samuel Barber: Historic Performances (1938 – 1953)
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.
An Interview with Peter Schreier
“200 oder 300” Matthäus-Passionen hat Peter Schreier (69) schon hinter sich, als Sänger, seit den 80er-Jahren in der Doppelfunktion als dirigierender Evangelist. So auch an diesem Karfreitag im Gasteig, wenn er das Opus mit dem Münchener Bach-Chor aufführt (14.30 Uhr, Live-Übertragung auf Bayern 4). Und damit wohl zum letzten Mal hier zu hören sein wird: Zum Jahresende will Schreier, einer der größten Bach-, Mozart- und Schubert-Interpreten unserer Zeit, seine Gesangskarriere beenden.