Alberto Vilar, a hotshot millionaire money manager and the Metropolitan Opera’s largest benefactor, was hauled before a federal judge yesterday on charges he stole $5 million from a client — and then used part of the money to make a donation to his alma mater.
Year: 2005
Teatro Colon — Where The House Is The Show
Most people go to the opera to see the show. In Buenos Aires, many go just to see the opera house.
Recently refurbished, the Teatro Colon offers guided tours through what is one of the world’s truly great houses of music. These tours are a hot attraction, especially for the tourists flooding the Argentine capital these days, where the dollar still has muscle. The tours are in Spanish, English, Portuguese and other languages.
A Profile of Valery Gergiev
What makes Valery Gergiev run? When the announcement came last week that he was to take over from Sir Colin Davis as principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, it was obvious what the LSO got from the deal. It confirmed them as one of the world’s leading orchestras, able to attract (Sir Simon Rattle possibly excepted) the most talented and charismatic conductor of his generation. For Gergiev, however, it was just another high-profile post to add to his already prodigious workload.
BELLINI: I Puritani
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.
García Opera Buffa Found
Una ópera bufa sobre Don Quijote, escrita hace 180 años, ha sido redescubierta en España el año del IV Centenario de la obra que la inspiró y posiblemente sea reestrenada, afirmó a EFE el director musical Juan de Udaeta.
Arabella at Châtelet
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.
Fisting Macbeth in Frankfurt
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.
PURCELL: Dido and Aeneas and The Masque of Cupid and Bacchus
GAILLIARD: Pan and Syrinx
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.
Die Zauberflöte at Baden-Baden
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.
MOZART: Lucio Silla
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.