There is much to admire in Masaaki Suzukiís 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.
Year: 2007
PUCCINI: La Bohème
La Bohème, opera in four acts.
Music composed by Giacomo Puccini. Libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi lllica, based
on episodes from Henri Murger’s Scènes de la vie de Bohème.
SMETANA: The Bartered Bride
As an audio-recording, Supraphon’s set of Bedrich Smetana’s The Bartered Bride conducted by Zden?k Koöler deserves the highest recommendation.
JAN¡?EK: Katja Kabanowa
A series of historic recordings comes from Profil/Edition: G¸nter H‰nssler, and from those a subset of Staatskapelle Dresden performances brings opera fans a remarkable document.
Teresa Berganza Live in Concert
Here’s another in a series of televised recitals from Lugano, Switzerland to have appeared on DVD.
Kiri Sings Karl: Songs of Mystery & Enchantment
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.
VERDI: Otello
Director Willy Decker’s outstanding Traviata from Salzburg, with Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazon, is one of the great contemporary opera DVDs.
Aspen premieres forgotten Cavalli work
A husky baritone in Speedos on a motor scooter and a buxom, purple-wigged Dame Edna drag clone ó the Aspen Opera Theater Companyís staging of Francesco Cavalliís 1667 ìEliogabaloî was off to a start that promised to equal the programís over-the-top staging of the composerís 1649 ìGiasoneî two summers ago. (AOTC director Edward Berkeley raised the curtain on that Baroque potboiler to a biker Amor on a Harley.)