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.
Month: October 2009
NICOLAI: Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor — Berlin 1943
Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor (The Merry Wives of Windsor), a comical-fantastical opera in three acts with dance.
Il trittico in San Francisco
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.
Czech Opera Treasures on Supraphon
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.”
Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda at the Sferisterio Festival
A number of performances from the Sferisterio Opera Festival have been released in recent months.
Orfeo at La Scala
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.
Wagner: Die Meistersinger von N¸rnberg
Videos from the Bayreuth Festspiele typically feature the highest quality audio and video of any live performance documents.
Toscanini: In His Own Words
The back cover description of this Medici Arts DVD can fairly be called misleading, though not dishonest.
Giordano: Marcella
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.
Los Angeles “Ring” continues to amaze
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.