One of Richard Wagner’s most enduring contributions to music history is a concept known as gesamtkunstwerk.
Month: June 2011
Peter Grimes, Covent Garden
Willy Decker’s production of Peter Grimes, first seen at
Covent Garden in 2004, should perhaps be renamed The Borough.
Boston Early Music Festival: Niobe, Regina di Tebe
The Boston Early Music Festival (hereinafter BEMF) has grown up.
Jeremy White and the British character singer tradition
Divas make headlines, but character singers are fundamental to the British opera tradition. “Character singing,” says Jeremy White, one of the stalwarts of the Royal Opera House, “is much more than just voice.”
Wagner’s Rienzi in Berlin
The Voltaire maxim usually given in English as “The perfect is the enemy of the good” illuminates the artistic conflicts surrounding many a Wagner production.
Jane Henschel — An Interview
Since her first significant and highly acclaimed debut as a guest artist with the Netherlands Opera in 1992, in the taxing role of the Nurse in Richard Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten, American mezzo-soprano Jane Henschel has triumphed in opera houses across the world, marvelling international audiences with her musical versatility, vocal strength and striking stage presence.
Will Crutchfield: Interview with the Director of Opera for the Caramoor Festival
Will Crutchfield made his name as a writer and musicologist in the mid-1980s, becoming the youngest music critic in the history of The New York Times.