This is an opera written with a cannon and a feather. There is sensory
overload—an overload of sensory overload: lights that shine into your face in
the manner of an ophthalmologist scanning your retina; eerie, too-loud sounds
that invade you from every direction; dancing patterns of light that may
resolve into huge words or huge faces; a great chandelier-harp that sometimes
descends to be played, a strumming like the sounds of the sirens in Plato’s
parable of the concentric crystalline spheres.
Year: 2011
Machover, Death and the Powers
Philip Glass’s OrphÈe
With voices of doom predicting the end of the CD format — supposedly to be replaced by downloading — the ancillary art of CD packaging also faces a grim future.
Bellini’s I Puritani in Bologna
Vincenzo Bellini’s operas are pure bel canto, with beautiful singing placed above all other considerations.
RomÈo et Juliette, New York
Is Guy Joosten’s staging of RomÈo et Juliette the
best-looking production in the Met’s current repertory or what?
Magnificent Mahler by Shanghai Symphony
It was, of course, only a coincidence, but a week of ideal spring weather — no rain and low humidity — found Shanghai in a perfect mood for an all-Mahler program by the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra on March 12.
Rodelinda, Royal College of Music, London
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/a55dd1aa-4f2c-11e0-9038-00144feab49a.html#axzz1Gi4nmXqx
The Queen of Spades, New York
Tchaikovsky’s Pikovaia Dama (The Queen of Spades) is the longest Mad Scene in opera. Ghermann is already half nuts when we meet him in the park in St. Petersburg on a windy day, and he gets crazier from scene to scene.
Aida, London
Strict courtly hierarchies and the repressed formality of ritual juxtaposed
with violent sexual jealousy and lurid erotic excess … a stage-world
more suited to the Straussian insalubrity of SalomÈ than to the epic
grandeur of Verdi’s Aida, perhaps?
Feel Locked Out? Nothing to Tackle? Well, Try Opera
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/sports/football/16opera.html?src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Farts%2Fmusic%2Findex.jsonp
Lucia, New York
It costs a lot to look cheap. And it takes a village to raise a child. In
the case of the Metropolitan Opera’s current revival of Donizetti’s
Lucia di Lammermoor, it takes a lot of talent to produce underwhelming
opera.