Excellent staging and strong vocal efforts put wind in the sails of this legendary ghost ship
Month: July 2013
Cecilia Bartoli as Norma
http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/Drilldown?name_id1=888&name_role1=1&comp_id=7408&bcorder=15&name_id=17492&name_role=2
Opera from Cambridge University Press
Although part of a series entitled Cambridge Introductions to Music, Robert Cannon’s wide-ranging, imaginative and thought-provoking survey of opera is certainly not a ‘beginners’ guide’.
Britten: The Canticles
First performed at this year’s Brighton Festival and originally designed for the Theatre Royal Brighton, this multi-media staging of Benjamin Britten’s five Canticles by long-standing collaborators Neil Bartlett and Paule Constable, also had an outing at Snape Maltings Aldeburgh in May this year, and has now arrived on the austere stage of the Linbury Studio at the Royal Opera House.
Anna Netrebko 10 Years @ DG celebrating Verdi 200
http://astore.amazon.com/operatoday-20/detail/B00DBQ0AV4
Central City Opera: Rocky Mountain High
Central City Opera’s meticulous staging of Our Town makes as good a case as is likely possible for Ned Rorem’s operatic version of that classic play.
Macbeth, Blackheath Halls
Since its inception in 2006, the annual community opera at Blackheath Halls has become a favourite fixture in the local summer calendar.
Lawrence Brownlee’s Spiritual Sketches
It would be condescending and perhaps even offensive to suggest that singing
traditional Spirituals is a rite a passage for artists of color, but the musical heritage of the United States has been greatly enriched by the performances and recordings of Spirituals by important artists such as Paul Robeson, Marian Anderson, Leontyne Price, Martina Arroyo, Shirley Verrett, Grace Bumbry, Jessye Norman, Barbara Hendricks, Florence Quivar, Kathleen Battle, Harolyn Blackwell, and Denyce Graves.
Britten’s Curlew River and The Prodigal Son
Poised between ritual and drama, between East and West, between Zen-Buddhist
symbolism and Christian medieval morality play, Britten’s three church parables pose some tricky problems — including a deliberately objectivised framing device which can distance the work from the audience, and, unusually for Britten, some less than effective musico-dramatic pacing.
Ermonela Jaho — Singing and Character
Ermonela Jaho caused a sensation at Covent Garden in London five years ago, when she took over Violetta at short notice from Anna Netrebko.