Siberian born baritone, Dmitri Hvorostovsky returned to Dorothy Chandler Hall on May 22nd with a unique all Russian song recital which included songs composed to Pushkin’s poetry and Dmitri Shostakovich’s Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarroti.
Month: May 2014
Schubert Liederabende, Wigmore Hall
In this Schubert Liederabende — the second in Ian Bostridge and Julius Drake’s planned series of four recitals at the Wigmore Hall — dark, sombre worlds evoking the romantic turbulence of Death and the Maiden were only briefly alleviated by radiance and light.
LA Opera: The Monk vs. The Courtesan
As AthanaÎl, Placido Domingo created a realistic monk who was ostensibly tempted to disregard his vows. The audience knew that had the courtesan ThaÔs lived longer, he would have thrown his immortal soul into the wind.
LA Opera Presents Powerful Streetcar Named Desire
As Blanche, RenÈe Fleming sang her role with a sultry air. Her smooth, creamy tones revealed her character’s ultra-refined dream world as she told of having once been married to a gay man. The moment when Blanche met Stanley was electric. From that first second, the audience knew he hated everything she valued.
English Concert, Wigmore Hall
With the FIFA World Cup just three weeks away perhaps it is permissible to use a sporting metaphor, for this performance by The English Concert at the Wigmore Hall — part of the ensemble’s 40th anniversary celebrations — really was a game of two halves.
The Met’s ‘La Cenerentola’ a winning ensemble of music and comedy
The company bids a smiling farewell to its 2013-14 HD simulcast season with Rossini’s comic masterpiece
CosÏ fan tutte at ENO
It must be the sea air. In Thomas Hardy’s vignette ‘The History of the Hardcomes’, two young women — quiet, gentle Emily Darth, and the more lively, rumbustious Olive Pawle — are betrothed to two cousins, James and Stephen Hardcome; but the quartet decide that they are paired up wrongly, and so ‘swap’ suitors, submitting to a moment of irrational infatuation.
Verdi’s Macbeth of the Living Dead
If it is supposed to bring bad luck to even whisper the name of the “Scottish Play” out loud, someone must have screamed Macbeth deafeningly before the performance at Saarbr¸cken’s State Opera House.
Annapolis Opera’s 26th Annual Vocal Competitions
Baritone Brandon Coleman’s mother, Linda, knew that 3-year old Brandon
would be a great singer when a stranger who had heard him, predicted it.