Fan interest began raging when Santa Fe Opera engaged venerable artist Patricia Racette to make her role debut as Minnie in Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West.
Month: August 2016
Die Liebe der Danae in Salzburg
The tale of a Syrian donkey driver. And, yes, the donkey stole the show! The competition was intense — the Vienna Philharmonic and the Grosses Festspielhaus in full production regalia for starters.
Snape Proms: Bostridge sings Brahms and Schumann
Two men, one woman. Both men worshipped and enshrined her in their music. The younger man was both devotee of and rival to the elder.
Cosi fan tutte in Salzburg
This Cosi fan tutte concludes the Salzburg Festival’s current Mozart / DaPonte cycle staged by Sven-Eric Bechtolf, the festival’s head of artistic planning.
The Exterminating Angel in Salzburg
Zeitgeist or what? What Luis Bunuel’s 1962 Franco era film El ‡ngel exterminador may mean to composer Thomas AdËs’ 2016 opera The Exterminating Angel.
The Queen of Spades, Opera Holland Park
The Queen of Spades has been doing rather well in and around London of late. I have only seen two stagings recently before this, but know of quite a few others. Of those: Opera North offered a rare lapse at the Barbican, about which the less said, the better; ENO, last year, offered strong vocal performances but a truly catastrophic production. All in all, then, Holland Park, as so often, came off best.
Prom 25: the dark, soulful realms of Bluebeard and Dvo?·k
Dvo?·k’s cello concerto is certainly one of the best known works for the instrument, and probably one of the best loved. Its Bohemian sensibility is by turns heroic, ebullient, poetic and wistful. Its soulfulness can inspire bravura impulsiveness from a soloist, as well as warm lyricism.