A historical afternoon at the NTR Saturday Matinee occurred with an epic
concert version of Prokofiev’s Soviet Opera Semyon Kotko.
Month: December 2016
History Repeating Itself: Prokofiev’s Semyon Kotko, Amsterdam Concertgebouw
L’amour de loin at the Metropolitan Opera
Opening night at the Metropolitan is a gleeful occasion even when the
composer is long gone, but December 1st was an opening for a living composer who
has been making waves around the world and is, gasp, a woman — the second woman
composer ever to have an opera presented at the Met.
Early Swedish opera – Stenhammer world premiere
The Feast at Solhaug : Henrik Ibsen’s play Gildet paa Solhaug (1856) inspired Wilhelm Stenhammer’s opera Gillet p Solhaug. The world premiere recording is now available via Sterling CD, in a 3 disc set which includes full libretto and background history.
La finta giardiniera at the Royal College of Music
For an opera that has never quite made it over the threshold into the ‘canonical’, the adolescent Mozart’s La finta giardiniera has not done badly of late for productions in the UK. In 2014, Glyndebourne presented Frederic Wake-Walker’s take on the eighteen-year-old’s dramma giocoso. Wake-Walker turned the romantic shenanigans and skirmishes into a debate on the nature of reality, in which the director tore off layers of theatrical artifice in order to answer Auden’s rhetorical question, ‘O tell me the truth about love’.
Lust for Revenge: Barenboim and Herlitzius fire up Strauss’s Elektra in Berlin
As the German language describes so beautifully, a “Schrei aus
tiefstem Herzen” was felt as Evelyn Herlitzius channelled an Elektra
from the depths of her soul.
Semyon Bychkov heading to NYC and DC with Glanert and Mahler
Heading to N.Y.C and D.C. for its annual performances, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra invited Semyon Bychkov to return for his Mahler debut with the Fifth Symphony. Having recently returned from Vienna with praise for their rendition, the orchestra now presented it at their homebase.
Lost Stravinsky re-united with Rimsky-Korsakov, Gergiev, Mariinsky
Igor Stravinsky’s lost Funeral Song, (Chante funËbre) op 5 conducted by Valery Gergiev at the Mariinsky in St Petersburg This extraordinary performance was infinitely more than an ordinary concert, even for a world premiere of an unknown work.
Philippe Jaroussky at the Wigmore Hall: Baroque cantatas by Telemann and J.S.Bach
On Tuesday evening this week, I found myself at The Actors Centre in London’s Covent Garden watching a performance of Unknowing, a dramatization of Schumann’s Frauenliebe und Leben and Dichterliebe (in a translation by David Parry, in which Matthew Monaghan directed a baritone and a soprano as they enacted a narrative of love, life and loss. Two days later at the Wigmore Hall I enjoyed a wonderful performance, reviewed here, by countertenor Philippe Jaroussky with Julien Chauvin’s Le Concert de la Loge, of cantatas by Telemann and J.S. Bach.
The new Queen of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Here is one of the next new great conductors. That’s a bold statement,
but even the L.A. Times agrees: Mirga Graûinyt?-Tyla’s appointment
“is the biggest news in the conducting world.” But Ms. Mirga
Graûinyt?-Tyla will be getting a lot of weight on her shoulders.
Battles administration neglects FLO’s assets by defunding the program
The college administration and President Denise Battles’ recent
decision to defund the Finger Lakes Opera came as a shock to many and a concern
to more. This decision reflects the administration’s blatant disregard
for the arts and reveals a mindset that is counterproductive to the mission of
the college.