San Diego Opera has mined solid gold with its mesmerizing and affecting production of As One, a part of their innovative ‘Detour Series.’
Month: November 2017
OLF: Songs by Tchaikovsky, Anton Rubinstein, Rachmaninov and Georgy Sviridov
Compared to the oft-explored world of German lieder and French chansons, the songs of Russia are unfairly neglected in recordings and in the concert hall. The raw emotion and expansive lyricism present in much of this repertoire was clearly in evidence at the Holywell Music Room for the penultimate day of the celebrated Oxford Lieder Festival.
Stockhausen’s STIMMUNG and COSMIC PULSES at the Barbican.
This concert was an event on several levels – marking a decade since the death of Stockhausen, the fortieth anniversary (almost to the day) since Singcircle first performed STIMMUNG (at the Round House), and their final public performance of the piece. It was also a rare opportunity to hear (and see) Stockhausen’s last completed purely electronic work, COSMIC PULSES – an overwhelming visual and aural experience that anyone who was at this concert will long remember.
Bampton Classical Opera Young Singers’ Competition 2017 – Winner Announced
Bampton Classical Opera is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2017 Young Singers’ Competition is mezzo-soprano Emma Stannard and the runner-up is tenor Wagner Moreira. The winner of the accompanists’ prize, a new category this year, is Keval Shah.
Il sogno di Scipione: a new recording from Classical Opera
With this recording of Mozart’s 1771 opera, Il sogno di Scipione (Sicpio’s Dream), Classical Opera continue their progress through the adolescent composer’s precocious achievements and take another step towards the fulfilment of their complete Mozart opera series for Signum Classics.
Nico Muhly’s Marnie at ENO
Winston Graham’s 1961 novel Marnie was bold for its time. Its themes of sexual repression, psychological suspense and criminality set within the dark social fabric of contemporary Britain are but outlier themes of the anti-heroine’s own narrative of deceit, guilt, multiple identities and blackmail.
TOSCA: A Dramatic Sing-Fest
On November 12, 2017, Arizona Opera presented Giacomo Puccini’s verismo opera, Tosca, in a dramatic production directed by Tara Faircloth. Her production utilized realistic scenery from Seattle Opera and detailed costumes from the New York City Opera. Gregory Allen Hirsch’s lighting made the set look like the church of St. Andrea as some of us may have remembered it from time gone by.
The Lighthouse: Shadwell Opera at Hackney Showroom
‘Only make the reader’s general vision of evil intense enough … and his own experience, his own imagination, his own sympathy … and horror … will supply him quite sufficiently with all the particulars. Make him think the evil, make him think it for himself, and you are released from weak specifications.’
Julian PrÈgardien : Schubert, Wigmore Hall, London
The Wigmore Hall’s complete Schubert song series continued with Julian PrÈgardien and Christoph Schnackertz, in a recital deferring from May. Well worth the wait, because PrÈgardian is good, his singing enhanced by very strong musical instincts. In Lieder, sensitivity and musical intelligence are as important as voice. A good recital, is one where you come away feeling you’ve gone deeper into the repertoire thanks to the performer, as opposed to watching celebrity for celebrity sake
Elisabeth Kulman sings Mahler’s R¸ckert-Lieder with Sir Mark Elder and the Britten Sinfonia
Austrian singer Elisabeth Kulman has had an interesting career trajectory. She began her singing life as a soprano but later shifted to mezzo-soprano/contralto territory. Esteemed on the operatic stage, she relinquished the theatre for the concert platform in 2015, following an accident while rehearsing Tristan.