Brent Opera’s Nabucco was a triumph in that it worked as a piece of music theatre against some odds, and was a good evening out.
Month: January 2018
LPO: Das Rheingold
It is, of course, quite an achievement in itself for a symphony orchestra to perform Das Rheingold or indeed any of the Ring dramas. It does not happen very often, not nearly so often as it should; for given Wagner’s crucial musico-historical position, this is music that should stand at the very centre of their repertoires – just as Beethoven should at the centre of opera orchestras’.
William Tell in Palermo
This was the infamous production that was booed to extinction at Covent Garden. Palermo’s Teatro Massimo now owns the production.
The Bandits in Rome
AKA I masnadieri, rare early Verdi, though not as rare as Alzira. In 1847 London’s Her Majesty’s Theatre† commissioned the newly famous Verdi to write this opera for the London debut of Swedish soprano Jenny Lind.
Utah’s New Moby Dick Sets Sail
It is cause for celebration that Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s epic Moby Dick has been realized in a handsome new physical production by Utah Opera.
Bevan and Drake travel to 1840s Leipzig
Julius Drake must have had had a lot of fun compiling this lieder programme, which was inspired by a visit to the home of Robert and Clara Schumann on Inselstrafle in Leipzig. The couple lived in this classical building during the 1840s and the visitors’ book reads like a roll call of the greatest Romantic artists—composers, poets, performers—of the day.
The Chalk Circle in Lyon
Not the 14th century Chinese play nor its 1832 French translation, but a 1931 operatic re-creation by Alexander Zemlinsky of a 1925 German translation by “Klabund,” staged just now in Lyon by French stage director Richard Brunel.
Jonathan Miller’s “Così” strikes gold again
When did “concept” become a dirty word? In the world of opera, the rot set in innocently, gradually.
Tucson Desert Song Festival Presents Artists from the Met and Arizona Opera
The Tucson Desert Song Festival consists of three weekends of vocal music in orchestral, chamber, choral, and solo formats along with related lectures and master classes.
The Schumanns at home: Temple Song 2018
Following their marriage, on 12th September 1840, Robert and Clara Schumann made their home in a first-floor apartment on the piano nobile of a classical-style residence now known as the Schumann House, on Inselstrafle, just a short walk from the centre of Leipzig.