Clonter’s Opera Gala in the breath-taking beautiful ball-room at the Lansdowne Club in Mayfair was a glamorously glittering smattering of opera – which made me want to run out to every opera in town.
Author: Gary Hoffman
Étienne-Nicolas Méhul: Uthal
The opera world barely knows how to handle works that have significant amounts of spoken dialogue. Conductors and stage directors will often trim the dialogue to a bare minimum (Magic Flute), have it rendered as sung recitative (Carmen), or have it spoken in the vernacular though the sung numbers may often be performed in the original language (Die Fledermaus).
A New Anna Moffo?: The Debut Disc of Aida Garifullina
Here is the latest CD from a major label promoting a major new soprano. Aida Garifullina is utterly remarkable: a lyric soprano who also can handle coloratura with ease. Her tone has a constant shimmer, with a touch of quick, narrow vibrato even on short notes.
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.
Mozart’s Requiem: Pierre-Henri Dutron Edition
The stories surrounding Mozart’s Requiem are well-known.
Dominated by the work in the final days of his life, Mozart claimed that he
composed the Requiem for himself (Landon, 153), rather than for the wealthy
Count Walsegg’s wife, the man who had commissioned it in July 1791.
Elder conducts Lohengrin
There have been dozens of capable, and more than capable, recordings of Lohengrin. Among the most-often praised are the Sawallisch/Bayreuth (1962), Kempe (1963), Solti (1985), and Abbado (1991). Recording a major Wagner opera involves heavy costs that a record company may be unable to recoup.
Premiere Recording: Mayr’s Telemaco nell’isola di Calipso (1797)
No sooner had I drafted my review of
Simon Mayr’s Medea in Corinto,
A Verlaine Songbook
Back in the LP days, if a singer wanted to show some sophistication, s/he
sometimes put out an album of songs by famous composers set to the poems of one
poet: for example, Phyllis Curtin’s much-admired 1964 disc of Debussy and FaurÈ
songs to poems by Verlaine, with pianist Ryan Edwards (available now as a CD
from VAI).
Giovanni Simone Mayr: Medea in Corinto
The Bavarian-born Johann Simon Mayr (1763–1845) trained and made his career
in Italy and thus ended up calling himself Giovanni Simone Mayr, or simply
G. S. Mayr. He is best known for having been composition teacher to
Giuseppe Donizetti.