Ron Howard’s latest music documentary after The Beatles: Eight Days a Week and Made in America is a poignant tribute that allows viewers into key moments of Pavarotti’s career – but lacks a deeper, more well-rounded view of the artist.
Author: Gary Hoffman
Prokofiev’s Soviet Operas
https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/music/twentieth-century-and-contemporary-music/prokofievs-soviet-operas?format=HB
Fun, Frothy, and Frivolous: L’elisir d’amore at Las Vegas
There are a dizzying array of choices for music entertainment in Las Vegas
ranging from Celine Dion and Cher to Paul McCartney and Aerosmith.
Admittedly, these performers are a far cry from opera, but the point is
that Las Vegas residents have many options when it comes to live music.
The Princeton Festival Presents Nixon in China
The Princeton Festival has adopted a successful and sophisticated operatic
programming strategy, whereby the annual opera alternates between a
standard warhorse and a less known, more challenging work. Last year
Princeton presented Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. This year
the choice is Nixon in China by modern American composer John
Adams, which opened before a nearly full house of appreciative listeners.
Lise Davidsen sings Wagner and Strauss
Superlatives to describe Lise Davidsen’s voice have been piling up
since she won Placido Domingo’s 2015 Operalia competition, blowing
everyone away. She has been called “a voice in a million” and
“the new Kirsten Flagstad.”
Nicky Spence and Julius Drake record The Diary of One Who Disappeared
From Hyperion comes a particularly fine account of Leoš Janáček’s song cycle The Diary of One Who Disappeared. Handsome-voiced Nicky Spence is the young peasant who loses his head over an alluring gypsy and is never seen again.
The Operas of Benjamin Britten – Expression and Evasion by Claire Seymour
https://boydellandbrewer.com/the-operas-of-benjamin-britten.html
Berlioz’s Requiem at the Concertgebouw – earthshakingly stupendous
It was high time the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra programmed Hector Berlioz’s Grande Messe des morts. They hadn’t performed it since 1989, and what better year to take it up again than in 2019, the 150th anniversary of Berlioz’s death?
The Opera Singer’s Acting Toolkit
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-opera-singers-acting-toolkit-9781350006454/
The Italian Opera Connection at ‘The English Versailles’: The Duchess of Buccleuch and the Georgian Stage at Boughton House
As part of its annual programme of events, Boughton House in
Northamptonshire hosts ‘A Passion for Opera’, a rare exhibition
portraying the musical life of Lady Elizabeth Montagu (1743–1827) and the
world of Georgian operatic culture.