French composer Charles Gounod wrote his five-act opera† RomÈo et Juliette† to a libretto that Jules Barbier and Michel CarrÈ based on William Shakespeare’s† Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet.
Author: Gary Hoffman
Joan of Arc as Atheist Heroine
Jeanne D’Arc—Szenen aus dem Leben der Heiligen Johanna, the last stage work of the German composer Walter Braunfels, documents a passage in music history that has only recently begun to break through the surface.
Wozzeck at Los Angeles
Wozzeck Wozzeck, Wozzeck: The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Laureate
Conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen, now Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor to the London’ Philharmonia Orchestra, is touring the United States with a program that includes three staged performances of Alban Berg’s opera, Wozzeck.
Kathleen Ferrier: A Film by Diane Perelsztejn
Contraltos rarely achieve the acclaim and renown of sopranos. Assigned few leading roles in opera, they are condemned to playing the villain or the grandmother, or to stealing the castrati’s trousers in en travesti roles.
Wexford Festival Opera 2012
Wexford Opera’s 2012 trio of rarities, seen on the opening three nights of the Festival, spanned a mere twenty years but offered operatic idioms ranging from verismo to pantomime, operetta to Wagnerian love-death apotheosis.
1612 Italian Vespers
Following their 2011 Decca recording of Striggio’s Mass in 40 Parts (1566), I Fagiolini continue their quest to unearth lost treasures of the High Renaissance and early Baroque, with this collection of world-premiere recordings, ‘reconstructions’ and ‘reconstitutions’ of music by Giovanni and Andrea Gabrieli, Monteverdi, Palestrina, and their less well-known compatriots Viadana, Barbarino and Soriano.
The Resurrection of Italo Montemezzi’s Epic La Nave
Italo Montemezzi’s great “lost” epic opera, La Nave, was heard on 31 October for the first time since 1938, leaving an enthusiastic New York audience wondering why on earth it had been neglected for so long.
Oliver Knussen: Where the Wild Things Are and Higglety Pigglety Pop!
Marking Oliver Knussen’s sixtieth birthday came a BBC Total Immersion
weekend at the Barbican: a double-bill of Knussen’s two operas written in
collaboration with Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are and
Higgledy Piggledy Pop! on Saturday, followed by a day of two chamber
concerts, a film, and an orchestral concert conducted by the composer himself
on Sunday.
Ralph Vaughan Williams: The Pilgrim’s Progress
After a slow, long period of gestation, commencing with a short dramatization at Reigate Priory in 1906 and spanning more than 40 years, the first performance of Vaughan Williams’ The Pilgrim’s Progress took place at Covent Garden on 26 April 1951, as part of the Festival of Britain.
Exaudi, Wigmore Hall
An intriguing blend of old and new marked the tenth anniversary of the
British vocal group, Exaudi, juxtaposing the adventurous intricacies and
affectations of the late-sixteenth century with the virtuosic refinements of
today’s avant garde.