Chaos and disorder rule at Los Angeles Opera of late, and not just in the fervid imagination of director Achim Freyer, the artistic force behind the controversial staging of Richard Wagner’s four-evening glorification of chaos and disorder.
Author: James Sohre
Aaron Copland’s score for The City
This disc neatly captures a central dichotomy of the career of composer Aaron Copland.
Tosca at Torre del Lago, 2007
Opera festival DVDs often seem to be produced as tempting advertisements meant to induce viewers to consider a trip to that festival for the next season.
Eva Marton in Puccini and Strauss
At one point in her career, Eva Marton appeared poised to be the true inheritor of Birgit Nilsson’s legacy roles: Wagner and Strauss’s most dramatic heroines, as well as key Italian roles (Puccini in particular).
Puccini: La Rondine
Throughout his relatively long and decidedly successful career, Giacomo Puccini returned to those operas of his that had not, immediately or eventually, secured an important place in the standard repertory.
Rossini: La Cenerentola
Michael Hampe seems to have been the director of choice in the 1980s for tastefully traditional Rossini productions.
Lorin Maazel conducts Verdi and Puccini at La Scala
In the mid-1980s (just before the Riccardo Muti era began), Lorin Maazel often ruled the conductor’s roost at La Scala.
Schubert: Fierrabras
The worlds of lieder and opera seem to share the same galaxy, while being countless light years apart.
Central City: the little opera company that can
You don’t have to be Asian to sing Madama Butterfly, but if you’ve got a top soprano from that part of the world, it adds another dimension of reality to Puccini’s tear-drenched verismo.