Superstitions surround theatrical productions of Shakespeare’s Scottish tragedy.
Author: James Sohre
Carlos Kleiber — Traces to Nowhere
Film biographies of great musicians notoriously exhibit a preference for talking heads nattering on over any music passages.
Nino Machaidze: Romantic Arias
The back cover of soprano Nino Machiadze’s debut solo recital from Sony Classical quotes her as describing the disc’s selection of arias as “my world, my successes to date and my hopes for the future.”
Two one-act comic operas from New York Festival of Song
The New York Festival of Song, created and run by Steven Blier and Michael Barrett, dedicates itself to what one might call “American lieder” — art songs by top American composers, classic Broadway, and operatic numbers.
Donizetti’s Marino Faliero at the 2008 Bergamo Music Festival
Gaetano Donizetti is arguably the established opera composer with the highest ratio of failures to successes.
Previn and Caird’s Brief Encounter
The chief classical music and opera critic for the Los Angeles Times often criticizes any new operas based on familiar films or classic novels, on the basis of artistic timidity and conservatism.
Julia Lezhneva sings Rossini
It seems very appropriate that a record company called NaÔve should elect to release a solo recital for a soprano in her very early 20s.
Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Aleksis Kivi
Great characters are at the center of all operatic masterpieces, yet opera almost never treads into “operatic biography” territory.
Saint-SaÎns’s Samson et Dalila in Antwerp
Bonus features on opera DVDs usually get generic names, such as “Interview” or “Backstage with…”