The pleasures (immense) and pain of Gioachino Rossini’s Semiramide (Venice, 1823). Uncut.
Author: Michael Milenski
L’equivoco stravagante in Pesaro
L’equivoco stravagante (The Bizarre Misunderstanding), the 18 year-old Gioachino Rossini’s first opera buffa, is indeed bizarre. Its heroine Ernestina is obsessed by literature and philosophy and the grandiose language of opera seria.
MÈdÈe in Salzburg
Though Luigi Cherubini long outlived the carnage of the French Revolution his 1797 opÈra comique [with spoken dialogue] MÈdÈe fell well within the “horror opera” genre that responded to the spirit of its time. These days however MÈdÈe is but an esoteric and extremely challenging late addition to the international repertory.
Simon Boccanegra in Salzburg
It’s an inescapable reference. Among the myriad “Viva Genova!” tweets the Genovese populace shared celebrating its new doge, the pirate Simon Boccanegra, one stood out — “Make Genoa Great Again!” A hell of a mess ensued for years and years and the drinking water was poisonous as well.
Tannhäuser at Bayreuth
Stage director Tobias Kratzer sorely tempts destruction in his Bayreuth deconstruction of Wagner’s delicate Tannhäuser, though he was soundly thwarted at the third performance by conductor Christian Thielemann pinch hitting for Valery Gergiev.
Three Chamber Operas at the Aix Festival
Along with the celestial Mozart Requiem, a doomed Tosca and a gloriously witty Mahagonny the Aix Festival’s new artistic director Pierre Audi regaled us with three chamber operas — the premiere of a brilliant Les Mille Endormis, the technically playful Blank Out (on a turgid subject), and a heavy-duty Jakob Lenz.
The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny in Aix
Make no mistake, this is about you! Jim laid-out dead on the stage floor, conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen brought his very loud orchestra (London’s Philharmonia) to an abrupt halt. Black out. The maestro then turned his spotlighted face to confront us and he held his stare. There was no mistake, the music was about us.
Tosca in Aix
From the sublime — the Mozart Requiem — to the ridiculous, namely stage director Christophe HonorÈ’s Tosca. A ridiculous waste of operatic resources.
Mozart Requiem in Aix
Pierre Audi, now the directeur gÈnÈral of the Festival d’Aix as well as the artistic director of New York City’s Park Avenue Armory opens a new era for this distinguished opera festival in the south of France with a new work by the Festival’s signature composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.