Category: Commentary

The phoenix

A poet, priest and womaniser, who ended his days as a grocer, he also wrote the words to some of the greatest operas. On the eve of Mozart’s 250th anniversary, Anthony Holden looks at the colourful life of his librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte

With the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth just weeks away, the source of his brilliance is being disputed. Alice O’Keeffe reports

Franz Leh·r was not the first to think of Goethe as an opera or operetta hero. There was the precedent of Giacomo Meyerbeer himself who in his old age wrote theatre music for a piece called La Jeunesse de Goethe. The piece was never performed.

The following are the nominees for the Grammy award in selected categories pertaining to classical vocal music.

Giulio Cesare in Egitto was the fifth of the full-length operas composed by Handel for Londonís Royal Academy of Music, the opera company founded in 1719 by a group of noblemen with the objective of staging Italian opera seria.

Giulia Grisi must be, by whatever standard is applied, regarded as one of the greatest and most important soprano singers who ever graced the operatic stage,

Classical performing organizations are feeling a little antsy nowadays, all except for the ones that are flat-out running scared.

Puccini’s Turandot is an opera to whose sinister charms I was long immune. I’m not sure what happened in recent years to make me love it.

The city-funded ThÈ‚tre du Ch‚telet, an operatic David to Paris Operaís Goliath, managed to make the biggest artistic splash of the new season. Richard Wagnerís Die Walk¸re, which opened October 21, following Das Rheingold by two days, was generally well cast, surely conducted and, as staged by Robert Wilson, brimming with theatrical interest. The two final operas will follow in November/December with two complete cycles offered in April.