In 1728 Handel was down on his luck, following the demise of his ‘Royal
Academy’. Ever the entrepreneur, the following year he made a scouting tour of
Italy in search of the best singing talent and, returning with seven new virtuosos
— including the castrato Senesino.
Category: Reviews
Orlando at the Barbican
Il trittico, Royal Opera
Strong revival for Richard Jones 2011 production with cast mixing returnees and dÈbutantes
A trip with Captain Haitink into Bruckner’s Cosmos
Last year for his 60th anniversary as conductor, Bernard Haitink celebrated with one of his first orchestra’s the Dutch Radio Philharmonic. That performance of Mahler’s Fourth turned out such a success, he returned for another round at the NTR Saturday Matinee at the Concertgebouw.
FÈlicien David: Herculanum
It is not often that a major work by a forgotten composer gets rediscovered
and makes an enormously favorable impression on today’s listeners. That has
happened, unexpectedly, with Herculanum, a four-act grand opera by
FÈlicien David, which in 2014 was recorded for the first time.
Music and the Exotic from the Renaissance to Mozart
In Musical Exoticism (Cambridge 2011) Ralph P. Locke undertook an
extensive appraisal of the portrayal of the ‘Other’ in works dating
from 1700 to the present day, an enquiry that embraced a wide range of genres
from Baroque opera to Algerian rap, and which was at once musical, cultural,
historical, political and ethical.
Khovanshchina at Dutch National Opera convinces musically, less so theatrically
Dutch National Opera’s Khovanshchina’s finest asset was
Anita Rachvelishvili’s vocally ravishing Marfa. The darkly opalescent
Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra came in a close second.
Sophie Bevan, Wigmore Hall
The meaning of the term cantata (literally, ‘sung’
from the Italian verb, cantare) may have changed over time, but
whether sacred or secular, the form — with its combination of
declamatory narration and emotive arias — is undoubtedly a dramatic
one, as this performance by Dunedin at the Wigmore Hall of cantatas by J.S.
Bach and Handel confirmed.
Extraordinary PellÈas et MÈlisande
With its City of Light presentations, honoring Paris and French inspired music, the Los Angeles Philharmonic offered its public an extraordinary concert performance of a unique opera — PellÈas et MÈlisande by Claude Debussy.
Fascinating Magic Flute in Los Angeles
Barrie Kosky, intendant of the Komische Oper in Berlin, initially thought of combining live performance with animation when he saw British theater company 1927’s production of Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. For that presentation, Suzanne Andrade and Paul Barritt mixed the worlds of silent film and music hall theater, a combination that Kosky wanted for his production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute.