Recorded between 24 and 27 October 2008 at the Philhamonie in Berlin, this release offers the dynamism of a concert performance with the sound quality associated with EMI’s fine recordings.
Category: Reviews
Sallinen’s The Red Line at Finnish National Opera, 2008
Some opera masterworks are admirable more than lovable — a distinction usually best revealed by the number of performances the work gets.
La Traviata and the Credit Crunch
One way of thinking about La Traviata is to consider it as a portrayal of bubble wealth that makes artistic capital from the shimmering, rainbow hues of the surface rather than showing any interest in what sustains the bubble.
Mahler 8, Royal Festival Hall
Following Lorin Maazel’s lifeless first movement from Mahler’s Tenth Symphony
CosÏ fan tutte, Los Angeles
The Los Angeles Opera Company’s charmingly understated new production
of CosÏ fan tutte will please your eyes and delight your ears, but its story might grieve your romantic soul.
Carmen, Philadelphia
There are two ways to sing the role of Carmen: as a “grand opera” heroine and as a character from opÈra-comique.
Menotti in German
As long as one keeps in mind that historical value is not the same as aesthetic quality, this DVD of early 1960’s live German TV performances of two short Gian Carlo Menotti operas makes for fascinating viewing.
Eugene Onegin, Los Angeles
Kudos to the Los Angeles Opera Company for expanding its heretofore limited
Russian repertoire and opening its 26th season with Tchaikovsky’s
Eugene Onegin. The romantic work based on the novel in verse of the
same name by Alexander Pushkin, is likely everyone’s favorite
Tchaikovsky opera.
The music of Donnacha Dennehy
Love and Death is the name of one of Woody Allen’s earlier films, one built around parodies of Tolstoy and other Russian 19th century literary giants.
The Inaugural Cambridge Handel Festival: a rosy dawn?
The haughty beauties that are the ancient colleges of Cambridge were definitely feeling the heat this past weekend, and not even the cooling streams of the Cam and its tributaries could assuage the heat of an Indian summer in the Fens of Eastern England.