Even a concert performance of Messiaen’s St FranÁois d’Assise could hardly fail to be an event.
Category: Reviews
Cecilia Bartoli at the Musikverein Wien
Every time an artist walks onto the performance stage, he or she attempts to give the performance of their lives, focusing on everything they have learned prior to, and giving of themselves in an unprecedented way.
Prom 68 ó Russian Fairy Tales from Rimsky-Korsakov and Stravinsky
Kashchey is a gnarled old ogre who imprisons a beautiful young princess in his gloomy underworld. It’s classic psychodrama. Kashchey has supernatural powers, so how can the Princess be saved ?
WAGNER: Tristan und Isolde
I’ve rarely seen a performance of Tristan und Isolde where I was quite so conscious of the singers’ teeth.
The Coronation of Poppea
The startup of a new opera company is always cause for cheering; it is getting harder and harder (that is, more and more expensive) to do, especially in New York.
Prom 64 ó Rattle conducts the Berlin Philharmonic in Messiaen’s Turang‚lÏla-symphonie
Because Turang‚lÏla is such a panorama, taking in Hollywood, Hindus and Peruvians, Wagner and Gurrelieder, it’s easy to assume it’s all surface Technicolor.
Opera from the Greek
Perhaps it will be enough to tell you that I wasnít halfway through this book before I searched the web for a copy of Professor Ewansís study of Wagner and Aeschylusís Oresteia, and ordered it forthwith: It has to be good.
Shadowless in Amsterdam
The Netherlands Opera opened its season at the Muziektheater with a stunning new production of Die Frau ohne Schatten, setting the bar very high indeed for all that is to follow in the repertoire.
HANDEL: Belshazzar
Although performances of Handel’s more obscure large-scale works are relatively common in London, it is far less common that they are given in a venue as large and high-profile as the Royal Albert Hall, with a line-up of conductor and soloists that will attract a full house for a lengthy and static work on a hot summer evening.
ìGreat Performancesî remembers Pavarotti ó What remains is the voice.
Luciano Pavoritti died on September 6, 2007. The all-too-ample figure and the fables associated with him are already retreating from memory.