A sound designer? Isnít that merely a euphemistic upgrade of ìsound engineer?î
Category: Reviews
Tosca at COC
An air of anticipation filled the Four Seasons Centre as the announcer walked across the stage to say that soprano Ester S¸megi was ill and would not be performing.
Tannh‰user at San Diego Opera
To open its 2008 season, San Diego Opera restored the production of Richard Wagner’s Tannh‰user that G¸nther Schneider-Siemsson created for the Metropolitan Opera three decades ago.
Madam Butterfly at ENO
Anthony Minghella’s visually-arresting staging, a co-production with New York’s Metropolitan Opera and the Lithuanian National Opera, returned this month to its original home at the London Coliseum after a gap of two years.
Italian Opera at the Liceu
The Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, after suffering a calamitous fire in the early 1990s, reopened in 1999, lovingly restored. TDK has released a series of DVDs from the…
MAHLER: Das Lied von der Erde
Premiered posthumously, the symphonic song-cycle Das Lied von der Erde by Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) remains one of his defining works because of its synthesis of song and symphony, two genres he pursued throughout his career.
Awesome Angelika Again
While I eagerly seized upon an opportunity to hear Angelika Kirschlager live for the first time, having written in very recent weeks about not one but two of the star mezzo’s current CD releases, I ventured to Frankfurt’s Alte Oper feeling a little bit like her stalker.
Karita Mattila Performs Manon Lescaut
When I worked in the Archives of the Met, I was custodian of several hundred costumes, many from the days when divas traveled with steamer trunks full of things run up just for them, by the finest designers, with the most glamorous materials, in the colors and styles that suited the ladies themselves.
J. S. Bach, arr. Robert Schumann. Johannes Passion.
In 1851 during his first season as music director in D¸sseldorf, Robert Schumann presented a performance of Bachís St. John Passion, and unsurprisingly adapted the score both to nineteenth-century taste and nineteenth-century practicalities.
DE LALANDE: Les Folies de Cardenio.
The centrality of dance at the French court helped bring grace, order, and political allegory into the characteristic prominence they enjoyed during the reigns of Louis XIV and Louis XV; theatre presentations of all stripes were infused with choreographic diversions.