Category: Reviews

We are reasonably sensitive, I suspect, to the number of ways in which venue can shape the nature and success of musical performance.

The best Norma on DVD treats the viewer to a blurry picture of washed-out colors and remote, compressed sound.

The better can be the enemy of the good and this recording proves it.

In her debut recording the young Roumanian soprano Katarina Jovanic demonstrates her talent in performing an intriguing selection of Lieder by Schubert, Brahms, and Strauss.

Myto does many an opera-lover a service by offering this enjoyable recording of Rossini’s French grand opera, here called Moïse.

For a period of close to half a century, French grand opera, as exemplified by the works of Giacomo Meyerbeer and his school, was the preferred form of music for the theatre (i.e. opera) in most of the civilized world.

It is somewhat ironic that until recent years Italy has generally been slow to take a leading role in the historical performance movement: ironic in that historically Italy both dominates and defines the early baroque style and ironic in that that style enshrines the primacy of textó the Italian text.

The first thing I noticed in the liner notes was the bold print claiming Cimarosa was born in 1797 and died in 1848, which correspond exactly with Donizettiís lifespan.