Although nothing is mentioned on the cover of the CD, I think this is the first official recording of the opera even if there are some pirates doing the rounds of the collectors (my copy is a Buenos Aires pirate). So this is not an unimportant issue of Catalaniís first opera.
Category: Reviews
L’Elisir d’Amore at the Met ó Three Reviews
The Metropolitan Opera presented Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore (The Elixir of Love), which “tells of the peasant Nemorino who decides to take some magic elixir sold to him by a quack doctor, so that he can win the heart of a wealthy land-owner, who (to spite Nemorino) has announced her marriage to a sergeant.” Here are three reviews:
Jonathan Lemalu: Love Blows as the Wind Blows
If one should believe British critics, especially English ones, Jonathan Lemalu is a major new bass; one of the greatest talents around whose qualities are widely proven by the fact this is already his third solo CD in a short time.
BRUCH: Das Lied von der Glocke
A century or so past, those simpler times without the internet, Desperate Housewives, and back-to-back sports and other activities that desperate parents feel they have to chauffeur their children to so theyíll be able to get into the higher levels of student loan debt, Americans joined choral societies and regularly presented well-known oratorios and cantatas: Elijah, The Seasons, maybe Christ on the Mount of Olives if they were really adventurous.
WEBER: Der Freisch¸tz
This 1959 recording is one where the whole is bigger and better than the separate parts. It is the German equivalent to the Cetra recordings of the fifties. Those were maybe not the greatest recording of an opera but one felt that everybody was steeped in the Italian tradition. The same is happening here.
VERDI: La Traviata
One takes a look at the sleeve and one realizes the wheel has finally turned a full circle. It started to move with the Decca La Traviata (Gheorgiu as Violetta, conducted by Solti) in 1994. Downloading and pc-copies were still in the future but nevertheless sales of complete opera recordings were spectacularly falling off since the eighties.
Berg’s Wozzeck at the Met ó Three Reviews
The Metropolitan Opera presents Wozzeck, Alban Berg’s “operatic version of B¸chnerís play about a soldier who subjects himself to medical experiments to augment his pay.” Here are two reviews.
Mario Del Monaco at the Bolshoi
Myto has the good sense to call a spade a spade. This is an issue exclusively meant for the Del Monaco-crowd and not for people wanting a Carmen or a Pagliacci. The set has one enormous quality: a brilliant natural sound that hides nothing and doesnít change the balance of the voices.
SCHREKER: Christophorus oder ìDie Vision einer Operî
How easy it might be to overlook this lesser-known Schreker opera, composed in 1928 and dedicated to Schrekerís good friend Arnold Schoenberg, here in its recorded debut. It has a quite curious libretto, complex and multilayered, and Schreker moves between what are at times quite disparate styles.
SPITZER & ZASLAW: The Birth of the Orchestra ó History of an Institution, 1650-1815
At a time when the press has made the public aware of the difficult circumstances that exist for the symphony orchestra in the United States, it is refreshing to find a book that demonstrates unequivocally the nature of that institution and, as a consequence, its power in culture.