In opera, embarrassment comes with the territory. Sooner or later, if you’re a fine and dignified singer, you will find yourself trapped onstage in a situation or a costume so stupid that the voice of God couldn’t save the scene. For René Pape, who has the body and bearing of a Hussar and who is probably the world’s best basso, the moment came in Act IV of the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of “Faust,” the scene in which the illegitimately pregnant Marguerite enters a church to repent and finds a taunting Mephistopheles.
Category: Reviews
Zemlinsky’s The Dwarf in Budapest
IMAGINE you’ve got a birthday coming up. What would you like this year? How about a dwarf? I didn’t think so. Well, how about a dwarf who doesn’t know how ugly and misshapen he is, and in fact thinks he’s attractive and loveable?
Alexandrina Milcheva Opens the 9th Easter Festival at the Sofia National Opera
On April 23, the 70-year old Bulgarian mezzo, Alexandrina Milcheva, gave a recital of a full value program at the Sofia opera, including airs from: “Orpheus” (Gluck), “Dido and Eneas”(Purcell), “Faust” (Gounod), “Il Trovatore”, “Werther”(Massenet), “Adrienne Lecouvreur”(Cilea)and “Carmen.”
GLUCK: Orphee et Euridice
Christoph Willibald Gluck’s (1714-1787) Orfeo ed Euridice is an opera that began a major reform of Italian opera and the way it was composed and performed in the eighteenth century.
Kilar’s Missa pro Pace at Alice Tully Hall
Amid the annual parade of world-class orchestras passing through New York, a visit by the Wroclaw Philharmonic of Poland could easily have been overlooked – and to some extent it was, in a sparsely attended concert at Alice Tully Hall on Sunday afternoon. But on Saturday evening, partly through an accident of timing, the orchestra played to a nearly full house in St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
Boulevard Solitude at Graz
In the middle of 2006, when you’d rather scream than hear another note of Mozart, take heed of a less-heralded musical birthday: Hans Werner Henze will turn 80.
Michelle DeYoung Steps In
In the wake of soprano Helene Hunt Lieberson cancellation of a Friday appearance at the University of Chicago’s Mandel Hall, management was fortunate to land Michelle DeYoung, one of the finest in a strong contingent of young American mezzos.
BRITTEN: The Turn of the Screw
Britten biographer Humphrey Carpenter quotes a friend of the composer’s as calling Miles “a male Lolita.” For all the blather, if not bother, about innocence in The Turn of the Screw, I’ve never felt there was much of it present among the inhabitants of Bly. There’s sure a nasty case of naiveté going around among the grown-ups though.
BIZET: Les Pêcheurs de Perles
Les Pêcheurs de Perles is not a terribly major opera. Ned Rorem once memorably described it as “harmless” concerning the occasion on which it shared a double bill with the world premiere of Poulenc’s Les Mammeles De Tiresias. But for a competent early work by a promising composer who went on to greater things (well, one greater thing, given his tragically early death), Pecheurs has been given an enormous amount of attention both on stage and in the recording studio. An attractive work of conventional Second Empire French oriental exotica, it’s blessed to contain two beloved numbers that have won the hearts of opera lovers whose loyalty keeps it before the public with some frequency.
Miliza Korjus sings Mozart, Donzetti, Delibes, Meyerbeer, Offenbach, Gounod, …
Miliza Korjus (1912-1980), the “Queen of Pyrotechnics”, sings with a crystalline precision, reminiscent of Joan Sutherland, and a purity of voice akin to Natalie Dessay. During the height of her operatic career, 1933-1936, Korjus had the flexibility, dynamic vocal range, and brightness to become the quintessential lyric coloratura. Hänssler Classic brings her voice back to life by remastering the very Electrola recordings that made her singing “immortal.”