Florian Boesch and Malcolm Martineau gave the finest recital so far in the Wigmore Hall’s decade by decade series of German Song.
Category: Performances
Tosca, Palm Beach
Victorien Sardou wrote the melodrama La Tosca, a play subject to
all sorts of incidental drama and off-stage intrigue, for Sarah Bernhardt.
Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, ENO
Benedict Andrews’ thought-provoking new production of Claudio
Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, the latest of
English National Opera’s innovative stagings at the Young Vic, juxtaposes
images of unremitting modernity with a tapestry of archaic aural colours, all
placed within an antique frame which resonates with universal emotions.
Le Comte Ory, Metropolitan Opera
Rossini’s penultimate stage work, Le Comte Ory, belongs to
the tradition of sexy scoundrel operas, along with such works as Don
Giovanni, Zampa, Fra Diavolo, Barbe-Bleu,
Les Brigands and Threepenny Opera.
Orlando Furioso, London
Adapting an extended literary work for the stage remains a challenge today
and was no less so in the baroque era. Ariosto’s enormously long poem
Orlando Furioso was extremely popular and inevitably his highly
coloured characters found their way onto the operatic stage.
Sarasota Opera Winter Festival 2011
Opera is alive and well in Sarasota. “It feels like it did before,” says Communications Officer for Sarasota Opera Patricia Horwell.
The Turn of the Screw at LA Opera
An operatic work by an esteemed composer, with a libretto adapted from a great author’s story, staged in an intelligent and well-designed production, featuring singers of the top caliber and a conductor with a deep commitment to the composer’s music, leading a chamber-sized group of his orchestra’s best players — magic in the opera house, right?
Machover, Death and the Powers
This is an opera written with a cannon and a feather. There is sensory
overload—an overload of sensory overload: lights that shine into your face in
the manner of an ophthalmologist scanning your retina; eerie, too-loud sounds
that invade you from every direction; dancing patterns of light that may
resolve into huge words or huge faces; a great chandelier-harp that sometimes
descends to be played, a strumming like the sounds of the sirens in Plato’s
parable of the concentric crystalline spheres.
RomÈo et Juliette, New York
Is Guy Joosten’s staging of RomÈo et Juliette the
best-looking production in the Met’s current repertory or what?
Magnificent Mahler by Shanghai Symphony
It was, of course, only a coincidence, but a week of ideal spring weather — no rain and low humidity — found Shanghai in a perfect mood for an all-Mahler program by the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra on March 12.