Period instruments and nineteenth-century grand opera are seldom found on the same stage — or even the same sentence — but as adventurous practitioners increasingly experiment in the repertoire of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, it’s a sight and sound that will inevitably become more familiar.
Category: Performances
Der Ferne Klang, Bard College
Franz Schreker, born in 1878, was a youth in the age in which psychoanalysis
first bloomed. In music, far from coincidentally, it was the post-Wagnerian era
when western tonality had been liberated from traditional rules but was
uncertain which new path to take.
Maria di Rohan at Caramoor
Maria di Rohan was Donizetti’s penultimate opera, composed in
Italian for Vienna in 1843, with revisions to appeal to the taste of Paris and
Milan following.
Santa Fe’s Mixed Dreams
Fairy Tales are often short on character, motivation and development. The stock figures are either good or bad, they are usually archetypal, and stand not only for themselves but larger dimensions of humanity.
George Benjamin: Into the Little Hill, Linbury, London
George Benjamin is the leading British composer of his generation. Into the Little Hill premiered in 2006, has been acclaimed a masterpiece.
Hoffmann Takes A Hit In Santa Fe
Despite its length and pretentions to being serious opera, Jacques Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann, dating from the 1880s, remains a leaky vessel adrift on a sea of self-fulfilling prophesies of doom.
Angela Meade’s Norma at Caramoor
Bellini’s Norma was composed in 1831 and, in the era of such
singing actresses as Giuditta Pasta, Maria Malibran, Giuseppina Strepponi,
Giulia Grisi and ThÈrËse Tietjens (famous Normas all), soon came to be known as
the bel canto vehicle par excellence, the summit of vocal achievement.
Simon Boccanegra at the Proms
Proms audiences have a tendency to be overly enthusiastic in showing their
appreciation, with an arsenal of rituals and traditions at the ready to show
their praise and adulation for their idols.
Opera’s Brigadoon — OTSL’s 2010 Season of the Sublime
At the beginning of every summer, an oasis of music and theater appears like
magic in the suburbs of St. Louis.
Meistersinger at the Proms
The BBC Proms brought the Welsh National Opera’s hit Die Meistersinger von N¸rnberg to the Royal Albert Hall and to the world, via international broadcast.