“Can it be?”
“It can’t!”
“But it is; he looks just like him…”
Category: Performances
Mahler and Ligeti at the Proms?
On the surface, the theme of this Prom seemed to be Sci Fi movies at the Proms. Both Ligeti’s AtmosphËres and Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra became huge hits when Stanley Kubrick used them in 2001 : A Space Odyssey. So how did Mahler’s *Kindertotenlieder* fit in ?
Seattle humanizes Wagner’s Ring
In 2001, when Seattle Opera completed its current production of Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen, it seemed the company had taken a step backward. In appearance the new Ring — the third full SO staging since Glynn Ross set out to make the city the American counterpart to Germany’s Bayreuth — was traditional.
The Dream of Gerontius: Grant Park Music Festival, Chicago
For the eighteenth program of its seventy-fifth anniversary season the Grant Park Music Festival under the direction of its principal conductor Carlos Kalmar gave two performances of Sir Edward Elgar’s monumental oratorio for soloists, chorus, and orchestra, The Dream of Gerontius.
Central City Opera 2009
Central City stages luminous Lucia
There’s the sextet, the greatest “hit” in all of opera when Caruso was in the cast, and there’s the “Mad Scene,” that exercise in vocal acrobatics that brought new glory to bel canto when the opera was new in Naples in 1835.
Fidelio at the Proms
Fidelio is not just any opera. But then, Beethoven is not just any composer. His only opera — unless one counts Leonore as a work in itself — confounds bureaucratic expectations.
Manon Lescaut at the Festival Puccini di Torre del Lago
Each year, the tiny Tuscan village Torre del Lago hosts a festival dedicated to its favorite son, Giacomo Puccini. This year’s Puccini Festival (10 July – 30 August) featured a “new” Manon Lescaut (a co-production with Opera del Nice Theater), its premiere garnering standing ovations for Marcello Giordani and Martina Serafin and accolades for Alberto Veronesi, the artistic director of the Festival.
Louis Andriessen De Staat at the Proms
De Staat is a seminally important work. So much modern music stems from it, not only “serious” classical music but progressive popular music too. It “is” music theatre, for it’s designed to be experienced live, the visual effect part of the action.
Christof Loy speaks about the new Tristan und Isolde at the Royal Opera House, London.
“Opera has so much to give” says Christof Loy, whose new production of Tristan und Isoldeopens at the Royal Opera House on 29th September. This opera is so familiar that everyone assumes they know it. But Loy’s approach involves going straight back to the score, and to the inherent drama in the music. “I don’t like superficial distractions”.