Category: Performances

Returning from Munich’s new production of Handel’s “Orlando” at thirty thousand feet above clouds which might have done service as props for that opera when first staged in 1733, it occurred that the great man himself could have had things to say about what might be director David Alden’s valedictory baroque piece for the Bayerische Staatsoper.

On May 22, the Kennedy Center’s Fortas Chamber Music Series and the Chateauville Foundation co-presented a fully staged production of Benjamin Britten’s haunting chamber opera The Turn of the Screw, conducted by Lorin Maazel. Here are three reviews:

Glyndebourne opened this year’s festival with “a new production of Mozartís CosÏ fan tutte, subtitled ëThe school for loversí, will open the 2006 Festival. This masterpiece includes some of Mozartís most exquisite music, and CosÏís now established popularity, following comparative neglect in the 19th century, is partly due to Glyndebourneís championing of the work since the opening of the Festival in 1934.” Here are some initial reviews:

What happened to Italo Montemezzi’s L’amore dei tre re? After the opera’s triumphant premiere at La Scala in 1913, Montemezzi was vaulted into the international limelight, and his creation enjoyed regular performances throughout the world until his death in 1952.

On 26 April, The Juilliard Opera Center gave the world premiere of Miss Lonelyhearts by Lowell Liebermann. Commissioned by the Centennial Commission of The Juilliard School with the support of the Trust of Francis Goelet, the production of Miss Lonelyhearts “has been developed cooperatively among The Juilliard School, the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California and the College-Conservatory of Music of the University of Cincinnati.” Here are two reviews.

Tosca “is based on a play by Sardou, which was written for the famous actress Sarah Bernhardt. Sardou crafted melodrama rather well, and Pucciniís librettists distilled the playís main attributes of action, sex, love, lust, politics, art and religion into one of the most popular operas of the verismo style.” Tosca is now playing at the Met with Deborah Voigt in the title role. Here are two reviews.

In March the Glyndebourne Opera production of Jonathan Dove’s Flight played at the 2006 Adelaide Festival. Barely a week later a second Glyndebourne production presented by Opera Australia opened at the Sydney Opera House with further performances in Melbourne at the State Theatre.

This season, the New York City Opera presents Handel’s Acis and Galatea. “When it comes to Handel, he not only lives but thrives at City Opera. Here Ovidís Metamorphoses is both the source and the inspiration for Acis and Galatea, one of Handelís most elegant and sensual works.” Here are two reviews.

On 11 April 2006, Andreas Scholl appeared at Zankel Hall, one of the performance venues in New York’s famous Carnegie Hall. According to Carnegie Hall: “On this program, we span a wonderfully diverse variety of music from a variety of places, sung by one of the worldís leading countertenors.

The British mezzo, Alice Coote, will make her Met Opera debut as Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro later this month. On the first of April, she gave a recital of Mahler and Schubert lieder, accompanied by Julius Drake. Here are two reviews.