Category: Performances

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – “Falstaff” might have been Verdi’s last opera; it might have been Verdi’s greatest opera; it is, without doubt, Verdi’s only and most hilariously comic opera.

“What’s a dame like me doing in a dump like this?” It takes a DBE to get away with a line like that in a venue as august as the Wigmore Hall – and this was how Felicity Lott wrapped up a recital marking 30 years of performing here with pianist Graham Johnson. The programme, Fallen Women and Virtuous Wives, is one the pair are currently touring. While its humour found its niche in the Wigmore Hall, how it will play in Luxembourg next week is anyone’s guess.

If Carl Maria von Weber never quite made it into the grand procession of Romantic giants, he left behind an opera of indestructible charm. “Der Freischütz,” which Eve Queler’s Opera Orchestra of New York undertook on Monday night at Carnegie Hall, is first of all a darling of historians – a musicological ground zero for the German musical theater.

With Monserrat Caballé’s sensational concert at the same hall in September 2000, this is the second appearance of a famous Spanish opera singer in Sofia. The advertising campaign that started two months ago brought very good results assembling the la crema y la nata de la sociedad. The Sofia Metropolitan Orchestra conducted by David Himenez performed well in the solos: Rossini’s “La gazza ladra” and the intermezzo of Heronimo Himenez’ zarzuella “La boda de Luis Alonso.” José Carreras chose to partner with the young and promising Bulgarian soprano, Zvetelina Maldzanska, to share his triumph in Sofia.

Theatrical magic and cheerful charm abound in Opera Theatre of St. Louis’ new production of Andre-Ernest-Modeste Gretry’s version of “Beauty and the Beast,” seen Sunday evening in its premiere.

Ahí estaba Angela Gheorghiu, recogiendo la ovación que se llevaba tras cantar el aria Prendi, per me sei libero, de la penúltima escena de L’elisir d’amore. Lo hacía abrazada al tenor Giuseppe Filianoti, a quien consolaba mesándole el pelo. En la escena anterior, Filianoti había cantado Una furtiva lagrima, y lo hizo, ay, con dos espectaculares gallos incluidos.

Ein gesellschaftliches, aber auch ein musikalisches Ereignis der besonderen Art: auf Einladung der Philharmoniker im Kammermusiksaal neben Sir Simon Rattle sitzen zu dürfen, um gemeinsam mit ihm die zauberhafte Lady Rattle, alias Magdalena Kozená, singen zu hören. Ihr Vortrag glich einem Streifzug durch Kunst gewordene Volkstümlichkeit: einer klingenden Speisekarte der Erinnerungen an die Heimatsprache der Musik.

Lorin Maazel has done a very bad thing. Have you heard? He wrote an opera, “1984” (based on the Orwell novel, of course). It was premiered at London’s Covent Garden last month. And he paid for part of the production himself. Very, very bad.

We haven’t seen much of American soprano Carole Farley in the UK for a very long time. She was something of a cult figure in the late 1970s and early 1980s, specialising in roles such as Berg’s Lulu and the unnamed woman in Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine at a time when some singers were unwilling to tackle them.

In its recent performances of Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream Chicago Opera Theater affirms its reputation for carefully gauged and well cast productions. Already from the subdued opening accompanied by muted strings an underlying tension is evident in the darting figure of Puck, a spoken role assumed in this production by the actor Jason Griffin. The movements of all the characters in this production are matched consistently to an orchestral or vocal expression, emphasizing thus the union of choreography with lyrical and declamatory effect. Chicago Opera Theater’s presentation divides the action and emotional entanglements of Britten’s three acts into two parts. Soon after the start of the first of these the royal fairy couple, Oberon and Tytania, enter in formal dress. Their disagreement over a youth taken into the service of the queen, yet desired by Oberon, fuels an initial conflict that — by the time of its resolution — will bear on the fates of the other pairs of young lovers in the piece as well.