A fully American grand opera Los Angeles Opera stages the seldom-produced “Vanessa” By John Farrell Special to U-Entertainment Thursday, November 25, 2004 – Los Angeles Opera has been steering its…
Category: Performances
Eugene Onegin at SFO
Soaring Opera hits new heights in Tchaikovsky’s ‘Eugene Onegin’ Joshua Kosman, Chronicle Music Critic Friday, November 26, 2004 Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” is a story of strong emotion accommodating itself, painfully…
OONY Presents La Fanciulla del West
Superb, if mixed, Fanciulla at OONY Last night’s La Fanciulla del West at Carnegie Hall was the classic case of the whole being much better than the sum of its…
Performance Note: Helikon Opera of Moscow Performs Nabucco at Dijon
The Helikon Opera of Moscow is in residence for three weeks at Dijon. Its first production was Verdi’s Nabucco. In ResMusica.com, Edouard Bailly reviews this production with lavish praise for…
Verdi’s Macbeth at Madrid
Macbeth and the darkness Madrid Teatro Real 11/10/2004 – Giuseppe Verdi: Macbeth Carlos álvarez (Macbeth), Paoletta Marrocu (Lady Macbeth), Aquiles Machado (Macduff), Guillermo Orozco (Malcolm), Carlo Colombara (Banquo). Orchestra and…
Handel’s Semele at the ENO
Semele Robert Thicknesse at the Coliseum [Times Online, 20 November 2004] IT HAS to be the Prince of Wales’s favourite opera. “Nature to each allots his proper sphere,” avers Congreve’s…
Tosca at Graz
bq. Boris Trajanov, Evan Bowers and Marquita Lister Opernhaus Graz’s new production of Tosca is a hit. According to Larry Lash of the Financial Times, bq. A stage direction in…
The Cunning Little Vixen at the Chicago Lyric
If ‘Vixen’ can find its balance, it’ll be a charmer November 19, 2004 BY WYNNE DELACOMA Classical Music Critic Somewhere amid the nonstop bustle onstage and the flood of highly…
Le Monde Reviews La Traviata at La Fenice: High Praise for Cast — Carsen’s Production a Cliché
La Fenice refaite à neuf lance sa saison avec une “Traviata” façon années 1970 LE MONDE | 17.11.04 | 18h19 Le théâtre vénitien, rénové après l’incendie de 1996, présente l’œuvre…
WSJ Reviews Le Grande Macabre and The Flying Dutchman at the SFO
Waiting for the End of the World
By HEIDI WALESON [WSJ]
November 17, 2004
San Francisco
Many listeners know Gyorgy Ligeti from the creepily futuristic orchestral music in the soundtrack of the 1968 movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.” His opera “Le Grand Macabre” (1978, revised in 1996), given its American premiere this month by the San Francisco Opera, is a thoroughly different creature, yet it is just as much an artifact of its time. Though carefully crafted and full of compositional references, the score is mostly an elbow-in-the-ribs accompaniment to a nihilistic black comedy. Beginning with an opening fanfare for car horns that sounds like Harpo Marx multiplied and continuing with a parody of the “Dies Irae,” the prophecy of the Day of Judgment, the opera is a soulless and often scatological joke.