Going in to Washington Concert Opera’s production of The Pearl Fishers on Saturday, I had low expectations as this was the composer’s first major opera to be produced professionally. My…
Category: Recitals/Concerts
Chelsea Opera Group’s Mascagni Double Bill is a Wonderful Display of Tenor Vocalism
Mascagni’s breakthrough opera Cavalleria rusticana is often now paired with something other than ‘Pag’, but rarely with his own later essay in verismo, Silvano (1895). It’s a similarly terse drama…
Barbara Hannnigan and the LSO
Barbara Hannigan’s LSO concerts – her concerts more generally too – always offer interesting, insightful programming as well as her extraordinary gifts as a performer. This was no exception, presenting…
A Musically Attractive Account of Leo Duarte’s New Completion of a Fragmentary Handel Opera
In between writing the operas Poro and Ezio, based on libretti by Metastasio, which was unusual for Handel despite the Italian’s being the foremost librettist of the age, the composer…
Bel Cantanti Opera Presents Russian Opera Gala That Leaves Us Wanting More
As promised at and by the fundraiser concert of Russian art songs and arias in January, Bel Cantanti’s opera gala this year was a celebration of Russian opera, with longer…
George Jeffreys & the Birth of the English Baroque
It was completely apt that the first music heard in Solomon’s Knot’s evening dedicated to composer George Jeffreys was some Byrd: the five-part Bow thine eare, O Lord (a contrafactum…
Songs of Love & War
Laurence Cummings and the Academy of Ancient Music brought around half of Monteverdi’s Eighth Book of Madrigals (Madrigali guerrieri e amorosi, 1704) to Milton Court. It was preceded by a…
What Rome Wants, Rome Gets: Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto in Hamburg
In the grand scheme of things, Julius Caesar and Cleopatra weren’t the most erotic or passionate of all lovers in history, nor does their story of alignment stand out as…
Opera Lafayette Steals Hearts In Time For Valentine’s Day with Queen of Hearts
After fifteen years with a home at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, Artistic Director Patrick Quigley announced before Opera Lafayette’s concert at St. Francis Hall on Thursday that the company…
The King’s Singers: Angels and Demons at Washington National Cathedral
A venue that demands nothing less than the best singing, and with its own top-tier choir to prove it, this past weekend Washington National Cathedral played host to a smaller…