Category: Recordings

A quarter century having passed since its premiere, Nixon in China appears to have secured a niche in the opera repertoire, at least of American opera houses.

With voices of doom predicting the end of the CD format — supposedly to be replaced by downloading — the ancillary art of CD packaging also faces a grim future.

Vincenzo Bellini’s operas are pure bel canto, with beautiful singing placed above all other considerations.

A major label release of a new studio recording of a full opera — with the traditional booklet/libretto — wanders onto the scene almost like a lost and lonely unicorn.

A key measure of operatic star power is the ability to get an obscure work staged — think Joan Sutherland and her run in Massenet’s Esclarmonde, an outlandish wallow in orchestral excess ladled over a libretto of unfathomable goofiness.

Interesting recordings continue to be produced in the classical music business by smaller labels with particular niche markets. For the label Timpani, their specialty tends to be rarer French repertoire.

Der zerbrochene Krug is a very short opera by Viktor Ullmann, based on a comedy by Kleist, concerning the fall of man.

It’s a joy to watch an athlete finding her legs, especially when you
know she’ll achieve her feat superbly, matchlessly, with supreme grace. I
first heard Sutherland sing I Puritani (three times) during the famous
Met run of 1976.

Issued together, this set includes recordings from two different times, with Mahler’s First Symphony based on performances from 10, 11, and 23 March 2003, and the Ninth from performances between 1 and 3 June 2006.

Mark Adamo’s opera, based on the famous novel by Louisa May Alcott,
contains one extraordinary scene, a model of how to adapt fiction into opera.