Heggie’s “Last Acts”

Let me say up front that I like Jake Heggie’s work. I feel he has a true gift for soaring and meaningful melody, a great ear for orchestral effects, a talent for picking good source material, and a knack for crafting affecting melodrama (in the best sense of that word) that can move an audience to tears.

Heggie faces family dilemma in new work

Do dysfunctional families outnumber the ones that move through life untroubled, or is it — to paraphrase Tolstoy — that every dysfunctional family is dysfunctional in its own way and thus of greater interest to writers and composers?

Stewed Queen Loses Her Head in ‘Bolena’

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=aISQ3OFGgBs8&refer=muse

Isabel Leonard, Weill Recital Hall

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/17/arts/music/17roun.html?ref=music

The ClichÈ-Busting Baritone

http://www.nysun.com/article/73002

Wozzeck, La Monnaie, Brussels

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/623311ac-f1eb-11dc-9b45-0000779fd2ac.html

St Matthew Passion at the Festival Hall

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/live_reviews/article3530835.ece

Eugene Onegin, ROH

http://music.guardian.co.uk/live/story/0,,2264291,00.html

Tristan und Isolde — The Metropolitan Opera

I bet this doesn’t happen at the movies:

Handel’s Riccardo primo, Re díInghilterra (HWV 23) and Tolomeo, Re díEgitto (HWV 25) from B‰renreiter

Published in 2007, Riccardo primo, Re díInghilterra (HWV 23) and Tolomeo, Re díEgitto (HWV 25) mark two of the latest installments of vocal-score editions of Handelís operas based upon B‰renreiterís Urtext editions.