In charting the history of music in the West, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in Paris loom large as a golden age of innovative polyphony, a golden age that is much the fruits of two composers, Leoninus and Perotinus.
HAYDN: Die Schˆpfung
Die Schˆpfung, Oratorium in drei Teilen
Music composed by Franz Joseph Haydn. Libretto by Gottfried van Swieten based on selections from the Book of Genesis and Paradise Lost by John Milton.
Woody Allen “seduced” by Los Angeles Opera
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/22/AR2007062200335.html
Talks on Global Broadcast Treaty Fail
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/UN_BROADCASTING_RIGHTS?SITE=WIRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Concilium musicum Wien on authentic instruments
This live concert recording assembles a trio of late eighteenth-century Viennese composers; the program is strong in evocation of time and place, but admittedly less so in substance.
Lully’s Psyché at Boston Early Music Festival
There’s not much point in presenting Lully’s Psyché (in its North American premiere no less) unless you’re going to give it something vaguely like the grandeur Louis XIV could command in 1678.
La Clemenza di Tito – English National Opera
An increasing lack of substance and imagination behind ENO’s season scheduling means that a revival of a theatrically impressive recent production of a repertoire piece is to be welcomed, especially when that production comes with a cast of superior calibre.
Leipzig Bachfest explores early opera
When opera is the subject, there’s an uneasy embarrassment at Leipzig’s annual 10-day Bach Festival, for opera is a genre that the city’s most famous musical son never embraced.