vilaine fille: Turandot

Puccini’s Turandot is an opera to whose sinister charms I was long immune. I’m not sure what happened in recent years to make me love it.

A thrilling spectacle of Puccini’s heroines

http://www.newsday.com/features/printedition/ny-turandot4492280nov01,0,3529973.story?coll=ny-features-print

BORODIN: Prince Igor (Highlights)

Not long ago the record label Delos announced that they would embark on a series of studio recordings of highlights from operas. This intriguing idea seemed to address the recording crisis spawned by the shrinking market for full studio sets, with their high cost for both producer and purchaser.

BIBER: Missa Christi resurgentis

In 1682 the Archbishopric of Salzburg celebrated its 1100th anniversary with an appropriately festal service in the Cathedral, depicted in an engraving by Melchior K¸sel. K¸selís engraving is a striking image, bringing into harmony the grand scale of the building (not yet one hundred years old), the ornamental richness of the interior, and the strong subdivisions of its space.

Kˆnigskinder, Bavarian State Opera, Munich

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/0cc15742-4a7c-11da-b8b1-0000779e2340.html

Maria di Rohan, Theatre Royal, Wexford

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/9f065bb2-4a7b-11da-b8b1-0000779e2340.html

Big ambitions in a small town

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/6d250fae-49b2-11da-8686-0000779e2340.html

A Singing Hiker Who Scales the Heights of Mozart Opera

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/31/arts/31conn.html

Tremendous Foreboding in the Air

http://www.nysun.com/article/22307

SAINT-SAÀNS: Samson et Dalila

French composer Camille Saint-SaÎns was a child prodigy, musicologist, astronomer, archeologist, poet, writer, teacher, and one of the most important and prolific composers of his generation. Yet, Saint-SaÎnsí reputation has, for some time, mainly rested on his instrumental works the ìOrganî Symphony, the overture Carnival of the Animals and his oratorio turned opera, Samson et Dalila.