In the dark before the lights came up, the stage looked like a set for “Oklahoma!,” down to the dozing cowpoke. The rising lights revealed the object that had looked like a windmill to be a maypole and the setting to be Czech, yet the “Oklahoma!” resemblance didn’t altogether fade. Bedrich Smetana’s opera “The Bartered Bride” has a whiff of an American musical to its simple sweet story (boy loves girl, boy figures out how to get together with girl) and pretty tunes, and the Juilliard Opera Center’s production, which opened on Wednesday, brought out the similarities.
Upshaw in Downtown Philadelphia and Carnegie Hall
A few seconds into Dawn Upshaw’s singing, you decide that the most important thing is purity of tone – honest, solid, unadorned tone – and Upshaw has it in spades.
Bo Skovhus at Wigmore Hall
We don’t hear Bo Skovhus in the UK as much as we should. One of today’s great singers, the handsome Danish baritone is both a star and something of a sex symbol on the European mainland, although his work has been inexplicably undervalued by British opera companies and concert managements.
A Profile of Corrado Rovaris
Peering out onto Broad Street from a poster in front of the Academy of Music, conductor Corrado Rovaris seems too young to be so intense. At almost 40, his face is boyish, his hairline unreceded. But the eyes behind the glasses are penetrating.
Tales of Hoffmann at Baltimore
Looking for an escape—from reality? The Baltimore Opera Company has just the ticket. Jacques Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann (The Tales of Hoffmann) is not called an “opera fantastique” for nothing.
HANDEL: Rodelinda
There was a time, not so long ago, when Handel was a rare bird on the video shelves of opera shops and record retailers, but it seems that with the advent of the slim ‘n sexy DVD disc, and (in Europe at least) a more flexible attitude to rights issues between record companies and opera houses, that those days are now, happily, past. The latest offering from Farao Classics is the 3 year old Munich Staatsoper production of his “Rodelinda” with staging by David Alden, music direction by Ivor Bolton, first given at their Festival in 2003. I’m not entirely sure why certain operas get chosen for DVD release and others don’t, and this one is a bit of a puzzle for several reasons.
LARSEN: love lies bleeding ó Songs by Libby Larsen.
This CD, entitled “Love Lies Bleeding,” is a companion to the fascinating recording by the same soprano and pianist, entitled “With All My Soul” (The Orchard 6003).
Hansel and Gretel at Inverness
WHAT was that about working with children? Halfway through Humperdinck’s fairytale opera a gang of local kids troops onstage dressed in sheets — angels, see — and hangs around for a bit before sloping off again: the naffest piece of staging I’ve collected in a while, and indicative of some confusion about the purpose of Scottish Opera’s mid-scale touring arm.
Boris Godounov at the Bastille
L’Opéra de Paris redonne à partir d’aujourd’hui, à Bastille, le Boris Godounov créé en octobre 2002 sous la baguette de James Conlon et dans la mise en scène de Francesca Zambello. C’est Jiri Kout qui devait assurer la direction musicale de ces nouvelles représentations. Empêché pour des raisons de santé, il sera remplacé par Alexander Vedernikov, directeur musical et chef principal du Théâtre Bolchoï qui assurera les sept premiers concerts, laissant à Alexander Titov, chef invité du Théâtre Marinski depuis 1991, le soin de prendre le pupitre pour les deux derniers. Une façon de recréer à Paris la rivalité artistique qui oppose Moscou à Saint-Pétersbourg.
Faust at the Met — Another View
In opera, embarrassment comes with the territory. Sooner or later, if you’re a fine and dignified singer, you will find yourself trapped onstage in a situation or a costume so stupid that the voice of God couldn’t save the scene. For René Pape, who has the body and bearing of a Hussar and who is probably the world’s best basso, the moment came in Act IV of the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of “Faust,” the scene in which the illegitimately pregnant Marguerite enters a church to repent and finds a taunting Mephistopheles.