In her awesome Emblems of Eloquence, Wendy Heller tirelessly investigates treatises, myths, libretti and letters to illuminate the natures of “real” and “imagined” women who reigned over seventeenth-century opera as subjects of musical portraiture. From Dido to Semiramide, Poppea to Calisto, Heller argues that women and women’s issues dominated the Venetian stage. Librettists struggled with issues of women’s sexuality, dominance, suppression of desire, overt desire, covert desire, homoeroticism and misogyny. And all at the time when, “Venice’s absolute exclusion of women in public life was written into the organization of the Republic.” This apparent contradiction is at the heart of her eminently readable text that displays Heller as a musicological Simon Schama.
RACHMANINOV: Symphony No. 1 in D minor, Op.13; The Isle of the Dead, Op.29.
The initial reception of Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 1 marked an unhappy yet decisive moment in the composer’s life, one that propelled his stylistic development and the trajectory of his career in new directions.
HGO Introduces Anthony Freud
http://www.houstongrandopera.org/press/press_releases.aspx?PressReleaseID=115
Festspiel Baden-Baden Begins Tchaikovsky Series with The Sorceress
http://www.stuttgarter-nachrichten.de/stn/page/detail.php/954710
Il barbiere di Siviglia at Festival d’Aix-en-Provence
Like Glyndebourne, Aix treats Mozart and Rossini as “house” composers, but Rossini has traditionally taken second place. This summer, in Provence as much as in Sussex, Rossini comes off better. After its two disappointing Mozart productions in the Théâtre de l’Archevèche at the weekend, the Aix festival decamped to the gardens of a dilapidated but enchanted estate outside the town for an evening of pure joy, courtesy of a new Barber.
The Highpoint of Festivals Styriarte
http://www.diepresse.com/Artikel.aspx?channel=k&ressort=ke&id=494355