Elsewhere on Opera Today readers can find a recent review of a live recording of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro from the Ponto label, a company that has joined the ranks of Opera D’oro and Gala in offering, at budget price, live recordings of various provenance. At their best, as with that Nozze, these recordings offer in acceptable sound (sometimes better) performances of such quality they rival their more expensive competitors. At less than the best, however, even the budget price becomes exorbitant.
This Tristan und Isolde, recorded on January 25, 1967, unfortunately belongs to the latter category. Unless one has a strong personal reason for wanting a keepsake of this company or the artists involved, the recording is unlikely to please most listeners. The primary reason is the sound. While not unlistenable, the recording is clearly an “in-house” affair, and probably from an audience member, as some of the coughing is more up-front than the singing. Worse, during the climax, some audience members are whispering as Isolde enters the Leibestod. One would love for a Jon Vickers to have been present to yell out, “Stop your damn whispering!”
WAGNER: Tristan und Isolde
Kurtag’s Kafka Fragments at Carnegie Hall
KAFKA and Kurtag. This natural coupling of writer and composer telegraphs with alliterative grace a century of modernism, a deeply felt spiritual condition and a grasping for genuine personal expression through violently impersonal times.
The Hungarian composer Gyorgy Kurtag was born in 1926, two years after Kafka’s death, but their sensibilities are interwoven in one of Mr. Kurtag’s most effective works, “Kafka Fragments,” for soprano and violin. These settings of short excerpts from Kafka’s diaries, letters and notebooks will be performed this week by the soprano Dawn Upshaw and the violinist Geoff Nuttall, in a new staging directed by Peter Sellars, as part of Ms. Upshaw’s Perspectives series at Carnegie Hall.
Tippett’s The Knot Garden at Scottish Opera
The Knot Garden Sir Michael Tippett sung in English The Knot Garden, with a libretto by the composer, has a typically enigmatic title. The elaborate Elizabethan Knot Garden often resembled…
Verlaine and Rimbaud in Boston
‘Verlaine and Rimbaud’ has the poetry but not the passion By Richard Dyer, Globe Staff | January 8, 2005 Intermezzo: The New England Chamber Opera Series adventurously alternates standard 20th-century…
BOLCOM: Songs of Innocence and of Experience
William Bolcom is arguably the preeminent American opera composer of today. His third commission for Lyric Opera of Chicago, A Wedding, recently opened to mostly positive reviews. His previous work in the form, A View from the Bridge, had a successful run at the Metropolitan Opera following its premiere in Chicago.
Lyric of Chicago’s New Season
Lyric plays it safe with season schedule By John von Rhein Tribune music critic January 6, 2005 Now at the midpoint of its golden jubilee season, Lyric Opera of Chicago…
Zeffirelli Has A Conniption
Franco Zeffirelli, one of the world’s best-known opera directors, yesterday branded the inaugural season of the newly refurbished La Scala opera house a disgrace.
Zeffirelli accused the opera house of inviting second-rate conductors to perform. Writing to a journalist on the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, who had written approvingly of the programme, he said the situation “risks becoming utterly absurd and developing into a scandal of truly international proportions because La Scala belongs to the whole world”.
Turandot at the Met
Turandot, Metropolitan Opera, New York By Martin Bernheimer Published: January 5 2005 02:00 | Last updated: January 5 2005 02:00 Turandot remains a prime tourist attraction at the Met, lock,…
A Dead-end at Abbey Road?
Twilight of the CD Gods? A Studio ‘Tristan’ May Be the Last Ever By MICHAEL WHITE LONDON, Jan. 4 – The EMI recording studios at Abbey Road in north London…
A Lost Portrait of Mozart Recovered?
Musikgenie zwischen Verschwendungssucht und verhärmter Armut — doch aus Mozart-Porträts spricht auch Lebensfreude, Lust am Genuß und tödliche Krankheit. Höchste Zeit, über Amadeus-Legenden nachzudenken.
War Mozart dicklich und wohlgenährt? Ein neu aufgetauchtes Bildnis zeigt den Salzburger Meister in seiner späten Zeit, im Jahre 1790. Mozart war 34 Jahre alt und hatte noch gut ein Jahr zu leben. Die Sensation: Pausbäckig und jovial, den Jackenknopf mühsam über dem Bäuchlein geschlossen, bietet Mozart einen Anblick gesunder Lebensfreude und jovialer Genußfähigkeit.