Carmen Forever By Octavio Roca October 19, 2004 Bizet's legendary heroine still inspires artists and opera lovers. The woman is fascinating, no question about it. Little by little, we are still getting to know Carmen. The fascination is strong, and...
US countertenor who is a wow in Europe By Francis Carlin Published: October 28 2004 03:00 | Last updated: October 28 2004 03:00 It is always a good sign when you find a singer attending a performance of something else...
MEMORIES OF ROBERT MERRILL: AMERICAN OPERATIC ICON by James Engdahl, Engdahl Artists International Robert Merrill, born Moishe Miller in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, passed away last Saturday, October 22, 2004, as he watched the first game of the World...
Wexford's dilemma for future operas By Andrew Clark Published: October 27 2004 03:00 | Last updated: October 27 2004 03:00 When Wexford's opera festival was young and innocent, audiences used to talk of "one for the head, one for the...
Scientists dig up family skeletons Luke Harding in Berlin Wednesday October 27, 2004 The Guardian It has been a mystery for more than a century - is a skull in an Austrian basement really that of arguably the greatest composer...
Not so hippy now Since the 1960s, René Jacobs has been a pioneer of the early music movement. Stephen Everson hears how his vision has evolved Friday October 22, 2004 The Guardian Anyone who still thinks "authentic" performances of baroque...
*New Repertoire Discoveries for Singers: An Interview with Michael Kaye* by Maria Nockin Did you ever wonder why that last Tales of Hoffmann you sang had all those photocopied sheets added in? Or why the version of "Butterfly" you learned...
Top composer Tavener turns to Islam for inspiration The Orthodox faith inspired him for more than 25 years, but after a rift with his spiritual adviser, the composer has rejected its 'tyranny' in a major work based on the Koran....
El sexo en la ópera no es sólo vulgar: ya nos aburre Fuera de la escena, la mezzo sueca es áspera y poco acogedora. Sus escasas sonrisas son un premio y sus respuestas son rápidas y precisas. Una evidente robustez...
Mistakes? I've made a few... (Filed: 04/10/2004) Pierre Boulez, the greatest and most uncompromising composer-conductor of our time, is mellowing as he approaches 80. He talks to Ivan Hewett However hard one normally prepares for interviews, there's always the feeling...
*Deborah Voigt withdraws from Vancouver Opera's production of Der Rosenkavalier* Vancouver, BC ~ American soprano Deborah Voigt, who was to make her role début as the Marschallin in the company's première production of Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, has withdrawn from...
Many a tear was shed when soprano Licia Albanese sang. Now she is celebrating her signature work, 'Madama Butterfly.' Allan Ulrich, Special to The Chronicle Monday, October 4, 2004 Was she or wasn't she? Licia Albanese is adamant. "Diva? Hah!...
Deux reprises, des tournées, un DVD, le prix de la critique : La Belle Hélène par le tandem Minkowski/Pelly fut l’un des plus grands et des plus durables succès du Châtelet. De quoi donner envie de reconduire l’équipe gagnante dans un autre Offenbach : ce sera La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein. Mais à une condition : que la vedette en soit à nouveau Dame Felicity Lott, la plus française des chanteuses britanniques, dont la classe et le naturel s’imposent de l’opérette viennoise à l’opéra-bouffe français, en passant par la nostalgie du Chevalier à la rose ou le désespoir de La Voix humaine. Nous avons rencontré cette femme délicieuse début septembre, juste avant que le spectacle n’inaugure la nouvelle salle de Grenoble, «rodage» précédant les représentations parisiennes.
L'opéra au cinéma, entre chic et surprise LE MONDE | 30.09.04 | 14em5 La mise en scène d'opéra est, pour des cinéastes comme Benoît Jacquot, Atom Egoyan, Robert Altman... l'occasion d'expériences exceptionnelles. "Il y a dans l'opéra un truc qui...
In the October 2004 issue of BBC Music magazine, Amanda Holloway writes: The phrase most often used of Anna Netrebko is a 'package': stunning looks, acting ability and a gorgeous, effortless lyric soprano voice. The following is a profile...
By Jan Neckers The line of Decca-tenors seems to run straight from Del Monaco to Bergonzi to Pavarotti. Granted there are some intrusions by Giuseppe Campora, Giuseppe Di Stefano and Franco Corelli but their names are not widely associated with...
This is not a biography of the Jewish tenor. Just some personal thoughts on a few interesting aspects. Those interested in a biographical article and an outstanding discography better purchase the June 2000 issue of The Record Collector where your servant and Hansfried Sieben devoted more than sixty small print pages to the tenor. Those able to read German can still buy Alfred Fasbind’s biography published at the Schweizer Verlagshaus in Zürich 1992. It is still available in some German bookshops and maybe with the author himself (Rosenbergstrasse 16, 8630 Rüti, Switzerland).
Goldberg No. 27 By Brian Robins During the eighteenth century Naples was one of the largest and most vibrant cities in Europe. Hot, dirty and overcrowded, it was a city of teeming life and colour that flowed from court and...
Soprano still sings, and talks about it By David Patrick Stearns Inquirer Music Critic The majestic voice of Metropolitan Opera radio announcer Milton Cross became painfully flummoxed at the name Kiri Te Kanawa. It was the soprano's 1974 debut at...
William Bolcom: The `Wedding' planner By John von Rhein Tribune music critic September 12, 2004 Elden is William Bolcom's middle name, but it might just as well be Eclectic. He's perhaps the most versatile "serious" composer now at work in...
Today at the University of Melbourne, an excerpt from Vivaldi's newly discovered choral setting of Psalm 110 ("Dixit Dominus") received its modern premiere, marking an historic occasion not only for musicologists but for the field in general.
By Carlo Vitali [Musical America]
Countertenor Christopher Field performed "De torrente in via bibet," an aria for alto and strings from the work's ninth movement, at the Faculty of Music's Melba Hall, with Linda Kent conducting the school's Baroque ensemble. Dr. Janice Stockigt, a musicologist at the University, recently identified the 11-movement piece for choir, soloists and orchestra, capping a five-year research project in Dresden's Saxon State Library. She says the score formerly had been attributed to Vivaldi's younger Venetian contemporary Baldassarre Galuppi.
Stockigt's finding that this "Dixit Dominus" was in fact Vivaldi's was subsequently confirmed by Michael Talbot, a leading expert on the composer and professor emeritus at the University of Liverpool. Though the work is but one of his three extant Psalm 100 settings, its importance in the study of his overall oeuvre is paramount. The spectactular choral fugue concluding the piece on the words "Sicut erat in principio," for example, overturns the traditionally accepted notion that Vivaldi didn't care much for strict counterpoint.
Indeed, Talbot has declared it the most significant Vivaldi discovery in 75 years. And Professor Warren Bebbington, Dean of the Melbourne Faculty of Music, forecasts that "Vivaldi lovers the world over will be excited to hear this brilliant work, all thanks to Jan Stockigt's intrepid research."
The project that yielded Stockigt's find, funded by the Australian Research Council, aims to identify and analyse the repertory of the Catholic court church of the Saxon capital, Dresden, during the 18th century. In her research she examined countless dozens of surviving manuscripts.
The setting is the fourth newly identified Vivaldi sacred work to have turned up in the Dresden Library in the last 20 years, thanks mostly to the joint efforts of Stockigt and Talbot. In each case, the piece belonged to a large consignment of sacred vocal works supplied to the Saxon court during the 1750s by Venetian copyist Giuseppe Baldan, a notorious falsifier of attributions out of commercial convenience. Vivaldi being dead and forgotten for the last decade, Baldan could reap additional profits from the composer's works by recycling them far from their original performance site (Venice) under the name of the more contemporary and thus fashionable Galuppi, whose name is proudly inscribed on the title-pages. The contrivance led astray not only Baldan's patrons, but also modern librarians and scholars.
Plans are afoot for the Koernerscher Sing-Verein Dresden to give the complete "Dixit Dominus" its modern premiere in Dresden, as part the city's forthcoming 800th anniversary celebrations.
Copyright 2005, Commonwealth Business Media, Inc.
This report is reprinted with the kind permission of Musical America, the "Business Source for the Performing Arts." Musical America is located on the Internet at http://www.musicalamerica.com/.