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14 Jan 2005
Le premier temps fort de cette deuxième partie de saison lyrique sera La Flûte enchantée bientôt proposée par l’Opéra Bastille : on a déjà vu dans une halle d’usine de Bochum ce spectacle étonnant conçu par les Catalans de la Fura del Baus, à l’époque où Gérard Mortier dirigeait le Festival de la Ruhr. Comment les matelas gonflables et la science-fiction philosophique imaginés par ces plasticiens virtuoses passeront-ils à Paris, et comment Marc Minkowski, qui avait très bien dirigé l’oeuvre en Allemagne, sera-t-il reçu par l’Orchestre de l’Opéra ? On le saura à partir du 24 janvier. Deux jours après, on suivra aussi, à Garnier, le second Couronnement de Poppée de la saison, après celui de McVicar aux Champs-Elysées : le metteur en scène, David Alden, est aussi anglais, et la divine Antonacci ne sera plus Néron mais Poppée. »
12 Jan 2005
The main entrance of the War Memorial Opera House.Photo by Terrence McCarthy SAN FRANCISCO — General Director Pamela Rosenberg announced details of San Francisco Opera's 83rd Season during a press meeting at the Opera House on Wednesday, January 12.... »
12 Jan 2005
SAN FRANCISCO Opera director search adds Houston veteran Once not in running, David Gockley now a leading candidate Joshua Kosman, Chronicle Music Critic Tuesday, January 11, 2005 David Gockley, the visionary longtime general director of the Houston Grand Opera, has... »
09 Jan 2005
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. »
08 Jan 2005
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 a maze - and the reference to Shakespeare's time is... »
07 Jan 2005
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 is faced with carrying its winning streak into the company's... »
06 Jan 2005
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”. »
05 Jan 2005
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 are always a surprise when you walk through the modest... »
01 Jan 2005
A Year When Classical Labels Came Through By ANTHONY TOMMASINI In 2003, the problems affecting the classical recording business seemed daunting: markets flooded with multiple versions of the standard repertory; declining sales; widespread layoffs in the offices of the major... »
01 Jan 2005
Soprano Amanda Forsythe has sung so often with baritone David Kravitz that she was only mildly surprised recently when she Googled her name, and up popped a reference to “Amanda Kravitz.”
Tonight and tomorrow afternoon, Forsythe is paired with Kravitz again for Pergolesi’s delicious little opera “La Serva Padrona” (“The Maid as Mistress”), presented by Boston Baroque as part of its annual New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day gala at Sanders Theatre. »
30 Dec 2004
ST. PETERSBURG, December 29 (RIA Novosti) – The city’s Mariinka (Kirov) theater is to open its next season here today with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Tsar’s Bride” opera.
Talking to RIA Novosti, people at the Mariinka theater’s press center noted that this was a joint production involving the theater and Holland’s Diaghilev Festival Foundation. The new stage version of this opera was first performed December 10 in Groningen, Holland. »
29 Dec 2004
Spoleto Festival USA has announced the production of three operas for 2005. These are: Die Vögel (The Birds) Lost when Braunfels was blacklisted by the Nazis in the late 1930s, the work has never received a fully staged performance... »
29 Dec 2004
De l’Isis de Lully, en 1677, à l’Akhnaten de Philip Glass, en 1984, en passant par l’inoubliable Aïda de Verdi, pas moins de deux cents créations lyriques – cantates, oratorios, opéras et ballets – ont eu pour thème l’Egypte, dont la moitié exclusivement consacrées à Cléopâtre. C’est dire l’attirance que ce pays et ses mystères, réels ou supposées, ont exercée sur les compositeurs et les librettistes, toujours à la recherche d’un nouvel exotisme ou d’un romantisme déchirant.
«Avec la deuxième collection d’égyptologie après celle du Musée Guimet de Lyon, dit Brigitte Bouret, conservateur du musée et commissaire de l’exposition «L’Egypte et l’Opéra», il était légitime que nous nous intéressions à ce thème d’une grande richesse d’autant que j’ai pu travailler avec un égyptologue de renom, Michel Dewachter.» »
28 Dec 2004
Premièring 14 January, TheaterLübeck will present Der Besuch der alten Dame, a schauspiel written in 1956 by the Swiss playwright Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921-1990) under the original title Komödie der Hochkonjunktur (Comedy of Business Prosperity), with music by Dietmar Staskowiak. Der Besuch der alten Dame received the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for best foreign play in 1958-59. »
28 Dec 2004
No time for Lyric to play it safe Opera company loses Epstein's voice of innovation By John von Rhein Tribune music critic December 27, 2004 Matthew A. Epstein's recent departure as artistic director of Lyric Opera raises questions about whether... »
26 Dec 2004
The Voices That Carried the Year By ANNE MIDGETTE OPERA lovers do a fair amount of hand-wringing over the state of singing today. My own pet peeve has been the decline in big voices, especially Verdi singers. But 2004 had... »
20 Dec 2004
Fi de Natalie Dessay et des Brentano-Lieder de Strauss (dont le dernier, Amor, donne le titre de son dernier album, chroniqué sur ResMusica). Qu’importe, le public s’est pressé ce soir là, comme à chacun des concerts de cette intégrale Mahler (lire le compte rendu de la symphonie n°3 et de ce même concert, deux jours plus tôt, à Dijon). Composée lors de son dernier séjour en Italie la symphonie n°29 d’un Mozart d’à peine 18 ans est créée en 1774 à Salzbourg, qui connaît depuis deux ans le règne du Prince-Archevêque Colloredo. Myung Whun Chung a choisi de réduire son orchestre en « formation Mannheim » (moins de trente cordes) pour servir cette œuvre avec la légèreté et la fluidité nécessaire. L’ensemble est très énergique et homogène, et accentue le coté brillant de cette symphonie par le parti pris de tempi plutôt allant, malgré quelques fluctuations dans les départs de mouvements. »
20 Dec 2004
Recorded music has benefited from the digital revolution, with lifelike reproduction possible in a variety of formats.
That’s not always a good thing, because professional musicians find themselves competing for work with a device known as Sinfonia.
The introduction of this “virtual orchestra” into opera and Broadway pits has stirred resentment, lawsuits and countersuits. Even the definition of what it is has generated heated debate. »
20 Dec 2004
At Juilliard, Students Learn That Opera Is Both Craft and Commodity By BLAIR TINDALL The Juilliard School in New York City has trained some of the world's most prominent singers since opening its opera department in 1930, including Leontyne Price,... »
19 Dec 2004
A History of Western Music? Well, It's a Long Story By JAMES R. OESTREICH OXFORD HISTORY OF WESTERN MUSIC By Richard Taruskin Illustrated. 4,272 pages. Oxford University Press. $500 until Dec. 31; then $699. The Oxford History of Western Music... »
17 Dec 2004
Philip Gossett, one of the world's foremost experts on Italian opera, will receive one of four Mellon Distinguished Achievement Awards, an honor that carries with it a $1.5 million prize. Gossett, the Robert W. Reneker Distinguished Service Professor in... »
16 Dec 2004
Berliner Opernhäuser haben Millionenverluste gemacht 19:45 Uhr Die Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin - Die drei Berliner Opernhäuser haben im ersten Jahr der gemeinsamen Opernstiftung weniger Besucher als erwartet gehabt und damit Millionenverluste gemacht. Insgesamt kamen in diesem Jahr in... »
16 Dec 2004
Discord rings out as new opera director takes up the baton By Sharon Verghis December 16, 2004 Richard Hickox barely had time to adjust to the time difference before he walked into his first industry controversy. "I'm sorry that I... »
15 Dec 2004
The Journal of Musicological Research has announced the release of Volume 23, Issue 3-4. The following is the table of contents from this issue: Paul Christiansen: "The Meaning of Speech Melody for Leos Janácek" Nathan Hesselink and Jonathan Christian... »
13 Dec 2004
Riss im Ensemble Bach-Chor ins Schlingern geraten Es schien perfekt eingefädelt: ein Konzert zum 50-jährigen Jubiläum, dann sogar mit dem künftigen Chef am Pult. Doch Ralf Otto, der charismatische Wunschkandidat aus Mainz, gab dem Münchener Bach-Chor kurz vor dem Weihnachtsoratorium... »
10 Dec 2004
A Night At The Opera Dec. 10, 2004 - That's the title of a very famous Marx Brothers movie--a movie that makes fun of all sorts of opera stereotypes. But you might be surprised to hear that the number of... »
09 Dec 2004
New, Musician-Run FM Station Plans Music Radio Revival A group led by two nationally known musicians has been awarded a contract to operate the Milwaukee Public Schools' FM station, WYMS-FM (88.9), and is developing a format to support musicians and... »
08 Dec 2004
Photo: AP/ Silvia Lelli/ Teatro Alla Scala. Glitz and clamour mark La Scala's reopening night John Hooper in Rome Wednesday December 8, 2004 The Guardian Decked out in red roses and surrounded by riot police, Milan's expanded and refurbished La... »
08 Dec 2004
Opera singer recovering after stabbing Doctors 'hopeful' about Giuseppe Di Stefano ROME, Italy (AP) -- Italian tenor Giuseppe Di Stefano was being taken off sedatives and doctors were hopeful about his recovery from injuries sustained in an attack at his... »
07 Dec 2004
The nominations for the 47th annual Grammy Awards were announced Tuesday in Los Angeles. The following were the nominees for opera and classical vocal performance recordings: Opera Recording: Monteverdi: L'Orfeo Emmanuelle Haim,conductor/harpsichord/organ; Ian Bostridge, Patrizia Ciofi and Natalie Dessay; Daniel... »