05 Apr 2016
One may think of Tosca as the most Roman of all operas, after all it has been performed at the Teatro Costanzi (Rome’s opera house) well over a thousand times since 1900. Though equally, maybe even more Roman is Hector Berlioz’ Benvenuto Cellini that has had only a dozen or so performances in Rome since 1838. »
02 Apr 2016
Roll up! A new opera by Handel is to be performed, L’Elpidia overo li rivali generosi. It is based upon a libretto by Apostolo Zeno with music by Leonardo Vinci - excepting a couple of arias by Giuseppe Orlandini and, additionally, two from Antonio Lotti’s Teofane (which the star bass, Giuseppe Maria Boschi , on bringing with him from the Dresden production of 1719). »
02 Apr 2016
Radvanovsky in New York, Devia in Genoa — Donizetti queens are indeed in the news! Just now in Genoa Mariella Devia was the Elizabeth I for her beloved Roberto Devereux in a new trilogy of Donizetti queens (Maria Stuarda and Anne Bolena) directed by baritone Alfonso Antoniozzi. »
31 Mar 2016
‘All men become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man
does. That is his.’ ‘Is that clever?’ ‘It is perfectly
phrased!’ »
26 Mar 2016
Evolving in Mahler’s Third: Dudamel and L.A. Philharmonic’s impressive adaption to the Concertgebouw »
22 Mar 2016
Though all big opera is called grand opera, French grand opera itself is a very specific genre. It is an ephemeral style not at all easy to bring to life. For example . . . »
21 Mar 2016
That’s Walter Benjamin of the Frankfort School [philosophers in the interwar period (WW’s I and II) who were at home neither with capitalism, fascism or communism]. »
21 Mar 2016
1737 was Handel’s annus horribilis. His finances were in
disarray and his opera company was struggling in the face of the challenge
presented by the rival Opera of the Nobility. The strain and over-work led
to a stroke, as the Earl of Shaftesbury reported: »
20 Mar 2016
Nocturnal visions and reveries dominated this concert by the BBC
Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Hall, part of a two-day celebration of
the music of George Benjamin which also includes a concert performance of
the composer’s opera Written on Skin. »
18 Mar 2016
On March 5, 2016, San Diego Opera presented it’s star bass, Ferruccio Furlanetto, in a concert of arias with the San Diego Symphony Orchestra at the orchestra’s home, Copley Symphony Hall. »
18 Mar 2016
On March 12, 2016, Los Angeles Opera presented the local premiere of Lee Blakeley’s staging of Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly which had been seen in 2010 at Santa Fe Opera. When Blakeley’s Geisha, played magnificently by Ana Maria Martinez, forsakes her traditional religion and breaks the rules of her culture, she eventually faces a choice between total loss of honor and suicide. Everything that happened on the stage Saturday night pointed toward the tragedy. Puccini’s unforgettable music and exquisite singing by Los Angeles Opera’s top-notch cast kept audience members on the edges of their seats all evening. »
16 Mar 2016
‘And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’ John Donne’s metaphysical meditation might have made a
fitting sub-title for Richard Jones’s new production of Musorgky’s Boris Godunov at the Royal Opera House — the first
performance in the house of the original 1869 score. »
14 Mar 2016
By the time that he composed Ariodante, which was first performed
in January 1735, Handel had more than three decades of opera-composing
experience behind him. It’s surely one of his greatest music dramas not
least because, adapted from Ludovico Ariosto’s epic poem Orlando
Furioso, it is a very ‘human’ drama, telling of love and lust,
betrayal and healing. »
14 Mar 2016
Don Giovanni is Mozart at his mature zenith. He makes his musical statements directly with optimum economy and, even after more than two centuries, the dramatic scope of his work remains a source of wonder to operagoers. Charles Gounod called Don Giovanni “an unequalled and immortal masterpiece, the pinnacle of lyrical drama.” »
10 Mar 2016
Descending into the concrete cavern that is Ambika P3, at the University of
Westminster, I reflected that the bunker-like milieu was a fitting venue for
Royal Academy Opera’s production of Rimsky-Korsakov’s May
Night, which updated the original early-19th century locale to
the beginning of the Soviet era. »
10 Mar 2016
The English Concert’s travelling Orlando has been collecting
rave reviews. Here’s another one from Amsterdam, the last stop on their
tour before Carnegie Hall. »
03 Mar 2016
In 1728 Handel was down on his luck, following the demise of his ‘Royal
Academy’. Ever the entrepreneur, the following year he made a scouting tour of
Italy in search of the best singing talent and, returning with seven new virtuosos
— including the castrato Senesino. »
02 Mar 2016
Bryan Hymel, Irene Roberts & Julius Drake at Rosenblatt Recitals »
02 Mar 2016
Strong revival for Richard Jones 2011 production with cast mixing returnees and débutantes »
02 Mar 2016
Last year for his 60th anniversary as conductor, Bernard Haitink celebrated with one of his first orchestra’s the Dutch Radio Philharmonic. That performance of Mahler’s Fourth turned out such a success, he returned for another round at the NTR Saturday Matinee at the Concertgebouw. »
29 Feb 2016
Dutch National Opera’s Khovanshchina’s finest asset was
Anita Rachvelishvili’s vocally ravishing Marfa. The darkly opalescent
Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra came in a close second. »
29 Feb 2016
The meaning of the term cantata (literally, ‘sung’
from the Italian verb, cantare) may have changed over time, but
whether sacred or secular, the form — with its combination of
declamatory narration and emotive arias — is undoubtedly a dramatic
one, as this performance by Dunedin at the Wigmore Hall of cantatas by J.S.
Bach and Handel confirmed. »
29 Feb 2016
With its City of Light presentations, honoring Paris and French inspired music, the Los Angeles Philharmonic offered its public an extraordinary concert performance of a unique opera — Pelléas et Mélisande by Claude Debussy. »
29 Feb 2016
Barrie Kosky, intendant of the Komische Oper in Berlin, initially thought of combining live performance with animation when he saw British theater company 1927’s production of Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. For that presentation, Suzanne Andrade and Paul Barritt mixed the worlds of silent film and music hall theater, a combination that Kosky wanted for his production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. »
24 Feb 2016
In the 17th century, sacred vocal music was not just for public worship in
church but also for private devotion within a secular setting, and this concert
at the Wigmore Hall by Theatre of the Ayre under its director
Elizabeth Kenny transported us from Chapel Royal to domestic chamber. »
22 Feb 2016
In a world opera schedule packed with safe bread-and-butter warhorses, Hawaii Opera Theatre gambled on a Britten rarity and came up smelling as sweet as a tuberose lei. »
19 Feb 2016
Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based their libretto for Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen on a novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée. On March 3, 1875, Carmen was premiered at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. »
19 Feb 2016
Napoleon I (Bonaparte) was known as the Aigle (eagle), his son by Marie Louise (of the Hapsburgs) later became called the Aiglon (eaglet). At birth he was dubbed the King of Rome by his father. Unofficially and very briefly he was Napoleon II. Exiled in Austria he was officially titled the Duke of Reichstadt and the Prince of Parma. »
18 Feb 2016
Notable first performance of Bellini's opera by ENO, with a striking assumption of the title role from the young American soprano »
18 Feb 2016
The Wigmore Hall’s chronological journey through the complete
lieder of Franz Schubert continued with this recital by tenor Ian Bostridge
and pianist Graham Johnson. The duo gave a thought-provoking performance
which was notable for the searching dialectic between simplicity and
complexity which it illuminated. »
17 Feb 2016
Peter Greenaway’s short film M is for Man, Music and Mozart, for which the Dutch composer Louis Andriessen composed the score, was commissioned to mark the bicentenary anniversary of Mozart’s death in 1791. »
17 Feb 2016
Together with fellow playwrights Émile Augier and Alexandre Dumas fils, Victorien Sardou dominated the French stage in the late nineteenth century. Although Sardou was an excellent craftsman who was elected to the Académie Francaise in 1877, his reliance on theatrical devices caused his plays to go out of style after the turn of the twentieth century. »
15 Feb 2016
The background of Giuseppe Verdi’s Nabucco, currently being presented at Lyric Opera of Chicago, draws on the struggle between Babylonian and Hebrew forces, emphasized in this production graphically by alternating scripts in cuneiform and Hebrew projections. »
15 Feb 2016
Whilst the Arts Council has been doing its best to destroy the English National Opera, ENO has fought back in the best way possible: in the theatre. »
15 Feb 2016
On Saturday, January 23, 2016, at the University of Arizona’s Crowder Hall, mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton and soprano Amber Wagner gave a delightful recital entitled From Baroque to Broadway. The Baroque was Benjamin Britten’s realization of three Henry Purcell songs: Music for a While, Lost is my Quiet, and What Can We Poor Females Do? »
15 Feb 2016
The route that Stuart MacRae and Louse Welsh have taken for their first full-length opera is reassuringly traditional in terms of getting experience of the genre, whilst the resulting work shows itself to be admirably anything but. »
08 Feb 2016
Opera Philadelphia deserves congratulations on yet another coup. The company
co-commissioned Cold Mountain, an opera by Jennifer Higdon based on
Gene Scheer’s adaptation of Charles Frazier’s celebrated Civil War
epic. »
08 Feb 2016
For their first of two recitals at the Wigmore Hall, Christian Gerhaher and Gerold Huber devised an interesting programme - popular Schubert mixed with songs by Wolfgang Rihm and by Huber himself. »
08 Feb 2016
There are not many opera productions that you would cross oceans to see. Graham
Vick’s Götterdämmerung in Sicily however compelled such a voyage. »
05 Feb 2016
Premièred in 1877 at Offenbach’s own Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens, Emmanuel Chabrier’s L’Étoile has a libretto, by Eugène Leterrier and Albert Vanloo, which stirs the blackly comic, the farcical and the bizarre into a surreal melange, blending contemporary satire with the frankly outlandish.
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