Opera Today
News
Lucia di Lammermoor at the Coliseum
Geoff Brown [Times Online, 8 February 2010]
So, once more we plunge into that melodramatic cauldron, that brooding nonsense, that is Lucia di Lammermoor. On its first outing in 2008 David Alden’s grimly stylised, psychopathological take on the opera that Donizetti squeezed from a capacious Sir Walter Scott novel gathered assorted praise. This time round, the director’s shock treatment of life in Lucia’s Scottish manse — think Grand Guignol reimagined by Ibsen — shocks and impresses rather less.
Opera music part of junk hauler's treasure trove
By John Kelly [Washington Post, 3 February 2010]
The junk hauler figured they had to be worth something, these 15,000 black discs that filled an entire room in a Silver Spring house.
Wozzeck, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theatre, San Francisco
By Allan Ulrich [Financial Times, 2 February 2010]
Every enlightened artistic community needs an organisation like Ensemble Parallèle, pledged to staging significant 20th-century operas in relatively intimate spaces. Considering that the San Francisco Opera has not produced Berg’s still shattering expressionist masterpiece in a decade - and is not likely to under the current management - Nicole Paiement’s valiant band struck a blow last weekend for intelligent music theatre in which dedication triumphs over dollars.
Bass-baritone eager to sing at home, in English
By Anne Midgette [Washington Post, 31 January 2010]
Eric Owens enjoys singing in English. “I always get so jealous of Italians and native Germans,” says the opera singer. As an American singing opera, “even if you get really fluent, there’s always a certain amount of disconnect, because you didn’t grow up with the language,” Owens says. “When I sing American music, it’s really satisfying to identify and connect so well with the text.”
In perfect harmony
By Allan Moses R. [The Hindu, 30 January 2010]
French soprano soloist Marion Baglan and pianist François-Marie Juskowiak evoked a thunderous response from a packed audience at The Alliance Française in a concert recently.
New Music Director for Opera Orchestra
By Dave Itzkoff [NY Times, 28 January 2010]
Eve Queler, the founder and longtime music director of the Opera Orchestra of New York, who has seen the institution through recent financial struggles, is preparing to step down. The orchestra said in a news release that it had appointed Alberto Veronesi, the Italian conductor, as music director starting with its 2011-12 season.
Le Poème Harmonique
By Allan Kozinn [NY Times, 26 January 2010]
Emilio de’ Cavalieri, though hardly known today, was a friendly competitor of the Florentine Camerata, the group of musicians and theorists whose ideas about text setting and drama led to the creation of opera around 1600. The Camerata’s style came to represent early Baroque vocal music as we know it. But Cavalieri’s music offers a fascinating glimpse of an alternative approach, and the performance of his “Lamentations of Jeremiah” by the French early-music ensemble Le Poème Harmonique at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin near Times Square on Saturday evening captured his distinct, sometimes exotic accent.
War and Peace, Theatre Royal, Glasgow
By Andrew Clark [Financial Times, 25 January 2010]
It is a popular misconception that masterpieces arrive in fixed form, like a gift from heaven. Some of the most successful operas - Carmen, Don Carlos, Boris Godunov , to name but three - have extremely messy histories, and until recently no one bothered if the edition was bowdlerised.
Florida Grand Opera's Eglise Gutiérrez lifts `Lucia di Lammermoor ' to modern heights
By David Fleshler [Miami Herald, 25 January 2010]
As traditionally performed, Donizetti’s opera Lucia di Lammermoor is 2 ½ hours of Scottish castles, mist-shrouded lakes, swordsmanship and tragedy.
Stirring Storytelling and Amorous Rapture
By Steve Smith [NY Times, 25 January 2010]
Ask any serious vocal enthusiast to provide a list of the finest singers currently working, and the chances are good that Bernarda Fink, an Argentine mezzo-soprano, will figure in. Here in New York, where Ms. Fink has appeared infrequently, her renown stems primarily from her performances on CD, including opera recordings conducted by René Jacobs and highly desirable recital discs on the Harmonia Mundi label.
![Prospero and Miranda by William Maw Egley (c. 1850) [Source: Wikipedia]](http://www.operatoday.com/prospero_miranda.png)