Elsewhere
MOZART: Don Giovanni — Salzburg 2002
Il dissoluto punito ossia il Don Giovanni (K. 527): Drama giocoso in two acts
Canada’s Brueggergosman makes the most of Mozart
When Toronto’s Opera Atelier asked her to sing Elettra in Mozart’s Idomeneo Measha Brueggergosman hesitated.
Fort Worth Opera Festival features “Angels in America”
In 2007 it was an experiment; now it’s a new summer festival firmly rooted in fertile Texas turf with a bright view of its second season and of the more distant future as well.
Spoleto USA revives opera, hall
Operas do not often get a second chance. A new work is premiered and — if it’s a co-commission — it moves on to another company or two.
Die Entführung aus dem Serail
Die Entführung aus dem Serail is too light to be a grand opera, but it makes rather grander demands of its singers than operetta could possibly bear.
Karajan: The Music, the Legend.
At the centenary of the birth of the conductor Herbert von Karajan various commemorations are occurring, an among them is the concise CD and DVD release by Deutsche Grammophon, with both discs bound into a booklet that includes a short prose tribute to the man illustrated with some well-chosen photographs from various parts of his career.
Punch & Judy at ENO
English National Opera’s production of Harrison Birtwistle’s ‘Punch and Judy’ is the company’s second collaboration with the Young Vic Theatre — following the premiere of Neuwirth’s ‘Lost Highway’ a few weeks earlier — and remarkably, also the second London production of this early Birtwistle work within a month, the previous one having been at the Linbury Studio Theatre, a collaboration between Music Theatre Wales and the Royal Opera.
The Collegiate Chorale: Jupiter in Argos
Over the years, one tried and true method of packing audiences in to the concerts of Robert Bass’s Collegiate Chorale has been to present concert opera with impressive soloists.
French Opera highlights on Classics for Pleasure
Consumers might opt for a highlights set instead of a full recording of an opera for many reasons.
THOMSON: The Plow that Broke the Plains
Naxos's DVD division has already released the performances on this disc of Virgil Thomson's scores for The Plow that Broke the Plains and The River, as soundtracks for a re-release of the original films. That DVD (Naxos 2.110521) contained, as...
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News Archives
Glyndebourne: lust, greed -and some great tunes
Ivan Hewett [Daily Telegraph, 8 May 2008]
This year Glyndebourne Festival Opera opens with a work in which the virtuous are punished, the wise are mocked, and the lustful and treacherous lavishly rewarded with riches and power - not to mention the best tunes.
A knight at the opera
By TIM CORNWELL [The Scotsman, 8 May 2008]
A BAWDY bedroom scene is playing on Scottish Opera’s rehearsal stage. Baritone Peter Sidhom, playing Sir John Falstaff – in a padded fat suit that bulges bizarrely from both his front and rear – is comically attempting to pin soprano Amanda Roocroft on the bed.
Latest mash-up: COC and hip hop
(Photo: Kevin Clark)
JOSHUA OSTROFF [Globe and Mail, 7 May 2008]
If you had to pick a pair of musical genres furthest apart from each other, opera and hip hop would be a fairly safe bet. One thing they do share is sizable purist fan bases, which, whether they use the phrase or not, prefer practitioners to keep it real. Nonetheless, these star-crossed genres are coming together in a performance called The Hip Hopera, a new collaboration by the Canadian Opera Company and the Royal Conservatory of Music.
Muti to CSO
By Sarah Bryan Miller [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 7 May 2008]
It’s potentially great news for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra: they’ve got a new music director, and he’s one of the best.
Carolyn Abbate Joins University of Pennsylvania Faculty as Professor of Music
[7 May 2008]
(Media-Newswire.com) - PHILADELPHIA –- Carolyn Abbate, who ranks among the world’s foremost musicologists, has been appointed the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of Pennsylvania, effective July 1. Abbate comes to Penn from Harvard University where she is the Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and the Fanny Peabody Professor of Music.
Conductor to skip vampire-themed opera
By Bradley S. Klapper [AP, 7 May 2008]
Acclaimed conductor Franz Welser-Moest will not take the rostrum for two scheduled billings of a vampire-inspired staging of "Die Fledermaus" at the Zurich Opera, the Swiss opera house said Wednesday.
Atalanta at the Royal College of Music
Richard Morrison [Times Online, 23 April 2008]
By all accounts Handel had a sense of humour. So I'm sure he would have been tickled by this delightful Royal College of Music production (ending the London Handel Festival) that transfers the story of the butch, boar-hunting Princess Atalanta and her clandestine quest for a worthy suitor to a 21st-century seaside resort populated by stroppy adolescents texting each other while hanging morosely round a litter bin. This is possibly the first Handel production in which a football scarf plays a central role.
Florez wows crowd at Met with 18 high Cs
By MIKE SILVERMAN [AP, 22 April 2008]
NEW YORK -- Rewarding a rare encore with an even rarer standing ovation in midperformance, a rapturous Metropolitan Opera audience hailed the company's beguiling new production of Donizetti's comic gem, "La Fille du Regiment" ("The Daughter of the Regiment").
No Breaks in Life, Not Even in a Fast-Food World
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI [NY Times, 21 April 2008]
PARIS — Gerard Mortier, the brilliant Belgian-born director of major European music festivals and opera houses, is poised to shake up the cultural scene in New York when he takes charge of the New York City Opera in 2009. A tireless champion of contemporary works and a provocative impresario with a penchant for radical productions that have alternately thrilled and scandalized audiences, Mr. Mortier has said that he is eager to take the helm of the “people’s opera,” as the City Opera has long been called.
A mountain of music
[The Guardian, 21 April 2008]
The sloping marble roof of the Oslo opera house may be perfect for snowboarding. But, for Jonathan Glancey, the warm heart of this stunning building is just as thrilling
Composer Philip Glass charms in Nasher Salon lecture
By SCOTT CANTRELL [The Dallas Morning News, 18 April 2008]
No other composer has made as long and lucrative a career out of so modest a bag of tricks as Philip Glass. For four decades, his diddle-diddles and doodley-doodlies have transported some and maddened others. But predictions of his imminent demise have proved unfounded.
Review: Ainadamar, Flavio and Der Rosenkavalier
[Daily Telegraph, 18 April 2008]
Rupert Christiansen reviews Ainadamar and Flavio at the Barbican and Der Rosenkavalier performed by Zurich Opera at Festival Hall
Born into an East European Jewish family, brought up in Argentina, and educated in Israel and the US, the composer Osvaldo Golijov wasn't destined to fit neatly into a mould. In the US, his eclecticism has won him widespread popularity, but what precisely underpins it?
The Minotaur: Enthralling, hypnotising - and unloveable
Rupert Christiansen [Daily Telegraph, 17 April 2008]
Ever since the story went round that Benjamin Britten had stormed out of the premiere of his first opera, Punch and Judy, Harrison Birtwistle has been cast as the bogeyman of modern music theatre, associated with a brutalist aesthetic infatuated with monsters, myths, masks, mime, murder and mayhem.
Bringing Out the Big Gunns
By JAY NORDLINGER [NY Sun, 17 April 2008]
Nathan Gunn is a baritone, famous for taking his shirt off in opera productions. (He is famous for being a very fine singer and singing actor, too.) Julie Gunn — or “Dr. Julie Gunn,” as she is known in her bio — is his wife and a pianist. They often give recitals together, and they gave one at Zankel Hall on Tuesday night. It was an exceedingly unusual recital.
Kathleen Battle, Carnegie Hall, New York
By Martin Bernheimer [Financial Times, 15 April 2008]
Understatement: Kathleen Battle has had an unusual career.
In 1994 she was at the peak of her powers, a lyric-coloratura of uncommon refinement, intelligence and charm. Though small, her silver-bell soprano was perfectly focused. She deserved her place as an international star attraction. Her backstage image, however, seemed less benign. Colleagues reportedly endured outrageous prima-donna indulgences and ego tantrums. Joseph Volpe, macho head of the Met, made a public point of firing her before a revival of La fille du régiment. She never returned to opera.
Tenor Giordani Sings for Pope at Yankee Stadium: Interview
Interview by Manuela Hoelterhoff [Bloomberg.com, 11 April 2008]
April 11 (Bloomberg) -- Marcello Giordani, an unusually tall and hardy tenor, just finished a surprising season at New York's Metropolitan Opera, where he subbed for frail little colleagues while shining in his own shows.
'Candide' Shows Its Age
By GEORGE LOOMIS [NY Sun, 11 April 2008]
One of Beverly Sills's landmark achievements as general director of New York City Opera was the company's 1982 production of Leonard Bernstein's "Candide." It wasn't that Harold Prince's production was particularly outstanding, though it was well received. Rather, the achievement was that it marked the first staging of this famously problematic work, originally seen on Broadway in 1956, that presented Bernstein's score in a reasonably full version and that won critical and popular acclaim.
L'opéra passion
Serge Martin [lesoir.be, 11 April 2008]
Elle fut la Violetta de La Traviata à la réouverture de la Fenice, à Venise, et incarna Lucia di Lammermoor dans la mémorable production des Chorégies d'Orange, retransmise par France 3. Patrizia Ciofi appartient désormais au gratin du chant mondial. A partir de ce 30 avril, elle sera la Maria Stuarda de l'opéra éponyme de Donizetti à l'Opéra royal de Wallonie, dans une mise en scène de Francesco Esposito et sous la direction de son mari, Luciano Acocella. Mais profitant de sa présence à Liège pour les répétitions, la soprano italienne nous offre, ce samedi, un superbe récital.
Feisty Orchestra Fuels Brussels Opera Changes
Commentary by Shirley Apthorp [Bloomberg.com, 10 April 2008]
April 10 (Bloomberg) -- Mark Wigglesworth, designated music director of La Monnaie/De Munt opera house in Brussels, won't take up his post in August as planned. The British conductor faced mounting opposition from a disgruntled orchestra.
An Improbable Opera
(Photo: Ken Howard)
By KATE TAYLOR [NY Sun, 9 April 2008]
When a chance came up to talk to Philip Glass about mounting a work of his at the English National Opera, Phelim McDermott jumped on it. Mr. McDermott — who runs, with Julian Crouch, a theater company called Improbable — was hardly an opera buff, but he was a huge fan of Mr. Glass.