27 Feb 2011
Gluck’s operas are part of a continuum, a tradition of French vocal
declamation (as opposed to the Italian school of flights of elegant,
open-throated vocal fantasy) that can be traced to him from Lully and Rameau,
and then from Gluck through certain works of Mozart and Gluck’s pupil,
Salieri to the operas of Spontini, Berlioz and Wagner. »
23 Feb 2011
György Kurtág's Kafka Fragments, op 24, is a masterpiece, one of the seminal works of the late 20th century. »
22 Feb 2011
In the mid-nineteenth century, every nationality that did not possess a
national state felt a need to prove itself, to square its shoulders and claim
nationhood with all the identifying marks of a nation: a language with a
literature, a tricolor flag, a national anthem extolling the people’s
stalwart character and the country’s landscape (inevitably the loveliest
in the world), a national theater and a national opera to be performed there. »
20 Feb 2011
The first performance of Thomas Arne’s masque Alfred took
place at Clivedon House on the Thames near Maidenhead, in August 1740. »
20 Feb 2011
This production retains a special place in my heart: its first outing in
1999 was my first Parsifal in the theatre. Saving up my student
pennies, I made the journey not once but twice from Cambridge to London, was
mightily impressed the first time and a little irritated the second. »
18 Feb 2011
From the sublime (Parsifal, the night before) to the not-even-ridiculous. »
17 Feb 2011
The story is ages old, and every culture has a version of it: the mythic
princess of an underwater realm longs for the love of a mortal man. »
15 Feb 2011
At the moment, it seems inevitable that John Adams’ 1987 opera Nixon in China will become a fixture in the repertoire. »
11 Feb 2011
Although Paris Opéra's Dream Team of soprano Natalie Dessay and director Laurent Pelly promised much for the SRO run of Giulio Cesare in Egitto, for the moment we will have to keep dreaming of what might have been.
»
08 Feb 2011
Witty and airy as an after-dinner anecdote over biscuits and cognac, Don
Pasquale (1844) is, unlikely as it may seem, almost the last opera Donizetti
completed before his descent into the madness of tertiary syphilis. »
07 Feb 2011
In 2010, Florida Grand Opera held a gala to honor Robert Heuer on his 25th
anniversary as general director. »
07 Feb 2011
Preparing for the Met premier of Nixon in China, I resolved to
forget—or place on hold—everything I remembered, or thought I
remembered, about the real persons who are characters in this opera, »
07 Feb 2011
The original story that formed the basis for the libretto of Puccini’s
opera Turandot told of a Mongolian princess who insisted that any
prospective husband endeavor to win a wrestling match with her. »
06 Feb 2011
It’s a rare recital that can be at one and the same time intensely
intimate and extravagantly exuberant, but that’s just what Magdalena
Kozená and the eight-piece Austrian ensemble Private Musicke achieved in this
fascinating and exhilarating concert, which brought a thrill of passion,
spontaneity and excitement to the usually more restrained and rarified
atmosphere of the Wigmore Hall. »
06 Feb 2011
If you are ever lucky enough to have the opportunity to catch a great exponent of just one of two major roles — the heroines or villains — in Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann, you should secure a seat maintenant. »
06 Feb 2011
If proof were needed, the Swiss capital’s heady new Le Comte Ory cements the notion that super-star Cecelia Bartoli certainly seems to have found an ideal home at Zurich Opera. »
06 Feb 2011
Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic have repeated their success with Mahler’s Das klagende Lied at the Royal Festival Hall. »
06 Feb 2011
Premiered in 2003, and aired again in 2005 and 2008, this current revival of David McVicar’s Die Zauberflöte brings many ‘old hands’ back together to re-visit oft-frequented roles on familiar ground. »
06 Feb 2011
The production of Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking currently on
stage at the Houston Grand Opera is marvelously celebratory in its success. »
04 Feb 2011
Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia at the English National Opera, London, is an interesting hybrid. The opera is performed “straight” so to speak, but encased in a frame of short filmed passages that add background and depth. These films don’t intrude, but enhance. »
03 Feb 2011
Yoav Gal, an Israeli-born composer-in-residence at the HERE arts complex in
Manhattan’s South Village, calls Mosheh a “VideOpera,” rightly giving as much place to what is seen (electronic projections) as to what is heard (from four sopranos playing the women in the prophet’s life and an orchestra of nine musicians). »
02 Feb 2011
Albéric Magnard, inspired to abandon the law for music by a visit to Bayreuth in 1886, was wealthy enough to ignore the public and go off on his own to compose. »
02 Feb 2011
This looked an enticing programme before Vladimir Jurowski, in conversation
with the Southbank Centre’s Head of Music, Marshall Marcus, divulged its
secrets. »
02 Feb 2011
In its current production of Giacomo Puccini’s La fanciulla del West Lyric Opera of Chicago celebrates the centenary of the first performances of the opera. »
01 Feb 2011
The 2010-2011 season for Minnesota Opera is steeped in Bel Canto
opera selections, starting with Rossini’s Cenerentola this fall, currently featuring Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda, and for the spring, a production of Verdi’s La Traviata with acclaimed Violetta, Elizabeth Futral. »
01 Feb 2011
A few years ago, a certain major newspaper boasted a music critic who could not bring himself either to take opera seriously or to deny himself the opportunity to review it. »
24 Jan 2011
Appearing on Palm Beach Opera’s website video player General Director
Daniel Biaggi points out among the reasons to attend the first show of the
company’s 2010-2011 season, “fantastic artists whose voices will
blow you away.” »
24 Jan 2011
In my July 2009 review of the first revival of Moshe Leiser’s and
Patrice Caurier’s 2005 production of Il barbiere di Siviglia I
commented that the directors, aided by conductor, Antonio Pappano, had
reinvigorated this operatic ‘old friend’, injecting freshness and
spontaneity into familiar material. »
19 Jan 2011
Arms swinging loosely at his side, a relaxed smile and bright eyes conveying
his confident ease, James Gilchrist’s young wanderer bounded nimbly onto
the stage at the Wigmore Hall, radiating and embodying the fresh
optimism of spring, at the start of this technically assured and dramatically
coherent performance of Schubert’s song cycle, Die schöne
Müllerin. »
16 Jan 2011
The dust on 65th Street is clearing up and the reviews for the renovated Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts are in — the piazza is being hailed as newly “inviting” by architects and arts critics alike, and rightly so. »
16 Jan 2011
They have been fiddling with Luc Bondy’s staging of Tosca. Scarpia doesn’t masturbate on the Madonna; he just sort of pinches her erotically. »
16 Jan 2011
Since he first came to notice a few years ago — in Messiah in this very hall, as Creonte at Covent Garden, and as Arsace in Partenope at New York City Opera, to name by a few recently acclaimed performances — many a starry accolade has been heaped upon young Welsh countertenor, Iestyn Davies: “achingly beautiful tone”,“unforgettable focus and poignancy” and “compelling sense of rhetoric” are typical of the bountiful superlatives. »
05 Jan 2011
In its production this season of Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera
Lyric Opera of Chicago has staged the work in its original locale at the royal
court of Sweden. »
31 Dec 2010
At the end of November Los Angeles Opera brought two productions to the stage of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. »
31 Dec 2010
Pelléas et Mélisande, Debussy’s impressionist drama closely
based on Maeterlinck’s eerie, symbolist play, is not a terribly vocal opera; it calls more for the subtlety of art song style than the belting of great divas and divos. »
19 Dec 2010
It may have been five years since Susan Bullock last performed at the Wigmore Hall, as her prominence on the world operatic stage has taken her away from the recital hall, but she wasted no time getting into her stride in this charming and musically varied concert. »
19 Dec 2010
La Fanciulla del West is Puccini’s love letter to an America that had acclaimed him joyously on his triumphant visit of 1907 to attend the Met premieres of Manon Lescaut and Madama Butterfly. »
15 Dec 2010
Badisches Staastheater’s production of Tosca starts off with a bang.
»
14 Dec 2010
No one could accuse the Paris Opera of pinching pennies (or Euro cents) in their lavishly expansive (and expensive) staging of Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler.
»
14 Dec 2010
The Royal Opera House itself is the star of this new production of Richard Wagner Tannhäuser. An intriguing twist on an opera that pits orgiastic excess against purity, pleasure against morality. »
11 Dec 2010
Perhaps the most unexpected occurrence of the evening was the malfunction of the Act I-Act II set change. »
11 Dec 2010
The opening night of the new season at Teatro alla Scala Milan is a gala event, the most glamorous in the entire Italian opera year. »
11 Dec 2010
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Emmanuel Schikaneder had known each other for some time before they wrote The Magic Flute. »
11 Dec 2010
Cecilia Bartoli is something of a phenomenon, capable of attracting an enthusiastic capacity crowd. »
06 Dec 2010
The Barbican’s Great Performers season often acts as a receiving house for continental opera productions, thus giving us in London a chance to hear interesting performances without actually having to travel. »
06 Dec 2010
Transplanting Britten’s Shakespeare opera to an Indian setting seems at first an illogical step by Hollywood director Baz Luhrmann. »