So it is with great pleasure that I say that this video of Ariadne is not only available
Levine is in complete, masterful control of Berg’s complex score, and the orchestra playing is flawless—disciplined, exact, and emotionally nuanced. One of the best features of the DVD is that the camera is in the pit for all the interludes between scenes, and we can see clearly how well the orchestra responds to the maestro. Read more »
This just in from the Met press office: “Andrea Bocelli will make his solo recital debut at the Metropolitan Opera House on Sunday, February 13, 2011 at 5:00 p.m. The performance will feature the celebrated Italian tenor singing a program of arias by Handel, and lieder and art songs by Beethoven, Wagner, Liszt, Richard Strauss, Fauré, and Tosti. Bocelli will be accompanied by pianist Vincenzo Scalera.” Read more »
To get straight to the point, the main attraction of this DVD is Renata Scotto. The Italian soprano, the first to perform all three heroines of Il trittico at the Met, is simply superb. She has élan in the moments of tension and a powerful, in-depth delivery. There is not a single word in the entire work that Scotto lets go to waste. Hers is a play of colors and gradations prodded by an exceptional imagination and interpretative sensitivity. Add to this an eloquent, aristocratic, full-relief pronunciation, which coalesces with the pliability of her sound and the refinements of the [...]
Richard Strauss’s brilliantly disturbing Elektra was first performed at the Dresden State Opera in 1909, and arrived in America in 1910 at the Manhattan Opera House. A second American premiere, this time in the original German, was in Philadelphia in 1931 with – and this will kill you – Nelson Eddy as Orestes. Along with Salome it represents Strauss at his most dissonant and chromatic. After Elektra, the composer would retreat to a more tonal, neo-romantic compositional style that while still harmonically complex, would never push the envelope like Elektra. This 1994 Metropolitan Opera performance has never been commercially available [...]
The end of the summer has been a quiet time for new opera production, but La Cieca realized she’d left you all having on the most recent Regie quiz. Or not hanging so much, actually, because calatrava guessed it: Il barbiere di Siviglia, a production by Claus Guth. An all-new, insect-free quiz follow the jump.
The German filmmaker and theater and opera director died earlier today. Among his works was a controversial production of Parsifal at the Bayreuth Festival beginning in 2004. [AP]
Which opera company hopes to rise to the occasion of a major tour minus that diva who seems to have lost her way yet again?
Cher Public