Christopher Corwin
Christopher Corwin began writing for parterre box in 2011 under the pen name “DeCaffarrelli.” His work has also appeared in , The New York Times, Musical America, The Observer, San Francisco Classical Voice and BAMNotes. Like many, he came to opera via the Saturday Met Opera broadcasts which he began listening to at age 11. His particular enthusiasm is 17th and 18th century opera. Since 2015 he has curated the weekly podcast Trove Thursday on parterre box presenting live recordings.
Today Chris’s Cache offers Angela Meade in Les vêpres siciliennes, along with a complementary I vespri siciliani starring Carol Vaness, another favorite American soprano.
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Chris’s Cache ends March with Berlioz’s exquisite Shakespeare adaptation Béatrice et Bénédict because it’s just the best thing to listen to on a spring day.
In Richard Strauss’s Arabella, the heroine is consumed with finding the right man—der Richtige—but who is the right Arabella?
The English Concert’s annual Handel tour brings Solomon conducted by Harry Bicket to the US beginning Sunday March 5. In anticipation, Chris’s Cache offers Solomon plus four other oratorios by the master: Belshazzar, Hercules, Saul and Jephtha, all via broadcasts for which I feel a personal connection.
On the train ride home I was thinking that I don’t want to see or hear Norma ever again.
A stack of noteworthy recent baroque vocal CDs on my desk has been staring at me for weeks, so I’m tackling them on Handel’s birthday before the Met roars back into action beginning this weekend.
On Saturday at Alice Tully Hall, Julliard 415, the school’s top-flight period-instrument ensemble, was joined by students from the Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts and Juilliard Drama for a rare semi-staging of King Arthur.
Chris’s Cache sends Renata Scotto a valentine ahead of her 89th birthday next week with rare in-house recordings of eight (!) mid-career performances spanning 1971-1977.
Chris’s Cache offers a pride of short early English works: John Blow’s Venus and Adonis (1683); Purcell’s King Arthur (1691) and The Indian Queen (1695); John Eccles’s The Judgement of Paris (1700); William Boyce’s Solomon (1743); and John Stanley’s Arcadia (1762).
Anticipating Leontyne Price’s 96th birthday on February 10, Chris’s Cache presents the American diva in an epic collection of live performances.
What happens when you attend a performance and it doesn’t engage you?
A week from tonight Franz Welser-Möst brings the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus to Carnegie Hall for a rare performance of Schubert’s Mass No. 6 in E-flat Major, D 950.
We constantly wonder whether the young man will embrace him—or slit his throat.
Chris’s Cache begins 2023 with a pair of bel canto operas featuring two artists soon to make their Met debuts: Sabine Devieilhe in the title role of Donizetti’s La Fille du regiment and Xabier Anduaga driving Lisette Oropesa crazy in Bellini’s I Puritani.
Lohengrin, one of my favorite Wagner operas, has been missing from the Met since 2006! For holiday listening and to prepare for its 26 February return, Chris’s Cache offers four interesting versions spanning nearly 40 years.
Diva November meets Wagner December when Chris’s Cache this week offers Régine Crespin as both Elisabeth in Tannhäuser and Senta in Der Fliegende Holländer via a pair of American pirates from the 1960s.
For those who relish 17th and 18th century vocal music, the annual visits to the Morgan Library by the singers and instrumentalists of the Boston Early Music Festival invariably guarantee delight
Wrapping up Diva November, Chris’s Cache offers two sacred works that couldn’t be more unalike.
The film of The Hours failed to effectively weave together the novel’s trio of threads of interiority about suicide and secondarily literary creation. I wondered if an opera would stand a better chance at achieving that? Based on Tuesday’s diva-encrusted stage premiere of Kevin Puts and Greg Pierce’s The Hours, its creators didn’t pull it off either.
No one who followed Trove Thursday will be surprised that Diva November on Chris’s Cache today features Ann Hallenberg and Sandrine Piau.
Diva November on Chris’s Cache continues with a half dozen of my favorite singers performing solo concert works you’ve likely never heard them in before: Janet Baker, Cecilia Bartoli, Cathy Berberian, Bernarda Fink, Elina Garanca and Jessye Norman in music by Haydn, Monteverdi, Schoenberg, Wagner, Porpora and Beethoven.
Diva November continues with three favorite divas in rare recordings of important 20th century works.
The magazine to which I no longer subscribe has for years celebrated divas each November; Chris’s Cache follows suit offering favorite sopranos and mezzos in live-performance rarities every Tuesday this month.
Chris’s Cache offers Le Siège de Corinthe, the later French version of Maometto II, with Katia Ricciarelli, Martine Dupuy, Curtis Rayam and Ferruccio Furlanetto.
