Porgy Amor
A cynical member of Generation X, Louisville native Todd Koenig rejected a society that told its youth the answers could be found in the MTV video games. His exploration of 20th-century popular music led to a study of piano and a love of jazz. In his twenties, he began to listen to classical music – first symphonic works, chamber music, and keyboard literature, then song cycles, masses and oratorios. Five years into that period, he ventured into one of the few remaining uncharted territories: opera. He has familiarized himself with the standard repertory and much outside of it, and has advocated the art form to friends his age or younger who love music and theater. Since September 2015, as "Porgy Amor," he has written reviews, history and think pieces (sometimes all at the same time) for parterre box. The opera he loves above all others is Verdi's Falstaff, which he has described as the work of a very old man, with which a listener can grow old.
The conclusion of our Fanciulla del West video overview in three parts looks at a trio of performances from the 2010s.
Puccini’s Girl closes out the 20th century and gallops into the 21st.
On Thursday, Puccini’s seventh opera, the California Gold Rush romance La fanciulla del West, returns to its birthplace for its first Met performances since 2011.
A Met HD cinema broadcast of Puccini’s Tosca on Saturday, 27 January, concluded the first run of a production marked by upheaval in the ten months between its announcement and its New Year’s Eve premiere.
Recorded on 7 May 2017, 50 Years at Lincoln Center: A Gala Celebration features three dozen Met singers of the present decade, from A(ngela) to Z(eljko).
Even those of us who consider Guillaume Tell Rossini’s greatest opera understand why it has not been his most frequently staged.
Psychology is encoded in the composer’s vocal lines more than his librettist’s words.
C-major has made available the first DVD/Blu-ray of Franco Faccio’s Amleto.
The second DVD/Blu-ray with Plácido Domingo as Verdi’s other beleaguered Doge, Francesco in I due Foscari.
In September, Finnish National Opera gave the world premiere of Höstsonaten (Autumn Sonata), based on Mr. Bergman’s 1978 study of a troubled mother/daughter relationship.
No amount of scholarly diligence has kept Les contes d’Hoffmann from being the messiest of all standard-repertory messes.
If everything you see is great, you are either new to opera or chronically easy to please.
Kevin Newbury‘s familiar production of Bellini’s Norma with its most frequent leading lady, the American Sondra Radvanovsky.
We leave behind the Vienna of the 1740s, the time of breeches, fans and white wigs.
“Time is a strange thing,” the lady observes, to a young man who cannot begin to understand what she is talking about.
“In my music, there’s not repetition. Something is always going on.”
So, how excited are you to read another piece about the Mary Zimmerman Rusalka?
The subject of timidity has been in my thoughts in these waning days of February 2017. One would almost think there had been some big announcement recently, preceded by a series of smaller ones, to turn a U.S.-based opera fan’s thoughts in this direction.
This Met’s second production of Berg’s 1935 opera was the hot topic of November 2015.
Today’s Rusalka video overview covers filmed performances of Dvorák’s opera since 2010.
While some once-popular Met operas have fallen into neglect in the past quarter century, Rusalka has returned regularly since its 1993 premiere.
The beautiful singing here is less in the sound than in the way the voice moves.