St. Paul’s Chapel is the perfect site for Saul, Handel’s finest dramatic oratorio. Not only are the acoustics brilliant, but Paul’s name was actually Saul before that unfortunate DUI on the road to Damascus. Accordingly, the Trinity Baroque Orchestra and the choir of Trinity Wall Street presented the piece on Friday night as part of the annual Twelfth Night Festival, fully staged as is currently the fashion for concert oratorios, and will repeat the event on Sunday at three. Read more »
When Mike Nichols was honored at the Kennedy Center, Elaine May said of his work: “Mike has chosen to do things that are really meaningful, and that have real impact, and real relevance, but he makes them so entertaining and exciting that they’re as much fun as if they were trash.” Christopher Alden has pulled the same bit of trickery at the San Francisco Opera with a production of Handel’s Partenope that is so erudite and theatrically audacious and also such a rollicking ride, it’s hard to believe it isn’t crap. Read more »
UPDATE: This afternoon’s Operavore program now available for streaming, after the jump.
Saturday afternoon at 12:30 on WQXR’s magazine show Operavore, our own JJ talks about Mathilde Marchesi and Antony Roth Costanzo discusses his Orlofsky role in the Met’s Fledermaus. Or, to put it another way, this is a show so gay only pugs can hear it. Read more »
Those dear, dear people over The Greene Space at WQXR would like you, cher public, to join them this Friday for a concert saluting this year’s winner of the Richard Tucker Award, mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard.
La Cieca predicts you won’t be seeing any puritans at the Met next season, except of course for the ones who slouch around during intermission hissing, “You call that a trill?”
“F. Paul Driscoll, editor of Opera News [not pictured], is optimistic.”
Cher Public