parterre box

In an ever-changing world it’s comforting to know that the Parmigiani of the Teatro Regio continue their campaign through the Verdi canon not unlike the Allied Forces’  rout of the Germans at the beginning of 1945. Though the body count isn’t nearly as high, somehow the devastation feels worse to me personally.
We are now working our way into the Master’s middle period with the release by C-Major  of a performance of Il Trovatore from October 2010.  The nifty “introduction to” that precedes all these issues reminds us that although the great Wagnerian George Bernard Shaw highly praised Trovatore at his first viewing he warned that it was,”Absolutely void of intellectual interest. Its appeal is to the senses all through.”  Read more »

De Nederlandse Opera’s remarkable 2011 feat of premiering productions of Gluck’s Iphigénie en Aulide and Iphigénie en Tauride on the same day and virtually the same set has been issued on a 2-DVD set by Opus Arte. Both productions feature fine singing, cogent and interesting stage direction, and brilliant conducting; both use period instruments and period pitch, much to the singers’ advantage. The performances on these DVDs are splendid and Gluck’s use of mythological stories to reflect deeply human emotion is brilliantly served. Read more »

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s only opera for Rome was written to an existing libretto by the great Pietro Metastasio, L’Olimpiade, which had already  been set by Vivaldi the year previously. It eventually became the most widely used libretto in history, inspiring more than 60 composers including Piccinni, Cimarosa, Paisiello, and Donizetti. When Pergolesi’s version premiered at the Teatro Tordinona in Rome in January 1735 the words on the page were still relatively warm which, apparently, could not be said of our young composer who would be dead the following March of tuberculosis at the age of 26.

This 2011 presentation of the Pergolesi Spontini Foundation is now on DVD and Blu-ray courtesy of our friends at Arthaus Musik and documents a thoughtful staging that aspires to the highest musical standard.   Read more »