Curtis Opera continued its season using the Prince Theater as their venue. That alliance took on particular resonance here, as the company ventured Sweeney Todd. The famous first production in 1979 was, of course, directed by Harold Prince, and surely represents one of his (and composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim’s) crowning achievements. Read more »
I must admit a certain trepidation when I received the press kit announcing that the role of Miles in Juilliard’s performances of Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw was to be sung by soprano Britt Hewitt and not a boy treble, but those concerns were dashed by the second scene of the opera. Read more »
This riotous opera transports the Oedipus tale to an apocalyptic 1980s London, plagued by police violence, racism, and socioeconomic decay. Intrepid composer Mark-Anthony Turnage’s (Anna Nicole) 1988 breakthrough brilliantly combines cockney-accented profanity and irreverent drama with an audacious score and outstanding four-person cast. Eddy (tenor Alex Otterburn), our modern-day Oedipus, dreams of a better life. After hearing a fortune teller’s disturbing prediction, he resolves at all costs to avoid shagging his own mum (soprano Susan Bullock) and inadvertently killing his father (tenor Andrew Shore). But he is unable to outrun fate, landing in the prophetically maternal arms of an East End café manager (mezzo soprano Allison Cook). Thirty years later, Greek still resonates, offering an incisive, brash contemporary statement on accountability and family. Read more »
Anna Netrebko‘s Instagram meets Metro.
On this day in 1926 the US premiere and first Metropolitan Opera performance of Puccini’s Turandot.
Two of today’s most compelling divas tackle a hair-raising early 20th century German masterpiece for “Trove Thursday”—Karita Mattila in Schönberg’s Erwartung conducted by Susanna Mälkki and Anna Caterina Antonacci in Hindemith’s Sancta Susanna led by Carlo Rizzi.
The House of the Redeemer is a convent in the former Fabbri mansion on East 95th Street, its library taken from a palazzo in Urbino. The room is therefore about the right size (say, two pre-war Manhattan living rooms) for chamber concerts. The concert last Friday night of the Ensemble Ricercare Antico, four Italian instrumentalists and a tenor, Riccardo Pisani, was part of the Salon/Sanctuary Concert series, who present music of various eras in properly atmospheric venues around New York and Florence.
Cher Public