Alex Baker lives in Washington, DC, where he enjoys attending a variety of classical music events. After college in New York he started attending the Met on a regular basis and blogging about his experiences at wellsung.blogspot.com. Current singers he would travel for include Christine Goerke and Karita Mattila, while historical favorites include Tatiana Troyanos and Astrid Varnay.
Alex Baker
The late-mid 1730s were transitional years for Handel, to put it nicely. Read more »
Opera warhorse overload can happen to the best of us, and going into Washington National Opera’s final presentation of the season, Madama Butterfly, I feared that I might be geisha’d out. My most recent encounter just six months ago (a Vienna State Opera production with Kristine Opolais) was well done but left me thoroughly cold, a sign that a personal moratorium on this particular chestnut might be in order. Read more »
Celebrated conductor William Christie, widely considered among the foremost interpreters of early-music for modern audiences, and his acclaimed ensemble Les Arts Florissants have delighted audiences at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) for 30 years. On March 1st, they return with Rameau, maître à danser, featuring two rarely seen operas originally penned by 18th-century French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau for the court of Louis XV.
A pastoral atmosphere prevails throughout La naissance d’Osiris, a one-act ballet set to a libretto by Louis de Cahusac commissioned to celebrate the birth of the Duke of Berry, future Louis XVI; Daphnis et Églé tells the story of two lovers ignorant of their own love for each other, charming audiences with its use of classic European dance styles like sarabande, gavotte, gigue, minuet, tambourin, and contredanse.
Both operatic miniatures served as a symbol of the court’s opulence as well as a source of evening entertainment; together, as Rameau, maître à danser, they serve as a sublime showcase for Christie’s singular brilliance and the ravishing power of baroque music. At the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House Mar 1—3. Read more »
While even committed opera enthusiasts can find Beethoven’s Fidelio a chore, a hardy few wonder why we can’t have more Fidelio. Washington Concert Opera maestro had these completists in mind last weekend with a presentation of the original 1805 version of Fidelio, aka Leonore, oder Der Triumph der ehelichen Liebe. Read more »
Washington National Opera continued a focus on recent works this season with Terence Blanchard and Michael Cristofer’s 2013 opera Champion on the life of boxer Emile Griffith.
The opera is relentlessly obvious, a work that repeatedly turns to tired tropes and canned characters to fill up its nearly three hour run time.
Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative, now in its 5th year, keeps the opera flame alight at the Kennedy Center during the long winter stretch between mainstage WNO productions.
Operatic history can be cruel where multiple works with the same subject are concerned
Washington National Opera offered a shellshocked D.C. some much-needed diversion Saturday night, with a new production of La Fille du Regiment.
Cher Public