Christopher Corwin
Christopher Corwin began writing for parterre box in 2011 under the pen name “DeCaffarrelli.” His work has also appeared in The New York Times, Musical America, San Francisco Classical Voice and BAMNotes. Like many, he came to opera via the Saturday Met Opera broadcasts which he began listening to at age 11. His particular enthusiasm is 17th and 18th century opera. Since 2015 he has curated the weekly podcast Trove Thursday on parterre box presenting live recordings.
An acclaimed revival earlier this season of Sebastián Durón’s Coronis (that name, yikes!) reminded me that Trove Thursday has been ignoring baroque zarzuelas.
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Trove Thursday offers a problematic yet fascinating work that would almost certainly not be staged today: Il Guarany by Carlos Gomes featuring João Gibin, Gianna d’Angelo, Piero Cappuccilli and Nicola Zaccaria.
Starry galas are popping up everywhere lately so it’s time for Trove Thursday’s, a challenging panoply trodding mostly off the beaten path—with an S-twist!
Trove Thursday finally welcomes Wagner’s Lohengrin arriving in a concert performance conducted by Georg Solti with Siegfried Jerusalem, Julia Varady, Eva Randová, Hermann Becht, Hans Sotin and Wolfgang Schöne.
Cavalleria Rusticana began Pietro Mascagni’s career with a bang, and despite a number of fine subsequent works the composer never again achieved the same lasting success that he had with his first.
As the late Arlene Saunders had a very limited commercial discography and performed mostly in Europe, I thought some readers might be curious to hear more of her.
Trove Thursday goes mini-epic with Gustave Charpentier’s naturalistic slice-of-life of fin-de-siêcle Paris in a rare 1999 Renée Fleming performance of Louise co-starring Jerry Hadley, Samuel Ramey and Felicity Palmer.
Trove Thursday turns to another epic opera in which the personal and the political intertwine: Prokofiev’s War and Peace.
Congratulations to kankedort who correctly identified 17 of 24 selections!
The competition to guess the identities of 24 sopranos singing “O hehrstes Wunder!” ends tonight, Monday May 11 at midnight EDT.
The final third of this week’s vocal-identification quiz brings together perhaps the most difficult-to-name sopranos offering Sieglinde’s “O hehrstes Wunder!” from Die Walküre.
Many now have scads more time for listening so Trove Thursday will offer several epic operas during May beginning with Rossini’s Guillaume Tell (this week aka Guglielmo Tell) in a concert performance featuring Giuseppe Taddei in the title role and Teresa Zylis-Gara and Franco Bonisolli as the war-crossed lovers.
Today’s installment of parterre box’s latest vocal-identification quiz brings eight more Sieglindes proclaiming “O hehrstes Wunder!”
For an ecstatic outburst lasting less than a minute I swiftly gathered up an exaltation of Sieglindes from live performances spanning nearly 80 years. In fact, there were so many I decided to split up the quiz into three parts.
Two of the leading postwar Czech sopranos appear together in Janacek’s Kát’a Kabanová when Trove Thursday presents Gabriela Benacková‘s gleaming heroine in her US debut relentlessly persecuted by Nadjezhda Kniplová’s implacable mother-in-law.
Trove Thursday completes its Prévost–trifecta with Puccini’s Manon Lescaut starring Sondra Radvanovsky and (pre-Met) Aleksandrs Antonenko conducted by Riccardo Chailly plus an added Radvanovsky-Puccini bonus: Suor Angelica.
Last night should have seen my favorite of this season’s revivals but instead Trove Thursday must step up with Jean-Marie Leclair’s irresistibly captivating Scylla et Glaucus conducted by Christophe Rousset.
While isolated opera-lovers intently navigate the deluge of streaming videos being made available, I’ve been listening rather than viewing.
While Harry Rose finishes his senior thesis on Gabriele d’Annunzio, Trove Thursday joins in his fascination with Dante’s damned adulteress with two settings (both from Amsterdam!) of Francesca da Rimini.
One of the more unfortunate losses from the Met’s closure is its revival of Simon Boccanegra, so Trove Thursday steps up with a 1975 Berlin performnace of Verdi’s dark masterpiece with Ingvar Wixell, Gundula Janowitz, José van Dam and Bruno Prevedi.
One Met casualty this spring is Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda so Trove Thursday fills in with a triple-header.
When La Cieca reached out asking for content, I resurrected a hoary standby—the vocal ID quiz.
Stephen Sondheim turns 90 on Sunday, prompting Trove Thursday to present his most “operatic” work, Sweeney Todd, in a rare 2002 performance with Christine Baranski and Brian Stokes Mitchell as the murderous duo.
