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.
The deadline for submitting answers to last week’s Ernani Vocal ID Quiz is tonight, Monday 30 March at midnight, EDT.
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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.
Trove Thursday couldn’t wait until Passover to offer Mendelssohn’s Elijah featuring two of my favorite singers, Gabriela Benacková and José van Dam, joined by Florence Quivar, Francisco Araiza and Thomas Moser.
We are in the midst of a titanic Beethoven onslaught prompted by the unstoppable need to commemorate the composer’s upcoming 250th birthday.
Later this month Asmik Grigorian will star in Covent Garden’s new Jenufa, which Trove Thursday anticipates presenting the acclaimed Lithuanian soprano in a broadcast from 2014 of Tchaikovsky’s rare opera The Enchantress (Charodeyka).
I never imagined I’d see such a rote park-and-bark Wagner production created in 2020!
After tonight’s dark drab dud of a Dutchman, I was plunged into despair.
Although I usually pretend that I don’t have the diva-worship gene, sharp-eyed readers of parterre box will know that since I joined the site in 2011 as “DeCaffarrelli” I have often swooned as an Ann Hallenberg-fanboi.
Trove Thursday previews Massenet’s Werther—due to return next month at the Met—with a 1984 Paris performance starring two marvelous protagonists, Tatiana Troyanos and Alain Vanzo.
Sunday is Handel’s 335th birthday, an event Trove Thursday celebrates with Rodelinda, Regina de’Longobardi, one of the composer’s most popular works.
By an astounding coincidence, on Monday night Handel’s third and fourth extant operas were being performed simultaneously across the street from each other at Lincoln Center.
Today’s Trove Thursday was originally scheduled for February 27, which would have been Mirella Freni’s 85th birthday, but instead we remember today the beloved soprano who passed away this past weekend in Puccini.
Handel’s biting Agrippina finally arrived at the Metropolitan Opera Thursday evening 310 years after its Venetian premiere.
Trove Thursday celebrates Leontyne Price’s 93rd birthday on Sunday with a pair of her rarest collaborations with Herbert von Karajan: Bruckner’s Te Deum with Hilde Rössl-Majdan, Fritz Wunderlich and Walter Berry and Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem alongside José van Dam.
Michael Spyres as Faust, despite a few flickers of indisposition, was nearly ideal.
Otto Nicolai’s Il Templario with Juan Diego Flórez, Clémentine Margaine and Luca Salsi.
Elina Garanca’s glorious Marguerite transformed La Damnation de Faust into the Met’s first essential must-see of the year.
Trove Thursday marks Mozart’s 264th birthday on Sunday with the 14-year-old’s remarkable opera seria Mitridate, Re di Ponto .
Ultimately, the unrelenting grimness of the subject matter allied to the sameness of the vocal writing made for a wearying evening.
Trove Thursday offers a rare third retelling of the saga of the ill-fated courtesan: Auber’s Manon Lescaut starring Mariella Devia.
Rosa Feola immediately established with her first group that she’s a serious artist who brought to the concert format both a warmly appealing coppery soprano as well as detailed and savvy dramatic instincts.
Anticipating the work’s return to the Met after more than a decade, Trove Thursday presents La Damnation de Faust in a 1959 broadcast featuring Régine Crespin, Nicolai Gedda and Ernest Blanc under the fine Berlioz conductor Igor Markevitch.
