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, The Observer, 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.
Although she didn’t sing that eponymous song by Reynaldo Hahn at Weill Recital Hall Thursday evening, Sabine Devieilhe did offer an “exquisite hour” of early 20th century French songs.
If I had to live with just one Tchaikovsky opera, it would be Iolanta.
When a work is named for its lovers one might legitimately expect that pair to dominate its performance but in my experience that is never the case with Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande.
“Trove Thursday” offers a recent broadcast of one of his best-known but rarely performed operas, Il Mitridate Eupatore.
Though barely a week old, 2019 has already provided New Yorkers with an essential, breathtaking music drama focusing on two women struggling for their very survival.
Claude Debussy wrote a number of large-scale vocal/choral pieces two of which are featured today on “Trove Thursday”: La Damoiselle élue and Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien.
Use bodily force and get your friends to one of the next five performances of the Met’s new production of Adriana Lecouvreur. It is everything!
We close 2018 with Le Comte Ory with an enviable nearly all-Italian cast of prime-time Rossini specialists: Mariella Devia, Cecila Bartoli, Ewa Podles, William Matteuzzi, Claudio Desderi and Pietro Spagnoli.
Heretofore I’d avoided the Met’s abridged, English-language holiday presentations.
Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel in an unusual broadcast conducted by Herbert von Karajan featuring Sena Jurinac and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf as the mischievous pair—performing in Italian!
French early music group Ensemble Correspondances offered two of the year’s very best concerts.
The long evening didn’t achieve the degree of celebration it should have.
Here’s a quick sprint through some recent (and a few maybe not-so-very-recent) Handel CDs that have been stacking up.
Four fine Handel-centric concerts from the Morgan Library to Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center proved a bracing antidote to pervasive Messiah-mania.
L’Arlesiana in a vibrant live performance from a dozen years ago with Giuseppe Filianoti, Latonia Moore and Marianne Cornetti.
Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov must be Russian’s most iconic opera and “Trove Thursday” presents it with Claudio Abbado leading an impressive team.
Tuesday the Met unveils its sixth new production of La Traviata since moving to Lincoln Center.
“Trove Thursday” marks St. Cecilia’s Day with two works by Henry Purcell, the composer who often celebrated music’s patron saint.
Alexander Birch Elliott‘ s dynamic if gauche Zurga added some pizzazz to an otherwise bland evening.
“The heavens are telling” begins the famous chorus that ends the first section of The Creation.
Two of today’s most compelling divas tackle a hair-raising early 20th century German masterpiece for “Trove Thursday.”
Just over a month ago the great Catalan soprano Montserrat Caballé died at age 85.
Throughout the evening I couldn’t help thinking that this1870s Biblical epic of erotic obsession and penance was what the Met should have been doing this fall rather than its misbegotten Samson et Dalila.
“Trove Thursday” keeps the evil deeds going this All Saints’s Day with a vintage La Scala broadcast of Arrigo Boito’s only completed opera Mefistofele.
Tell us: What’s your favorite Verdi performance?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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