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.
On October 14, 1979 I spent my birthday attending my first all-star opera gala, thrilled at the chance to hear some of the great singers I’d only experienced on LPs, broadcasts or via my pirate reel-to-reel tapes.
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Here are another half-dozen past Trove Thursday highlights ahead of my new parterre box live-recording series launching a week from now.
Michael Spyres’s nobly moving Idomeneo wasn’t just a bravura triumph: singing strongly throughout, he brought more colors to his portrayal of the tortured king than I had experienced from others in the Ponnelle production.
Surrounded by security and greeted by a bevy of cameras, Su Majestad la Reina Sofía brought a bit of excitement to an evening that didn’t end up being all that musically rewarding.
After several grueling negotiating sessions, La Cieca and I have agreed that I will continue to periodically share live opera recordings here.
This tenor must be the finest classical singer in the world today.
Trove Thursday, which began on 10 September 2015, is ending today, seven years and 346 installments later.
Trove Thursday previews next week’s BBC Proms presentation of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius with a 2008 broadcast conducted by Colin Davis with Sarah Connolly, Ben Heppner and Gerald Finley.
Trove Thursday teases Michael Spyres’s North American recital debut at the Park Avenue Armory early next month.
From three centuries, three Cleopatras (not to mention Claudette!) grace today’s Trove Thursday podcast.
Monteverdi’s late Homeric masterpiece Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria isn’t often performed in the United States.
Having had many memorable encounters with these characters before, I had been looking forward to encountering them again in an ambitious contemporary Oresteia, but I left the Armory feeling that writer-director Robert Icke just didn’t get it.
This week’s Trove Thursday—Kodály’s Háry János in a 1955 RAI broadcast in Italian led by famed Hungarian conductor Ferenc Fricsay—may be a bit brief as C-19 finally arrived last week chez CC.
Lyric Opera of Chicago opens its new season on September 9 with an all-American Ernani, prompting a Trove Thursday preview with three versions of my favorite early Verdi opera featuring as its unlucky heroine: Leontyne Price, Martina Arroyo and Aprile Millo.
Beverly Sills and Renée Fleming perform 30 years apart the same work with the same orchestra in the same venue!
The always elegant Véronique Gens has recently returned often to her earliest roots in the French baroque.
Since April four wildly varied incarnations of Hamlet have been haunting New York City theaters; the most recent to arrive was Robert Icke’s chicly contemporary take on Shakespeare’s play which opened last week at the Park Avenue Armory.
Trove Thursday presents its own “White Nights Festival” Glinka double bill.
Die Schweigsame Frau, in a Munich performance featuring Kurt Moll, Julie Kaufmann, Francisco Araiza and Wolfgang Rauch conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch.
To conclude its triumphant season, last week the Met Orchestra performed its annual Carnegie Hall concerts under music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin and once again performed superbly.
Trove Thursday presents a delightful pirate recording from the 1983 Pesaro Festival of Rossini’s Il Turco in Italia with a cast headed by three Americans—Trove fav Lella Cuberli, Samuel Ramey and David Kuebler—along with Alessandro Corbelli and Luigi De Corato, conducted by Donato Renzetti.
Trove Thursday’s belated contribution to last weekend’s Platinum Jubilee is a broadcast from Aldeburgh of Benjamin Britten’s Gloriana with Christine Brewer and Tom Randle as Elizabeth and Essex, an opera which premiered 69 years ago yesterday.
To celebrate Valerie Masterson‘s turning 85 tomorrow, Trove Thursday offers a second annual birthday salute to the English soprano.
