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.
Chris’s Cache begins 2023 with a pair of bel canto operas featuring two artists soon to make their Met debuts: Sabine Devieilhe in the title role of Donizetti’s La Fille du regiment and Xabier Anduaga driving Lisette Oropesa crazy in Bellini’s I Puritani.
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Lohengrin, one of my favorite Wagner operas, has been missing from the Met since 2006! For holiday listening and to prepare for its 26 February return, Chris’s Cache offers four interesting versions spanning nearly 40 years.
Diva November meets Wagner December when Chris’s Cache this week offers Régine Crespin as both Elisabeth in Tannhäuser and Senta in Der Fliegende Holländer via a pair of American pirates from the 1960s.
For those who relish 17th and 18th century vocal music, the annual visits to the Morgan Library by the singers and instrumentalists of the Boston Early Music Festival invariably guarantee delight
Wrapping up Diva November, Chris’s Cache offers two sacred works that couldn’t be more unalike.
The film of The Hours failed to effectively weave together the novel’s trio of threads of interiority about suicide and secondarily literary creation. I wondered if an opera would stand a better chance at achieving that? Based on Tuesday’s diva-encrusted stage premiere of Kevin Puts and Greg Pierce’s The Hours, its creators didn’t pull it off either.
No one who followed Trove Thursday will be surprised that Diva November on Chris’s Cache today features Ann Hallenberg and Sandrine Piau.
Diva November on Chris’s Cache continues with a half dozen of my favorite singers performing solo concert works you’ve likely never heard them in before: Janet Baker, Cecilia Bartoli, Cathy Berberian, Bernarda Fink, Elina Garanca and Jessye Norman in music by Haydn, Monteverdi, Schoenberg, Wagner, Porpora and Beethoven.
Diva November continues with three favorite divas in rare recordings of important 20th century works.
The magazine to which I no longer subscribe has for years celebrated divas each November; Chris’s Cache follows suit offering favorite sopranos and mezzos in live-performance rarities every Tuesday this month.
Chris’s Cache offers Le Siège de Corinthe, the later French version of Maometto II, with Katia Ricciarelli, Martine Dupuy, Curtis Rayam and Ferruccio Furlanetto.
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.
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.
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