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.
Trove Thursday offers two very different live recordings of Halévy’s grand opera La Juive.
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Lawrence Brownlee “Rising” at Carnegie Hall
Tenor Lawrence Brownlee, “one of the most in-demand opera singers in the world today” (NPR), performs an anticipated program of newly commissioned works with texts drawn from great Black authors and poets of the Harlem Renaissance. Thursday, March 23 at Carnegie Hall. (Photo: Zakiyah Caldwell Burroughs)
A snarky commentator might dub last night at the Met “Boris of the divo hair flip” but that would do a disservice to a serious, often effective performance of the challenging original version of Mussorgsky’s masterpiece.
Trove Thursday joins with those who prayed for opera to reopen worldwide for two broadcasts—more than fifty years apart–of Janacek’s stunning Glagolitic Mass, one conducted by Robert Shaw featuring Martina Arroyo, the other with Asmik Grigorian (pictured) led by rising American Karina Canellakis.
Anticipating Chicago’s prima donna-debut weekend and with apologies to Dorothy Bishop (not pictured), Trove Thursday mounts its own “Dozen Divas Show.”
This week Trove Thursday presents Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride in three stirring broadcasts starring Rita Gorr, Gré Brouwenstijn and Sena Jurinac
Important European revivals this season would like to return Nicola Porpora to the remarkable prominence he held during the first half of the 18th century. Trove Thursday argues his case with a “pirate” recording of Polifemo featuring Franco Fagioli in a star performance along with Xavier Sabata (pictured), Laura Aikin, Mary-Ellen Nesi and Christian Senn.
In anticipation of the Met’s reopening performance on September 11, another serving of pandemic-hoarding arrives on Trove Thursday with 10 rare live performances of the Verdi Requiem’s concluding “Libera me.”
Trove Thursday sends best wishes to Michael Tilson Thomas, currently recovering from a recent surgery to remove a brain tumor, and presents him in a broadcast leading the UK premiere of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Mlada with Makvala Kasrashvili, Felicity Palmer, Jon Frederic West and Sergei Leiferkus.
Trove Thursday returns to vocal works of Gustav Mahler!
As Tokyo’s games wind down, Trove Thursday’s are just beginning with settings of L’Olimpiade, an important Metastasio libretto, by Giovanni Pergolesi and Domenico Cimarosa, both featuring gold-medal mezzo Anna Bonitatibus.
Like many composers of his generation, Ernest Chausson was enthralled by Wagner and he too turned to legend for his only opera, one that would consume him for final decade of his brief life.
Joan of Arc inspired many splendid works of art including Tchaikovsky’s Orleanskaya Deva which Trove Thursday presents today in a 1975 broadcast featuring the great Russian mezzo Irina Arkhipova and her husband tenor Vladislav Piavko.
Last night, for the first time in nearly a year and a half, opera returned to Lincoln Center.
Trove Thursday previews Bard Summerscape’s upcoming production of Ernest Chausson’s Le Roi Arthus with a recent Paris broadcast conducted by Philippe Jordan featuring the doomed love triangle portrayed by Sophie Koch, Roberto Alagna and Thomas Hampson.
Live opera returns to Lincoln Center when Teatro Nuovo presents Il Barbiere di Siviglia on July 27 and 28.
Lately I’ve been loving listening to Régine Crespin, prompting Trove Thursday to celebrate the great French soprano with private in-house recordings of two of her important non-Met North American appearances.
Celebrating Independence Day didn’t seem like a great idea in recent years, but for hope-filled 2021 Trove Thursday offers El Capitan, John Philip Sousa’s best-known operetta.
Trove Thursday celebrates Pride with a Bible-based homoerotic sort-of opera not by the guy who wrote “Depuis le jour”: Charpentier’s David et Jonathas with Mark Padmore, Laurent Naouri and Jaël Azzaretti led by Emmanuelle Haïm.
March 2, 2020 – June 18, 2021: Those 15 months were the longest I’ve gone without attending a live opera performance since high school.
Were Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Horne 20th century opera’s ultimate same-sex pairing?
As New Yorkers swelter in the Fahrenheit 90s. Trove Thursday escapes to wintry Vienna 1920s for Richard Strauss’s Intermezzo (in English) sumptuously conducted by Julius Rudel and starring the incomparable Elisabeth Söderström as the delicious, exasperating wife of Alan Titus.
The lovely English soprano Valerie Masterson turns 84 today, prompting Trove Thursday to present her in a pair of her specialties.
Teresa Stratas turned 83 yesterday and Trove Thursday features one of the recent past’s most interesting yet frustrating artists in two rare broadcasts.
Quarantining during COVID dramatically increased my compulsion to collect and compare interpretations.
