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.
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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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.
The great Spanish mezzo soprano Teresa Berganza died on May 13 at the age of 89, so Trove Thursday salutes one of its favorites with a pair of dazzling rare live Mozart performances.
Before Wednesday I don’t remember gasping when I entered a concert venue.
A Trove Thursday Mega-Post © featuring the wonderful American soprano Erin Morley in Orff’s Carmina Burana and Richard Strauss’s Brentano Lieder, plus extended live excerpts from Handel’s Orlando, Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail, and Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots.
Trove Thursday offers Ernst Bloch’s 1910 Macbeth featuring Inge Borkh and Nicola Rossi-Lemeni and Hamlet by Ambroise Thomas starring Thomas Allen with Christine Barbaux and Josephine Veasey as the women in his life.
I wonder why many New Yorkers have been led to believe that the only Handel conductor in the world is Harry Bicket.
A motley crew of Piotr Beczala, Ian Bostridge, Anders J. Dahlin, Emiliano Gonzalez Toro, Ernst Häfliger, Jonas Kaufmann, Mark Padmore, Peter Pears, Julian Prégardien, Andreas Schager and Jon Vickers.
The Met’s recent Ariadne auf Naxos and Elektra combo left me wanting more and more Richard Strauss, so Trove Thursday offers a complete Capriccio with Jonas Kaufmann (his one-and-only Flamand) and Christopher Maltman vying for Soile Isokoski.
The Met’s Nabucco revival was an early pandemic casualty and it’s unlikely to be rescheduled anytime soon as its raison d’être has been (at least temporarily) banished, so Trove Thursday programs Verdi’s early success with Rita Hunter, Kostas Paskalis and Ferruccio Furlanetto, plus a cabaletta-quiz in which 15 sopranos tackle “Salgo già!”
Ireland’s Wexford Festival Opera marked its 70th birthday in 2021 by presenting four prima donnas who made important early appearances at the festival in solo recitals across the globe.
Recent discussion about soprano Lise Davidsen has included much speculation about music she might undertake in the future.
Saturday’s performance of Le nozze di Figaro at the Met mined the humor from Mozart’s divine setting of Beaumarchais’s play about a crazy day in the Almaviva household.
Though several other versions have recently been performed and recorded, Handel’s remains the best-known Brockes Passion.
