“Non mi dispiace” seemed to be the general consensus in the loggione December 7 when Verdi’s Attila came roaring into La Scala to open the 2018-19 season. Read more »
Harry Rose
“Having just the vision’s no solution.”
Though a number like “I’m Still Here” might fall into the trap of camp performance, a deeper look at the structure of the song says a good deal about Sondheim’s postmodern tendencies. In a way, Carlotta is just another example of a Sondheim character whose narrative is presented that of failure in life. Read more »
Celebrated conductor William Christie, widely considered among the foremost interpreters of early-music for modern audiences, and his acclaimed ensemble Les Arts Florissants have delighted audiences at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) for 30 years. On March 1st, they return with Rameau, maître à danser, featuring two rarely seen operas originally penned by 18th-century French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau for the court of Louis XV.
A pastoral atmosphere prevails throughout La naissance d’Osiris, a one-act ballet set to a libretto by Louis de Cahusac commissioned to celebrate the birth of the Duke of Berry, future Louis XVI; Daphnis et Églé tells the story of two lovers ignorant of their own love for each other, charming audiences with its use of classic European dance styles like sarabande, gavotte, gigue, minuet, tambourin, and contredanse.
Both operatic miniatures served as a symbol of the court’s opulence as well as a source of evening entertainment; together, as Rameau, maître à danser, they serve as a sublime showcase for Christie’s singular brilliance and the ravishing power of baroque music. At the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House Mar 1—3. Read more »
“Camping” with Follies.
Though composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim’s works are famous for their structural and modular diversity, a closer look at their elements of cultural criticism embedded in each work give insight into philosophical and structural undercurrents that stay consistent through his career, chiefly camp and postmodernism. Read more »
Patrice Chéreau‘s Elektra brims with ideas beyond its eschewing of the opera’s standard, hysterical trappings.
Lohengrin descended upon the Wiener Staatsoper this month like American college students to Oktoberfest: loudly, spastically, not especially coherent, and in full lederhosen and dirndls.
The whole performance reminded me of what Butterfly as I have never known it, but often herad about it, can be.
Logistically, a large-scale revival of the operas of Giacomo Meyerbeer is an unreasonable request, much less an expectation.
Uneven operas, like Verdi’s Ernani, which just recently finished its Scala run, more often work as theatre on the micro level than the macro.
Cher Public