As most of you probably know, I worship at the altar of Moffo the way some worship Callas. She has so many great complete recordings, including Falstaff, Luisa Miller, Lucia, Rigoletto, etc. But one of her very best is this Nozze. Carlo Maria Giulini leads an absolutely perfect cast.
Nadine Sierra, Javier Camarena, and Artur Rucinski lead a live broadcast from Barcelona.
I was so beguiled by Erika Baikoff when I saw her perform at the Sag Harbor Song Festival back in September. Such a lovely and musical voice that just flows and when she sang this, she got mid-note applause during the final sustained B.
Sometimes–to negotiate the High Gee!s, as it were–you just need to call in Edda Moser.
A performance recorded in November at the Metropolitan Opera
Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, Paris 1980: Georg Solti, Lucia Popp, José Van Dam, Gundula Janowitz, Gabriel Bacquier, Frederica Von Stade.
Baroque specialist Ottavio Dantone leads a live video broadcast from the Teatro Alighieri in Ravenna
Sing High, Sing Low – My favorite Fiordiligi
I’ve shared this before but this is one of the most perfect pieces of Mozart singing and acting I’ve ever come across.
At the time of the recording’s release, Kathleen Battle was getting established.
Instead of giving laurels to a performance already praised since a long time, my choice will be Don Giovanni, Metropolitan Opera, May 2023.
Musically speaking, Così fan tutte is my favorite opera by Mozart, but not necessarily in terms of its dramaturgy
Eleanor Steber shows us how it’s done.
Edita Gruberova as Donn’Anna — “Crudele? Ah no, mio bene … Non mi dir”
Lorraine Hunt Lieberson sings Mozart’s great K 523, ‘Abendempfindung an Laura’ live at Ravinia with Peter Serkin, August 2004
The celebrated Austrian director, known for his picturesque and conservative stagings, was 94.
For many opera lovers of the Baby Boomer generation, German bass Kurt Moll (1938-2017) was Sarastro, exuding wisdom and kindness through his unaffected bearing and incomparably rich, homogeneous sound.
Così is an almost post-modern opera, in that it mocks the bourgeois construction of ‘love’ as a socially-sanctioned precursor to matrimony.
A new play by Peter Danish opening at New York’s New World Stages in March will reimagine a meeting between Leonard Bernstein and Herbert von Karajan
On 23 July 1986, almost certainly more people simultaneously experienced a Mozart aria than ever had before or since when Arleen Auger sang at Andrew and Fergie‘s wedding.
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).
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