Wendy Escambia


Orlando is the first of three Händel operas based Orlando Furioso, Ariosto’s 15th-century adaptation of the 12-century poem, Chanson de Roland, the other two operas being Alcina and Ariodante. This epic tale of heroism, love, reason and madness also served as the basis for operas by Lully, Vivaldi, Haydn and Scarlatti. In fact, Händel based…

on January 05, 2012 at 6:00 PM

I’ve had this DVD sitting in my apartment for literally months – mea culpa, La – and I finally got around to watching Mark Adamo’s opera Little Women last weekend. Commissioned by the Houston Grand Opera, the piece received almost unanimous critical and popular acclaim when it premiered in 1998. This DVD was recorded for…

on February 28, 2011 at 10:51 AM

Decca has released a remarkable performance of Massenet’s great romantic tragedy Werther. Filmed live in January 2010, this performance stands out primarily for the great singing and dramatic vitality of the principals, particularly the remarkable Werther of Jonas Kaufmann. It is rare to hear a tenor voice with this much heft, body and color phrase…

on January 19, 2011 at 10:23 AM

In Measha Brueggergosman‘s newest DG release, “Night Songs…” Oh… sorry! That was Renée Fleming‘s beautiful 2001 Decca release of similar (occasionally overlapping) material. Let me try that again. “In the Still of Night…” Oh… sorry! That was Anna Netrebko‘s voluptuous CD of Russian songs released earlier this year. 

on October 25, 2010 at 11:34 AM

James Levine: Celebrating 40 Years at the Met includes not only unreleased video performances on DVD but also live radio broadcasts on CD.  This performance is one of the latter,  originally heard April 19, 2003. The Rake’s Progress has one of the greatest operatic pedigrees of all time.  It was inspired by a series of…

on August 27, 2010 at 10:02 AM

Richard Strauss’s brilliantly disturbing Elektra was first performed at the Dresden State Opera in 1909, and arrived in America in 1910 at the Manhattan Opera House.  A second American premiere, this time in the original German, was in Philadelphia in 1931 with – and this will kill you – Nelson Eddy as Orestes. Along with…

on August 22, 2010 at 8:45 PM

This live CD of Wagner orchestral excerpts and the Wesendonck Lieder is noteworthy for the conducting of Franz Welser-Most and the truly remarkable playing of The Cleveland Orchestra. I have seldom heard an ensemble sound so beautiful on CD. The strings shimmer like satin, the reeds are clean and clear, the brass warm and burnished with…

on August 19, 2010 at 3:57 PM

On the occasion of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s 85th Birthday, TDK has re-released performances of Schubert’s “Die schöne Müllerin” and “Winterreise” as a two-DVD boxed set. “Winterreise” was recorded without an audience at Siemensvilla, Berlin in January 1979, and is the earlier and more robust of the two performances. “Die schöne Müllerin” was taped over a decade…

on July 01, 2010 at 11:16 AM

The subtitle for Il crociato in Egitto, the last of Meyerbeer’s great Italian operas, is “Historic Melodrama in Two Acts,” and boy is it!  A melodrama, I mean. I’m not sure about the historic part.

on May 18, 2010 at 3:18 PM

Reviewing a CD of someone you have never heard live is always a dicey proposition. As we all know, a voice sounds very different in a big hall than it does up-close and personal. So if Marc Hervieux is your favorite new tenor, please don’t put me in the “crosshairs” just yet. I freely admit…

on May 04, 2010 at 11:23 AM

When I saw this CD was coming out my first thought was, “Why?” We already have brilliant recordings of  “Die Schöne Müllerin” from artists like Fritz Wunderlich, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, et. al.

on March 26, 2010 at 10:53 AM

I have heard Gerald Finley live and enjoyed his singing immensely. He possesses a strong, resonant, lyric baritone, even of scale and beautiful of timbre. His biggest successes to date have been creating the roles of Oppenheimer in John Adams‘ Dr. Atomic and Harry in Mark-Anthony Turnage‘s The Silver Tassie. He includes selections from both…

on March 19, 2010 at 4:20 PM

I have to confess that I overheard that line during the intermission of the Met’s new production of Amboise Thomas’s seldom-performed Hamlet based on Shakespeare’s oft-performed play. I couldn’t have said it better myself. 

on March 18, 2010 at 12:05 PM

A Little Night Music at the Walter Kerr last night left me longing for a little more than we were given. Yes, there are some wonderful things about this revival of Stephen Sondheim’s most unabashedly romantic musical – and I’ll get to those in a minute – but the sets and costumes by David Farley…

on January 06, 2010 at 3:28 PM

The life of Dmitri Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk is almost as melodramatic as that of its heroine. Composed in the early 1930’s, the opera was well received at its 1934 Leningrad premiere, and was also a success in Moscow a couple of years later. Then one evening Stalin came to see it and…

on November 08, 2009 at 10:59 AM
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