Questo e Quello
As I mentioned in a previous post, one of my two favorite operas is Les Troyens,
Gather around while I play Ghost of New Year’s Eve past!
Happy 69th birthday to actress Andrea Martin!
Greetings from the Windy City, where I, Opera Teen (not pictured) am at the press conference eagerly awaiting the announcement of Lyric Opera of Chicago’s 2016-2017 season!
“You can’t imagine anyone else writing an opera that sounds like this one, though you devoutly wish someone would.”
Trove Thursday looks forward to spring via Haydn’s beguiling oratorio Die Jahreszeiten (The Seasons) in a splendid rendition from the 1981 Salzburg Festival with Ileana Cotrubas, Francisco Araiza and José van Dam, James Levine conducting.
On this day in 1900 Puccini’s Tosca premiered in Rome.
On this day in 1976 Sarah Caldwell became the first female conductor at the Met.
Two months after my last visit to this season’s sixteen-performance run of Puccini’s Turandot, I returned eager to witness the latest chapter in the sporadic Met career of Nina Stemme. Rising stars Anita Hartig and Alexander Tsymbalyuk also appeared in their roles for the first time at the Met, so Monday evening turned into a…
Born on this day in 1910 actress Luise Rainer.
Even in San Francisco, actions speak louder than words.
WNO premiered Better Gods, an hour-long work by composer Luna Pearl Woolf and librettist Caitlin Vincent on Friday evening.
Pierre Boulez continuously challenged me and totally changed the way I listen to music.
Is Manon Lescaut a cold, clinical tale of the splendors and pitfalls of transactional sex, or is it a romantic Italian opera at its most lush and melodic?
Born on this day in 1755 Alexander Hamilton, first United States Secretary of the Treasury.
Fellow parterrians, my review in the Observer of this year’s PROTOTYPE festival does not appear until Wednesday.
“In the first place,” Human Weasel Norman Lebrecht helpfully clarified, “it was not a gay bar the director wanted but a miners’ bar.”
Happy 81st birthday baritone Sherrill Milnes.
Happy 60th birthday mezzo-soprano Waltraud Meier!
“How does Renée Fleming do it all? She’s smart. She takes Speed! The tiny blue diet pill you don’t have to be overweight to need.”
The Hänsel und Gretel discussions over the holidays plunged me down a YouTube rabbit hole.
On this day in 1981 The Pirates of Penzance opened at the Uris Theater to run 772 performances.
Maria Agresta‘s delicately-acted, sumptuously-sung seamstress transformed what might have been just an average Wednesday night revival into something finer.
Fidelio but with an unhappy ending, Bedrich Smetana’s stirring Dalibor opens 2016’s “Trove Thursday” in a 1968 German-language broadcast from Bavarian Radio.
Tell us: What’s your favorite Verdi performance?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
