Questo e Quello
What is surreal, symbolic, and generally mysterious in the dramatic arts can get a bad rap.
Lisette Oropesa sang “The Lost One”—the meaning of “traviata.”
This “new-to-Chicago” production is a sheer pleasure from beginning to end.
Among the goals for my Mixcloud page are more Mozart, and to pay tribute to more of our living legends.
On this day in 539 BC the army of Cyrus the Great of Persia took Babylon.
“Operatic” generally refers to sung drama, but there is another meaning of that term: grandiose, outsize, hysterical.
On this day in 1958 the musical Goldilocks opened at the Lunt Fontanne Theater, to run 161 performances.
Venomous Fishwife Norman Lebrecht now doesn’t know the difference between Anton Chekhov and Konstantin Stanislavsky.
Well that’s a terrible place to start a review, and it’s not quite fair to SFO’s Lucia di Lammermoor, but…
Born on this day in 1813 composer Giuseppe Verdi.
Although the season is less than three weeks old, Metropolitan Opera audiences may hear nothing else this season as beautiful as Peter Mattei’s “Song to the Evening Star.”
Besides the heavens and a sweater in The Devil Wears Prada, it is the hue of Hibla Gerzmava’s soprano, in contrast to the red or rose or red-orange voices of most sopranos.
Lianna Haroutounian will sing the role of Amelia Grimaldi in all performances of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra at the Met this season: April 1, 5, 9 matinee, 13, and 16.”
“The curtain was descending rapidly on the last act of La Traviata, which was sung by the Metropolitan Opera company, when Miss Farrar stepped too far toward the footlights to bow to the audience.”
On this day in 1987, Waltraud Meier made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Fricka in a new production of Das Rheingold.
Three decades before Joyce DiDonato and Juan Diego Flórez dazzled the world with their La donna del lago roadshow, another deluxe team headed by Frederica von Stade and Marilyn Horne shone in Rossini’s neglected masterpiece.
On this day in 1897 Gustav Mahler became director of the Wiener Hofoper.
What gets me, La Cieca snaps, is not so much that Levine bit off more than he could chew, because that’s old news.
“Along with every other music journalist in New York, I was blindsided by this news. If ever there was a company that appeared the picture of fiscal and artistic good health, it was Gotham.”
Which operatic character could be best described as a spider?
On this day in 1982 the musical Cats opened at the Winter Garden Theater, to run 7,485 performances.
If you had told me 20 years ago that at some point in the future I would have over 550 of the Metropolitan Opera’s performances, audio and video, at my command with the touch of a button I would say my eulogy had just been read and I’d been taken to my reward.
On this day in 1889 the Moulin Rouge opened in Paris.
“The anvil scene is enlivened for female members of the audience by the importation of lusty non-singing blacksmiths.”
Tell us: What’s your favorite Verdi performance?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
