review / recording
Your favorite box set-aholic here completely missed the release last August of Giuseppe Di Stefano – Complete Decca Recordings in honor of the great tenor’s centenary.
By Patrick Mack
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It’s nice to see Sony Classical backing a serious operatic soprano and not some crossover refugee from Britain’s Got Talent or another syrupy Christmas album from the world’s reigning Heldentenor.
By Patrick Mack
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Sondra Radvanovsky is very special here!
By Niel Rishoi
For those who complain (not entirely unfairly) that Handel operas are “just a string of da capo arias,” I sometimes mutter to myself, “Have they ever tried Rameau?”
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We have two reasons for celebrating Jessye Norman and the first is a release on the BBC / London Philharmonic Orchestra label of a Richard Strauss concert.
By Patrick Mack
The sonic wizards of the Netherlands at Pentatone have released their latest in the series of Maestro Lawrence Foster’s studio opera recordings. Reunited with his Lisbon forces, the Gulbenkian Orquestra and Coro, for a fresh take on Puccini’s three-hanky weeper.
By Patrick Mack
Since my previous CD round-up review the onslaught of solo recital disks of 18th century (and sometimes also 17th) vocal music has continued unabated.
I can’t imagine anyone watching this two-hour schlockfest at home and then dropping $150 for the privilege to see it again, masked and in an uncomfortable chair.
Who’s been hiding tenor Benjamin Bernheim from me all this time?
By Niel Rishoi
Plucked from obscurity by Howard Hughes and sold to the public as a buxom, brunette heir apparent to his former protégé, Jean Harlow, Jane Russell became a household name before she ever shot a single reel of film.
Though the formal recorded aria recital is the ultimate calling card of an artist, the invitation to the spectator to receive, listen, and critically behold of the offerings (on fire or burnt), they are but a souvenir and there are a few drawbacks inherent with the presentation.
By Niel Rishoi
Director Jon M. Chu’s film adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights has come around at exactly the right moment.
This solid if not stellar performance finds our diva in particularly passionate form. Maybe they should have re-titled it Maddalena?
By Patrick Mack
Ombra Compagna, out today on Pentatone, spotlights Lisette Oropesa in 10 of Mozart’s most challenging concert arias accompanied by Il Pomo d’Oro conducted by Antonello Manacorda.
