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Eli Jacobson inaugurates parterre box’s new “Perspectives on the Aria” feature with a deep dive into Leonore’s “Abscheulicher!” from Beethoven’s Fidelio which returns to the Metropolitan Opera tomorrow with the Met’s current dramatic soprano star Lise Davidsen as Leonore.
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Unfortunately, Barbara Haveman does not perform very much anymore and she did not leave many recordings.
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Pick a little, talk a little
Following the successful launch of the new regular feature The Talk of the Town in January, the team at the box is inviting contributions for a new quarter of operatic potpourri.
My parents- heroes that they were- used to drive me to Tower Records in Piccadilly Circus (RIP, to both the store and while we’re here, to my parents) after dinner on my birthday, to take advantage of the fact that it was open until midnight.
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A 2010 broadcast documenting Yannick Nézet-Séguin‘s Metropolitan Opera debut performances
Corinne Winters and Karita Mattila lead a performance recorded last month in London
Many of us of a certain age had the good luck to see Benita Valente frequently at the Met. My memory is that she was treated rather like a house singer at first, and only later was appreciated for her extraordinary gifts.
Following the successful launch of the new regular feature The Talk of the Town in January, the team at the box is inviting contributions for a new quarter of operatic potpourri.
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Wanna write for us? We’re accepting pitches.
Parterre Box welcomes pitches from all interested writers—even those not endowed quite as pictured.
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Ahead of Natalie Dessay‘s adieu to classical music and upcoming American turn, parterre box offers a sample of her in Gounod‘s “Jewel Song” recorded just last year.
Mussorgsky‘s Khovanshchina is one of the most gripping operatic political dramas ever written, with lots of gorgeous melodies and superb choral writing.
Opera San José (OSJ) is continuing the second half of its 41st season with a company premiere of Béla Bartók’s Symbolist opera Bluebeard’s Castle (A kékszakállú herceg vára), with a libretto by his friend and poet Béla Balázs, and OSJ truly spared no effort to make the occasion a memorable one.
Sitting in Park Avenue Armory last week for the American debut of baritone Konstantin Krimmel, the rush of joy I felt was two-fold.
Great score; let anyone but Jeremy Sams concoct a new libretto!
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No Leos Janácek operas have turned up this month among the works we’d like to see at the Met, so Chris’s Cache corrects that omission with live recordings of two of the composer’s most compelling operas (performed in English).
It used to be proverbial on the Met Opera Quiz, usually quoted by quiz master Edward Downes: “If you can’t remember where a certain plot event occurs … it happens in La Gioconda.”
My first introduction to Béla Bartók’s one-act opera Bluebeard’s Castle was the musicologist Susan McClary’s infamous book Feminine Endings. Here, McClary likened her search of a feminist musicology to Judith’s journey through the seven doors; a journey that ends in Judith’s symbolic death.
I know that there is no chance that Met will ever do this since they have decided to focus on contemporary opera at the expense of reviving older works. Still it has some of Donizetti’s most moving and striking moments. The plot is so over the top gothic that it could still be quite effective.
Following the peek at Asmik Grigorian‘s attempt, parterre box humbly offers an in-house snippet of Federica Lombardi‘s “Casta Diva” from a few blocks over on the Ringstrasse
