The earliest days of recording told by F.W. Gaisberg, the man who recorded Patti, Melba, Moreschi, and Tamagno among many others.
Norma returns La Scala this week for the first time in nearly 40 years and parterre box marks the occasion with titular druidess Marina Rebeka singing a bit of Verdi
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).
The Met Orchestra under Yannick Nézet-Séguin surges into summer with a mixed program at Carnegie Hall
Kent Nagano‘s and the Richard-Wagner-Akademie‘s historically informed Ring Cycle takes on Siegfried in Dresden
Not really an opera book but, c’mon, it’s Bach.
Nicky Spence sings the title role in a performance recorded earlier this spring in Cardiff
Gäelle Arquez sings the title role in a live broadcast from Rome
I did not expect Dorothy Kirsten‘s autobiography to be so rewarding a read: I did so twice.
A reminder to relax and refresh this summer by sharing your innermost operatic thoughts for The Talk of the Town
A new recording by the London Symphony Orchestra is the latest landmark in a spring full of Janácek‘s Jenufa
A live broadcast from Venice featuring Anna Caterina Antonacci as Madame de Croissy
parterre box looks forward to the official start of summer tomorrow with a wistfully pointed performance of Samuel Barber‘s “Knoxville: Summer of 1915” by soprano Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha
Yuval Sharon and the American Modern Opera Company meld Monteverdi and George Lewis in a live performance from Lincoln Center
A juicy, guilty pleasure read!
Carmen in Brussels is dramatically vibrant, if vocally stretched
A muted production challenges a talented cast in San Francisco Opera’s Idomeneo
According to the memoirs of Alma Mahler, her third husband, Franz Werfel used to wander around the cafés of Paris with one of his chums, singing arias from obscure Verdi operas at the top of their lungs until the management would ask them to move on.
Chris’s Cache offers an early 80th birthday salute to Jessye Norman with broadcasts of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius, and Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder plus a pair of opera arias by Verdi and Mascagni from a 1979 Atlanta Symphony concert with Robert Shaw.
Giovanni Verga‘s short story (which he adapted as a play with Giuseppe Giacosa) provides the basis for Mascagni‘s famous opera.
A starry concert Aïda in Baltimore proves unusually polished
John Yohalem reports on Catapult Opera’s satiating San Giovanni Battista
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