Recent Stories
A Wales of a singer
Happy 59th birthday bass-baritone Bryn Terfel
I’ll take the fall
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).
Rise and look around you
My first opera of the new season in Paris, after kicking off in Brussels with Kris Defoort’s thought-provoking The Day of our Singing, was another nearly-new work, totally new to me: Sir George Benjamin’s Picture a day like this.
The new Norma
In a splashy new recording of Norma, Marina Rebeka “is doing something very untoward, and it appears destructive to her voice.” It has Niel Rishoi worried.
Baby Bjoner
Born on this day in 1927 soprano Ingrid Bjoner.
My Verona
It surprises even me how some operas have eluded me in live performance even after lo, these many years. One of them is Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette.
Next to godliness
Washington National Opera rounded out its season opening weekend with a one-night-only performance entitled “Gods & Mortals: A Celebration of Wagner” the evening after the premiere of its new production of Fidelio.
Thunder from down under
Born on this day in 1926 soprano Joan Sutherland
Ainadamar
Miguel Harth-Bedoya leads Angel Blue, Elena Villalón, Daniela Mack, and Alfredo Tejada in Osvaldo Golijov and David Henry Hwang‘s opera
Spanish mains
Andy Knapp recently wrote enthusiastically about a 1973 Met pirate recoding of Il Trovatore starring Montserrat Caballé, Viorica Cortez, Plácido Domingo, and Robert Merrill. Chris’s Cache today shares that recording, as well another Met in-house starring the same soprano, tenor and baritone in Un Ballo in Maschera from several years earlier.
Laufe wie eine Ägypterin
On this day in 1928 the American premiere of Richard Strauss‘s Die Ägyptische Helena at the Met. Maria Jeritza was the Helena.
A Requiem for the Country?
Michael Steinberg on Riccardo Muti, fascism, and who speaks through the collective voice of the Verdi Requiem.
Actress of protest
Ainadamar functions on two levels: as a defiant dance against fascist totalitarianism and as an exaltation of the diva.
A diletti sempre nuovi
On this day in 1883 the Metropolitan Opera presented its very first Traviata. Marcella Sembrich is Violetta
The cheese stands alone
Strike Up the Band! cried the brothers Gershwin (and book-writers George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind) in the first of their three satirical, vaguely political operettas—sort of jazz Gilbert & Sullivan—that they dreamed up in the late 1920s.
Tenue farfalla
A revival of Huang Ruo’s M. Butterfly, a co-production between the Barbican and BBC Symphony Orchestra, landed in London last week.
Pole of the audience
Happy 52nd birthday baritone Mariusz Kwiecien
Mitridate, re di Ponto
A performance from Boston recorded earlier this fall and reviewed here
Norma conquest
Born on this day in 1801 composer Vincenzo Bellini
Andrea Chénier
A performance from Théâtre des Champs-Elysées recorded earlier this month
First things first, I’m the realist
Born on this day in 1906, film, stage and opera director and designer Luchino Visconti
