All dolled up
When my editor suggested to me a round-up of my favorite recordings of Jacques Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann I was très, très, intrigued.
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Dramatic edge
Happy 65th birthday soprano Maria Guleghina
Macabre fascination
Can György Ligeti‘s only opera be understood as the composer’s own grappling with trauma, death, and memory of a past life?
L’equivoco stravagante
Michele Spotti conducts Maria Barakova, Nicola alaimo, Carles Pachon, and Pietro Adaíni in another live broadcast from Pesaro
Fête-a-fête
Rameau is in the news—at least in France!
Queen of the Nile
Happy 87th birthday stage director Sonja Frisell
Bianca e Falliero
Roberto Abbado conducts Nicolò Donini, Dmitry Korchak, Giorgi Manoshvili, Aya Wakizono, and Jessica Pratt in a live broadcast of the opening of the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro
A vision almost like a prophecy
Folks who have never attended a full-length, uncut Giacomo Meyerbeer grand opera have been known to pout and ponder: Why did the most popular opera composer of the mid-nineteenth century all but vanish from the stages of the world after a hundred years?
Reining supreme
Born on this day in 1903 soprano Maria Reining
Wunschmädchen walten dort hehr
Lise Davidsen will sing Brünhilde in the Met’s new Yuval Sharon-directed and Nézet-Séguin-conducted Ring Cycle starting in 2027-28 and culminating in 2030
The Fairy Queen
Paul Agnew conducts Les Arts Florissants in a live Proms performance featuring Paulina Francisco, Georgia Burashko, Rebecca Leggett, Juliette Mey, Rodrigo Carreto, and Ilja Aksionov
Direct-to-video
As a burgeoning opera fan, I relied on YouTube to connect me with the art form.
Osserva quella cieca
Born on this day in 1954 writer, editor, and parterre creator James Jorden
Don Giovanni
Harry Bicket conducts a performance recorded earlier this summer in Santa Fe featuring Ryan Speedo Green, Rachel Fitzgerald, Rachael Wilson, David Portillo, Nicholas Newton, Liv Redpath, William Guanbo Su, and Soloman Howard
Air and sunlight
Born on this day in 1890 conductor Erich Kleiber
Unforeseen developments
Happy 64th birthday soprano Deborah Voigt
Tancredi
Yi-Chen Lin conducts Anna Goryachova, Antonino Siragusa, Andreas Wolf, Mélissa Petit, and Laura Polverelli in a performance from last month in Bregenz
Brood in Great Britain
Happy 65th birthday baritone Simon Keenlyside
Utterly unique, occasionally off-putting
Chris’s Cache wishes Gundula Janowitz a happy 87th birthday today with three early live broadcasts of a favorite soprano in works by Pergolesi, Haydn, and Schumann.
Nono & Dallapiccola
Maxime Pascal conducts Caroline Wettergreen, Freya Apffelstaedt, Robin Tritschler, Tobias Moretti, Tanja Ariane Baumgartner, Georg Nigl, and John Daszak in a 20th century double bill of Il Canto sospeso and Il prigioniero recorded last week at the Salzburg Festival
Götterdämmerung
Simone Young leads the final 2024 Bayreuth Ring broadcast with Klaus Florian Vogt, Olafur Sigurdarson, Catherine Foster, Michael Kupfer-Radecky, Mika Kares, and Gabriela Scherer
Einen sonderbaren Klang
Happy 87th birthday soprano Gundula Janowitz
Der fliegende Holländer
Oksana Lyniv conducts Michael Volle, Elisabeth Teige, Georg Zeppenfeld, Eric Cutler, Nadine Weissmann, and Matthew Newlin in a live broadcast from Bayreuth
Hier zeige deine Taten
Born on this day in 1926 bass Theo Adam