Ivy Lin searches for a slam dunk version of Elvira’s Mad Scene from I puritani in the latest “Perspectives on an Aria.”
It began with charming modesty.
Les Contes d’Hoffmann is something of a puzzle in which some of the pieces are missing and others been altered to fit since Offenbach died before he could complete and revise the work.
Yes, there were other Giocondas if not of quite the same distinction. Chronologically…
These are my findings and opinions (and I welcome rebuttals)!
Lawrence Brownlee and Michael Spyres are two singers at the top of their game, as this concert showed, virtually peerless in music as punishing as it is pretty.
Nathan Hull was an operatic Quixote who did not go it alone, but inspired bands of optimists, giving proper employment to the many worthy New Yorkers mad enough to study voice and pleasure rare elsewhere to those of us thrilled to take it in.
Somewhere in all of this, I decided it was time to try Callas.
Records will save us.
Leyla Gencer: The very name is exotic. She was an artist of Turkish ancestry who, during the 1950s and 60s, held her own despite the presence of Maria Callas, Renata Tebaldi, Renata Scotto, Montserrat Caballe, and Magda Olivero, all of whom shared roles in her repertoire. Ironically, Gencer has a number of important credits attached…
[This article originally appeared in the print zine precursor to this site, one of a series of surveys of live recordings by critic Leila de Lakmé.] Leyla Gencer. The very name is exotic. She was an artist of Turkish ancestry who, during the 1950s and 60s, held her own despite the presence of Maria Callas,…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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