Nina Stemme’s Elektra is familiar to me in three different incarnations.
The Albanian soprano Ermonela Jaho is surely the reason that Covent Garden has made a commercial release of this “Live to Cinemas” relay from March of 2017.
I count myself as privileged to have witnessed Götterdämmerungat the Royal Opera House during this season’s revival of Keith Warner’s Ring.
This revival of Phyllida Lloyd’s 2002 Macbeth production was probably the most anticipated event of the Royal Opera House 2017/2018 season, due mostly to Anna Netrebko’s return to Covent Garden after a three-year absence.
Even those of us who consider Guillaume Tell Rossini’s greatest opera understand why it has not been his most frequently staged.
“Semiramide—a better opera than this dude expected!”
The second DVD/Blu-ray with Plácido Domingo as Verdi’s other beleaguered Doge, Francesco in I due Foscari.
“Trove Thursday” celebrates the thrilling Finnish soprano Karita Matilla in the ultimate diva role.
The debate over live transmissions of opera to cinemas in HD isn’t going to go away.
“Take a good deal of trouble with it, because it is a fine subject, delicate and full of pathos.”
Sometimes when you find the club that will have you as a member, you do not easily give up your spot.
Berlioz apparently couldn’t decide if his was an oratorio or an opera, so he labeled it a “légende dramatique.” Since its 1846 Paris premiere, it remains on both opera stages and in concert halls, with its first Met staging in 1906.
Sunday afternoon’s all-Richard Strauss concert served as a de facto commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the debut of Renée Fleming, long one of the house’s biggest stars.
Is Manon Lescaut a cold, clinical tale of the splendors and pitfalls of transactional sex, or is it a romantic Italian opera at its most lush and melodic?
Enthusiasm is contagious–you have to cover up carefully lest it make you sick.
Angela Gheorghiu‘ s idiosyncratically alluring, sometimes maddening, always fascinating Floria Tosca inevitably became the evening’s unmissable raison d’être.
What gets me, La Cieca snaps, is not so much that Levine bit off more than he could chew, because that’s old news.
There is a simple elegance to the single-composer recital album format. For the listener in the mood for, say, Puccini, it’s a chance to delve into his music without any pesky interruptions by those other guys like Verdi or Massenet. And if one is also in the mood for a particular singer’s art, then the…
The studio opera recording is a rare beast these days and its arrival always a cause for celebration.
Contemporary stagings of Parsifal tend to be spare, abstract affairs scrubbed of religious associations, knights in armor and, sometimes, a grail.
Whenever opera-lovers are canvassed about what neglected operas they hunger to see revived, the resulting lists inevitably feature a goodly number of grand operas, those once wildly popular monstrosities–particularly by Meyerbeer–written primarily for Paris in the mid-19th century.
The Salzburg Festival has long had the image of this place where for a little over a month, the very best singers are brought together with the very best conductors and the very best directors to create the very best productions the opera world has to offer.
When Norman Lebrecht is declaring on an almost daily basis that classical music is dead, it’s perhaps heartening that four of today’s prominent tenors have recently released what might be called fluff/vanity albums.
The experience of watching Wagner’s final opera Parsifal is frequently elevated to a spiritual occurrence, and productions have historically emphasized the religious dimension of the opera’s core themes of redemption and the dangers of temptation.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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