The superb 1958 Bayreuth Lohengrin, under the wonderful Cluytens.
I suppose Der fliegende Holländer is my favorite Wagner opera — a riveting masterpiece from start to finish, dramatically and musically.
In the 1847 version of Macbeth, the forces of Teatro Nuovo lacked the thunderous punch this music can pack, but provided a pleasant ride
There were, of course, other Chénier recordings beyond the truly great ones…
The worst criticism perhaps was the gleeful Schadenfreude noting Edita’s voice wasn’t as under her command as it used to be.
“Met’s Roller Coaster Season Dips Back Into Artistic Basement with Walküre“
Wagner’s Ring is an artistic masterpiece that is peerless in its ability to continually reveal layers of musical, theatrical, and philosophical insight
“Trove Thursday” leaps to the end of the cycle with a slightly abridged Götterdämmerung featuring Amy Shuard as Brünnhilde.
This Sony Classical set of live performances covers a golden quarter century in the singing and staging of Wagner. Birgit Nilsson shared it with many other legends, and many of them appear on these discs.
“Trove Thursday” presents a live Tristan 2 concert featuring one of my favorite dramatic sopranos. Gertrude Grob-Prandl.
In the midst of Tosca month “Trove Thursday” assembles from the 60s to the 80s an Il Trittico in which each opera features an important Italian star.
Today’s offering is an electric performance of Verdi’s early potboiler Attila conducted by Giuseppe Sinopoli.
There has been a conspicuous absence of chat on Parterre about this year’s Bayreuther Festspiele.
This week, I offer you a classic rendition of Richard Strauss’ tale of the House of Atreus starring Ursula Schröder-Feinen, Astrid Varnay, Leonie Rysanek, Theo Adam, and Hans Hopf under Karl Böhm’s direction.
“I will never sing the role again. It was frightful. We were a set of madwomen…There is nothing beyond Elektra. We have lived and reached the furthest boundaries in dramatic writing for the voice with Wagner. But Richard Strauss goes beyond him. His singing voices are lost. We have come to a full stop.”
Fidelio but with an unhappy ending, Bedrich Smetana’s stirring Dalibor opens 2016’s “Trove Thursday” in a 1968 German-language broadcast from Bavarian Radio.
One Saturday afternoon during my freshman year in college, Richard Strauss’s Elektra made me fall in love with Ursula Schröder-Feinen—or maybe vice versa.
I am certain that we Parterrians are a very literate, even literary, group.
What better way to welcome Halloween than with that scariest of all operas, Salome, in a performance culled from one of Mike Richter‘s magnificent CD-ROMs?
I got quite a surprise when I opened the latest packet of goodies from La Cieca – a DVD of Orphée aux Enfers, but in German as Orpheus in der Unterwelt.
The Met’s 1979 telecast of Mahagonny exposed one of the lesser-known factors contributing to the demise of disco: the global supply of eye shadow, rouge and lip gloss was exhausted for the next decade by a cast featuring Klara Barlow, Louise Wohlafka, Nedda Casei, Gwynn Cornell, Joann Grillo and Isola Jones—and stilettos, garter belts and…
This live CD of Wagner orchestral excerpts and the Wesendonck Lieder is noteworthy for the conducting of Franz Welser-Most and the truly remarkable playing of The Cleveland Orchestra. I have seldom heard an ensemble sound so beautiful on CD. The strings shimmer like satin, the reeds are clean and clear, the brass warm and burnished with…
A new CD set of Der Ring des Nibelungen, recorded live at the Bayreuth Festival in 2008, is slim on superstar casting, but basks in the reflected glory of conductor Christian Thielemann, a controversial artist with a passionate following. So how does the music measure up?
Four of the cher public caught yesterday’s HD presentation of Tosca and have agreed to share their impressions with La Cieca and the rest: “The death of Puccini’s Tosca was much exaggerated, in fact it did not take place.” “After about 34 years of going to the opera, I don’t think I’ve ever left a…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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