I came to The Rake’s Progress with a huge “Show Me” chip on my shoulder.
While everyone tries to figure out what on earth Strauss and Hofmannsthal are up to in Die Frau ohne Schatten, now playing at the Met, Chris’s Cache offers a later, simpler, shorter Strauss with three live broadcasts of his “bucolic tragedy” Daphne.
On this day in 1922 the Metropolitan Opera presented the company debut of Catalani’s Loreley.
The Met’s recent Ariadne auf Naxos and Elektra combo left me wanting more and more Richard Strauss, so Trove Thursday offers a complete Capriccio with Jonas Kaufmann (his one-and-only Flamand) and Christopher Maltman vying for Soile Isokoski.
Trove Thursday adds two short works—Goyescas and L’enfant et les sortilèges—to Christian’s expansive recent survey of Bernard Haitink’s opera legacy.
I never fathomed I’d be writing words as these this soon.
In the month and a half leading to Bernard Haitink’s passing on October 21, my AirPods constantly channeled a musical festival of sorts centered on the Dutch giant’s expansive discography.
American soprano Gianna Rolandi died Sunday morning, according to a number of her friends and colleagues. She was 68.
We are in the midst of a titanic Beethoven onslaught prompted by the unstoppable need to commemorate the composer’s upcoming 250th birthday.
“Trove Thursday” turns to a quintet of baritone/bass voices: Matthias Goerne, Simon Keenlyside, Georg Nigl, Thomas Quasthoff and René Pape performing works by Pfitzner, Sibelius, Adams, Martin and Schubert.
Tannhäuser pales beside the other great Wagnerian operas in the degree to which it has innovated the Regisseur’s vocabulary for set design and dramaturgy.
Wagner’s Ring is an artistic masterpiece that is peerless in its ability to continually reveal layers of musical, theatrical, and philosophical insight
With Liber scriptus came the biggest discovery for me, the vocal talent of Elena Stikhina.
Arabella with Wolfgang Sawallisch conducting a prime-time 1980s Munich cast.
“Trove Thursday” presents Janet Baker in Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde from 1970 partnered by Jess Thomas and conducted by Josef Krips.
Due to bandwidth limits “Trove Thursday” must post some more modest offerings in months with five Thursdays.
Due to a small hiccup in scheduling at Casa della Cieca, this week you get two uploads!
I was once accused—by my own mother, mind you!—of having too many recordings of Verdi’s Aida. The blistering audacity of that recrimination did get me to thinking: How many recordings of Aida is too many? I mean, you’ve got the old classic you cut your teeth on. Then there’s he one where the tenor and…
At the Opernhaus Zürich, the coat check is not optional.
A new CD
features the ten most gorgeous minutes recorded by a tenor in Wagner since World War II.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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