Dream a little dream of me
Gabriela Lena Frank’s El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego enchants and surprises despite the Disnified treatment of its subject matter.
Carlos Alvarez
8 pieces since 2009 — in 5 roles, at 4 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
8
pieces
5
roles
4
companies
18
years
Role Diego Rivera
Role Don Giovanni
The beast with three backs
Among the “auditions” that have come flooding in from the cher public are reviews of three very different productions of Don Giovanni. Your doyenne has taken the liberty of combining the three critiques into a single posting, but she urges you to remember, remember well the names of the authors of this troika of treatises.
Role Iago
Autumn leaves
It may have taken most of Verdi’s canon to do it, but the “Tutto Verdi” collection finally manages to do justice to Verdi in his last two operas.
It’s all about Muti
A dramatic symphony with incidental voices: that’s how Riccardo Muti’s Otello, which inaugurated the 2008 Salzburg Festival, could be aptly described. Beginning with the initial allegro agitato with its piercing lashes, it instantly appears obvious that Muti’s intention is to go for the jugular, nail the audience to their seats and never give them a […]
Role Lorenzo de' Medici
Three-way
An ambitious and Wagner-smitten Ruggero Leoncavallo wrote his rarely heard opera I Medici (Historical Action in Four Acts) as the beginning of what he planned as “an epic poem in the form of a historical trilogy.” Taking his lead from the Ring, Leoncavallo called his planned trilogy Crepesculum, an homage to the Italian translation of […]
Role Scarpia
Charisma and chemistry
For this revival of Tosca Teatro Real has configured several casts with some of the best singers in the world: Sondra Radvanovsky, Maria Agresta, Anna Netrebko, Joseph Calleja, Michael Fabiano, Yusif Eyvazov, Jonas Kaufmann, Carlos Álvarez, Gevorg Hakobyan and Luca Salsi.