With a song in my heart
Another five-Thursday month invites “Trove Thursday” to offer a combo of shorter works.
Christophe Rousset
43 pieces since 2011 — at 2 companies, most often at Les Talens Lyriques.
43
pieces
2
companies
16
years
By company
A spouse tale
A performance of Gluck’s Alceste from Wiener Staatsoper in June 2016.
Significant mother
Fans of divas who sing 19th and 20th century opera may find themselves searching in vain for CDs to buy with this season’s gift cards, since their idols so rarely put out solo recitals these days.
Regni Dessay
Almost exactly twenty years after her auspicious Metropolitan Opera debut as the Fiakermilli in Arabella and a year following what she has claims was her final appearance on the operatic stage, Natalie Dessay returned Sunday afternoon to Lincoln Center—to sing opera.
Myth opportunity
America hasn’t exactly been vigorous about commemorating the 250th anniversary of the death of Jean-Philippe Rameau.
Farinelli from heaven
My impossible wish would be to hear one of the great castrati who dominated opera for most of the 18th century.
Belief in a higher power
The behavioral phenomenon of limerence has been described as “an involuntary potentially inspiring state of adoration and attachment to a limerent object involving intrusive and obsessive thoughts, feelings and behaviors from euphoria to despair, contingent on perceived emotional reciprocation.”
Empire records
That’s what it must have been like in 1726 London when Handel composed Alessandro for perhaps the three most famous (and expensive) singers of the day.
An embarrassment of divas
As if last week’s survey wasn’t enough, a few more recent diva-recital disks remain worthy of attention particularly since they arrive from five front-rank singers.
Divas merrily on high
Cecilia Bartoli and Joyce DiDonato are not the only ladies who have recorded recitals this year featuring music from the 17th and 18th centuries.
Beach, beach, beach
Here’s the thing about puns, Betsy: summer going to enjoy them and summer not.
Citius, Altius, Fortius
Of all the Olympics-related products created to honor the upcoming summer games in London, surely one of the oddest must be a brand new pasticcio just released on a two-CD set
by Naïve—L’Olimpiade.
Just my Gluck
For all his historical importance Christoph Willibald Gluck remains one of the least known and performed of the great opera composers.
All hell baroque loose
Many American opera-lovers take the “Grand Tour”—a pilgrimage to Europe to attend opera at its great houses—Peter Grimes at the Royal Opera in London or Otello at La Scala in Milan, or perhaps for the more well-heeled a visit to the summer festivals of Glyndebourne, Salzburg or Aix-en-Provence.
Evergreen goddess
Every year New York City opera-lovers eagerly anticipate the autumn because it means that summer is finally over and we can get back to serious opera-going, and this September promises “The Battle of the A’s.”
Miss Mannered
Joyce DiDonato enjoys the rare cachet of having three studio-recorded operas released in the past three years while other famous divas must be content with “just” DVDs. Although two of Renée Fleming’s Violettas have found their way onto video in less than five years (why??), “the people’s diva” has only recorded one studio opera in […]
Blow’s job
Despite baby-steps over the years, America’s musical scene, especially opera, remains decidedly un-HIP. (HIP: “historically-informed performance,” also called “period performance.”) While European opera houses turn increasingly to “original instrument” orchestras and specialist singers for seventeenth and eighteenth century works, this rarely occurs in the US.
Baroque, back
This Cleofide must have been conceived as a perfect target for haters of Italian baroque opera. While many might (grudgingly?) acknowledge that Handel is indeed an important operatic composer, here we have a virtually unknown name often relegated to dusty music history books. Not only has no one ever heard (nor probably even heard of) […]
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