A favorite Donizetti performance from Leyla Gender-Bender A favorite Donizetti performance from Leyla Gender-Bender

I’m convinced that someone else will claim this Donizetti opera before I do, but Maria Stuarda is definitely my very favorite Donizetti opera.

The favorite The favorite

Gabriela Benacková, one of Trove Thursday’s favorite sopranos, turns 75 tomorrow, so we celebrate with two rare complete Verdi portrayals.

Minnie happy returns Minnie happy returns

Puccini’s Girl closes out the 20th century and gallops into the 21st.

Iris, hence away Iris, hence away

Endlessly extricating her from existing contracts then negotiating new ones must make being Sonya Yoncheva’s manager the hardest job in the music business.

Bella come un tramonto Bella come un tramonto

With the performance of Dessì we move onto a different plane than the other singers.

Daniela Dessì 1957-2016 Daniela Dessì 1957-2016

Soprano Daniela Dessì has died of cancer. She was 59.

Gli enigmi sono due Gli enigmi sono due

Giacomo Puccini’s final opus interruptus is and shall always remain my favorite opera. The reasons for this preference are so varied and numerous that if they were printed and bound the volume would most assuredly require its own stand.  

Fair, game

The Monday, 12th December, Weill Hall recital debut of Signora Chiara Taigi, a strikingly good looking Italian soprano, who had made her American operatic debut this past March, starring as Selika in the OONY production of Meyerbeer’s long-neglected L’Africaine, was something Your Own Camille had looked forward to with a high hopes and a faintly…

Sicilian Whispers

There is no peace for Verdi in Parma.  As a second production of its Verdi Festival the Teatro Regio presented I vespri siciliani on October 10,  starring Giacomo Prestia as Procida, Leo Nucci as Monforte, and the lovebirds Daniela Dessì and Fabio Armiliato as Elena and Arrigo. 

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…

Golden girl

Although she has made headlines on this side of the Atlantic largely because of her recent dismissal by Franco Zeffirelli from a Roman production of La traviata on the grounds of “physical inadequacy,”  Daniela Dessì is a topflight star in Europe. In her native Italy she is arguably the most popular soprano currently active. Over…