One of the first things James Conlon did when he took over the reins as Music Director of LA Opera was create the “Recovered Voices” project, producing operas that had been suppressed by the Nazis.
Despite this being the first full-length opera for Gabriela Lena Frank, there’s no lack of experience across the creative team which, along with favorable reviews for the production, contributed to high levels of anticipation.
With the phenomenal cast that stacked Paris Opera’s production of I Capuleti e i Montecchi , it was easy to overlook the quirks of Bellini’s opera and get lost in the pleasures of glorious bel canto singing.
Austin McCormack‘s lascivious choreography outshone a tepid and tedious staging of Saint-Saëns’s old-testament epic.
For opening night 2018, the Met offered the creaky but appealing biblical epic Samson et Dalila, presumably as a vehicle for Elina Garanca and Roberto Alagna.
“Trove Thursday” gives a preview of Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila with a broadcast featuring an unexpected temptress—Dolora Zajick—who will celebrate the 30th anniversary of her Met debut next month.
The characters get right down to work immediately with their foul deeds.
My first experience with John Corigliano’s music was in high school with the ear and mind blowing score he wrote for Ken Russell’s film Altered States.
Although Walter Braunfels was among those German composers whose music was banned in their home country after 1933, and whose political rehabilitiation in 1945 was not accompanied by a commensurate revival of his music, his 1920 opera Die Vögel should need no special pleading on musical or dramatic grounds. Though Braunfels is traditionally described as…
In the process of unearthing forgotten musical works, sometimes we stumble across a gem. World War II saw an entire generation of European composers forced into internment or diaspora, and their works are only slowly being rescued from obscurity. In a recent DVD release from the LA Opera, a part their Recovered Voices series, we…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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