I was first exposed to Hänsel und Gretel as a child, likely via The Metropolitan Opera’s 1982 PBS telecast.
Peter Sellars‘s triple bill of Viennese modernism featuring Erwartung and a concert performance of The Raft of the Medusa stare down death at the Salzburg Festival
In Munich, performances by 97-year-old Herbert Blomstedt and 32-year-old Thomas Guggeis show the city’s orchestral ensembles at their best
A perfect meeting of voice with composer occurred when Arleen Auger took part in the rediscovery of early works by Mozart.
When my editor suggested to me a round-up of my favorite recordings of Jacques Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann I was très, très, intrigued.
After attending three Met Lohengrins I’ve gone into Wagner withdrawal waiting for the upcoming Der Fliegende Holländer.
On this day in September 27, 1988, the Metropolitan opera presented the company premiere of Giulio Cesare, starring Kathleen Battle and Tatiana Troyanos.
The great Spanish mezzo soprano Teresa Berganza died on May 13 at the age of 89, so Trove Thursday salutes one of its favorites with a pair of dazzling rare live Mozart performances.
Minutes into “An die Nacht,” the first song Friday night, I realized how much I’d missed being enveloped in that seductive Straussian combination of a soprano (or two or three) rising higher and higher over a surging orchestra.
In anticipation of the Met’s reopening performance on September 11, another serving of pandemic-hoarding arrives on Trove Thursday with 10 rare live performances of the Verdi Requiem’s concluding “Libera me.”
Ombra Compagna, out today on Pentatone, spotlights Lisette Oropesa in 10 of Mozart’s most challenging concert arias accompanied by Il Pomo d’Oro conducted by Antonello Manacorda.
Trove Thursday follows tradition and bids farewell to 2020 with an operetta: Lehár’s Die Lustige Witwe starring Edda Moser as a most commanding Hanna Glawari!
Trove Thursday presents Alzira—derided by some as Verdi’s worst opera—in a 1968 Carnegie Hall concert with Gianfranco Cecchele, Louis Quilico (star of last night’s Met Rigoletto stream) and Elinor Ross, who died in March at age 93.
“Trove Thursday” presents two live versions of Sunday in the Park with George.
At one point I spent a couple of months on the dole and dollar record shopping had a number of obvious virtues as a pastime.
“Trove Thursday” offers Così fan tutte with Pilar Lorengar, Josephine Veasey, Lucia Popp, Luigi Alva and Kieth Engen with Georg Solti conducting.
To mark Mozart’s 260th birthday tomorrow, “Trove Thursday” offers his infrequently performed bucolic opera Il Re Pastore with the sublime Arleen Augér as its heroine and Edith Mathis as her shepherd-lover.
Barihunk Mariusz Kwiecien injured his handsome back during today’s dress rehearsal of Don Giovanni at the Met and was taken to the hospital, tweets Dan Wakin. As La Cieca writes this, Kwiecien’s cover Dwayne Croft is at the Met rehearsing the opera’s first act swordfight.
Die Zauberflöte is a perennial favorite with audiences, and modern productions have attracted top singers and production teams. Yet every production struggles with the performance text, particularly with the issues of race and sex. The dreams of the Enlightenment may be lovely, but the social mores of their dreamers have not aged gracefully. Despite a…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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