This performance truly “never fails to lift my mood.”
Chris’s Cache offers ten more sopranos singing Strauss‘s Vier letzte Lieder: Sena Jurinac, Gundula Janowitz, Jessye Norman, Roberta Alexander, Edith Mathis, Helen Donath, Malin Byström, Christiane Karg, Jacquelyn Wagner, and Corinne Winters.
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.
Chris’s Cache wraps up November with Régine Crespin’s Chicago Leonore; two rare Met Fidelios headed by Christa Ludwig and Hildegard Behrens; and a concert performance with Birgit Nilsson led by Leonard Bernstein, plus a final twist: excerpts of Carol Vaness in Leonore.
It was love at first hearing. The music was glorious, the conducting bouncy and pointed, and the singers sure sounded terrific to me.
Brigitte Fassbaender‘s sound is piquant and, I’d hazard to guess, instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with her work.
Today the good guy finally gets his chance with San Giovanni Battista by Alessandro Stradella featuring Christophe Dumaux as John the Baptist.
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.
It’s hard to think of a rare work by a great composer more tailor-made for a twenty-first century reexamination than Mozart’s Il Sogno di Scipione.
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…
Glyndebourne’s release of a live Rosenkavalier from 1965 longs to be loved and cherished by listeners. Featuring a thrilling Traumcast composed of Montserrat Caballé, Otto Edelmann, Teresa Zylis-Gara, and Edith Mathis, one would certainly expect it to deserve much praise and admiration. The sound quality is, however, a stunning disappointment.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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