Contrasting approaches to Regie duke it out in Cavalleria rusticana & Pagliacci and Rusalka in Munich
Lise Davidsen‘s singular Senta dominates the forces of the Norwegian National Opera in a roiling new recording of Der fliegende Holländer out now on Decca Classics
Trove Thursday previews next week’s BBC Proms presentation of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius with a 2008 broadcast conducted by Colin Davis with Sarah Connolly, Ben Heppner and Gerald Finley.
Soprano Erin Wall died in early October, a month shy of her 45th birthday; Trove Thursday remembers her with a 2012 broadcast of Kaija Saariaho’s shimmering L’Amour de Loin.
Michael Spyres as Faust, despite a few flickers of indisposition, was nearly ideal.
Elina Garanca’s glorious Marguerite transformed La Damnation de Faust into the Met’s first essential must-see of the year.
Minnesota Opera’s stab at boosting revenue with extra performances of something surefire never caught fire.
Although Gustav Mahler never wrote an opera, his colossal Eighth Symphony “The Symphony of a Thousand” may give us some glimpses of what a Mahler opera might have sounded like
I am, perhaps instinctively, skeptical of those who commit suicide.
This was a Rosenkavalier that aspired to excellence and almost achieved it.
I’m a long-time fan of the Opera in English series funded by The Peter Moores Foundation that started, fittingly enough, with conductor Reginald Goodall’s performances of Wagner’s Ring cycle recorded live from the London Coliseum and released by EMI
Benjamin Britten’s final opera Death in Venice, based on Thomas Mann’s 1912 novella, is given a lush and quite beautiful production from stage director Deborah Warner for the English National Opera.
Necrophiliac pedophilia? Or a slow descent into madness? What really happened at Bly? After listening to Glyndebourne’s 2007 Production of Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, released in a live recording under the festival’s own label, one is still left in the dark as to what really transpired at that English estate. Perhaps this…
Okay, it wasn’t Sister Act all the way, but in the middle of Acts IV and V, ENO’s new production of Gounod’s Faust (September 18) almost turned me into a straight Catholic Republican conservative. But we’ll get to the reason why a bit later.
I have heard Gerald Finley live and enjoyed his singing immensely. He possesses a strong, resonant, lyric baritone, even of scale and beautiful of timbre. His biggest successes to date have been creating the roles of Oppenheimer in John Adams‘ Dr. Atomic and Harry in Mark-Anthony Turnage‘s The Silver Tassie. He includes selections from both…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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