There was that Tristan.
Two problematic 1990s Donizetti daughters
Opera house versions of Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd featuring Bryn Terfel / Judith Christin and Thomas Allen / Felicity Palmer.
Trove Thursday sends best wishes to Michael Tilson Thomas, currently recovering from a recent surgery to remove a brain tumor, and presents him in a broadcast leading the UK premiere of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Mlada with Makvala Kasrashvili, Felicity Palmer, Jon Frederic West and Sergei Leiferkus.
Trove Thursday goes mini-epic with Gustave Charpentier’s naturalistic slice-of-life of fin-de-siêcle Paris in a rare 1999 Renée Fleming performance of Louise co-starring Jerry Hadley, Samuel Ramey and Felicity Palmer.
Stephen Sondheim turns 90 on Sunday, prompting Trove Thursday to present his most “operatic” work, Sweeney Todd, in a rare 2002 performance with Christine Baranski and Brian Stokes Mitchell as the murderous duo.
“Trove Thursday” presents for the third annual installment of “Handel for my Birthday” a wickedly ideal Felicity Palmer dominating Agrippina.
Christian Thielemann is widely regarded as our time’s preeminent master of the Austro-German symphonic ensemble.
This week’s “Trove Thursday” offers Benjamin Britten’s Death in Venice featuring Anthony Rolfe Johnson.
As promised, “Trove Thursday” offers Don Quichote chez la duchesse, a second nearly unknown opera based on Cervantes’ towering literary masterpiece.
There was a general feeling of homecoming in the hall on Friday evening in anticipation of what promised to be a special return visit on many levels.
The internecine machinations of those who ruled—or sought to rule—the Roman Empire have long provided rich material for writers and composers, and on Thursday evening operamission continued its ambitious plan to stage in chronological order all of Handel’s operas by presenting one of the most delicious of those Roman-based works, Agrippina which premiered in Venice in 1709.
American mezzo Jamie Barton, who has steadily been winning fans in the US over the past few years for her rich and nuanced singing, took the international opera world by storm last weekend by winning both the Song Prize as well as the overall prize in the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition.
Almost exactly one hundred years ago on March 18, 1912, the Metropolitan Opera gave its final performance to date of Armide.
It’s a sad story, really. Debussy and Maeterlinck had what the kids would call Major Drama over who was to sing Melisande (Mary Garden vs. the person you’ve never heard of) and so Maeterlinck didn’t see Pelleas until years after Debussy had died, so he never got to be like “word!” or, I suppose, “mot!”
[Our Own Gualtier Maldè reports from this afternoon’s dress rehearsal of La Fille du Régiment] The Met has another hit on its hands — though not a totally new one, this production and cast already having triumphed at Covent Garden and the Vienna Staatsoper. Laurent Pelly (who vies with Davide Alagna and Mark Streshinsky as…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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