Antonacci’s singing is remarkably beautiful for one who clearly doesn’t make that a top priority.
Norman Dello Joio, who was knocking about winning prizes for film and TV scores, composed The Trial at Rouen, his second opera on the subject, for NBC.
It’s a pity that Francis Poulenc took so long to getting around to compose his operas.
Anna Caterina Antonacci delivered a tour de force of French diction, subtlety of phrasing, variation of vocal timbre, and white-hot stage acting.
The best part of Paul Appleby’s recital for the Philadelphia Chamber Society came in his last two groups.
Opera Upper West recently tweeted an unfortunate picture of me.
Washingtonians enjoyed a happy reunion this past Sunday with David Daniels.
Soprano Denise Duval, muse to Francis Poulenc, died yesterday in Switzerland. She was 94.
Heaven temporarily relocated to the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées Sunday evening for a concert performance of Rossini’s revered but rarely heard Semiramide.
Midway through the first portion of this past Wednesday’s New York City recital debut of Mme. Natalie Dessay I became very distracted by the persistent urge to try to characterize the experience of what was happening on stage, for this was, by no means, an ordinary recital and no ordinary debutante.
New York Festival of Song’s Manning the Canon: Songs of Gay Life is a delightfully lighthearted, deeply personal, and colorful recital made of equal parts sex, camp, melancholy, and tenderness. Steven Blier‘s wide-ranging program consists of five sets of songs, each meant to evoke, as per his program notes, “a quintessential moment of a gay…
“Parade” is defined simply by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as “a pompous show.” Fitting enough, then, that the triple bill titled Parade: An Evening of French Music Theatre recorded at the Met on March 16, 2002 consists of Erik Satie’s ballet Parade, Francis Poulenc’s Les Mamelles de Tirésias, and Maurice Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortilèges. These…
British soprano Dame Felicity Lott and her frequent partner, the pianist Graham Johnson, have collaborated on a new recital disc for Champs Hill Records, “Call Me Flott.” Do we really have to?
Juilliard Opera presented an under-ripe yet moving performance of Poulenc’s masterpiece Dialogues des Carmelites on Wednesday. Promising young singers surmounted a dodgy production and stiff musical direction with intelligent singing and contagious enthusiasm.
Leyla Gencer: The very name is exotic. She was an artist of Turkish ancestry who, during the 1950s and 60s, held her own despite the presence of Maria Callas, Renata Tebaldi, Renata Scotto, Montserrat Caballe, and Magda Olivero, all of whom shared roles in her repertoire. Ironically, Gencer has a number of important credits attached…
[This article originally appeared in the print zine precursor to this site, one of a series of surveys of live recordings by critic Leila de Lakmé.] Leyla Gencer. The very name is exotic. She was an artist of Turkish ancestry who, during the 1950s and 60s, held her own despite the presence of Maria Callas,…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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