The new Opera News section of OPERA magazine already seems to be getting smaller, but the March issue features a long interview with Carol Vaness about Donna Anna.
It’s autumn in New York, baby.
On this day in 1965 soprano Mirella Freni and tenor Gianni Raimondi made their Metropolitan Opera debuts in La bohème.
When our friends at Naxos and C Major announced near-dueling releases of Puccini’s “shabby little shocker,” I was ready with my critic’s pen dipped in bile.
In the five short years that I’ve been in New York, I have seen that crusty old Franco Zeffirelli production of La bohème more times than I can count on one hand. And there are certainly times when that peeling mise-en-scène really shows its age.
Old opera productions at the end of their performing life can be sad affairs.
On this day in 1987 the Met raised the curtain on Franco Zeffirelli‘s production of Turandot.
When I saw that Richard Bonynge AC CBE, conductor and musicologist supreme, had authored a book titled Chalet Monet about the home he shared with his wife, La Dame Joan Sutherland OM AC DBE, in Les Avants, Switzerland I practically had to wipe my chin.
On this day in 1970 the Metropolitan Opera presented new productions of Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci.
On this day in 1981 “the Zeffirelli Bohème” opened at the Metropolitan Opera.
On this day in 2008 Anja Harteros sang her first Metropolitan Opera Violetta.
David McVicar’s 2017 production of Tosca returned to the Met on Tuesday night, with an able and watchable, if not transcendent cast.
LA Opera sent out an email warning that the production “contains depictions of blood, violence, and drug use, as well as strobe lights and a gunshot effect in Act III.”
The second act of Dream of the Red Chamber reached the apex and provided the audience with soul-stirring fulfillment.
Your favorite box set-aholic here completely missed the release last August of Giuseppe Di Stefano – Complete Decca Recordings in honor of the great tenor’s centenary.
Pavarotti and Freni are gone but the Franco Zeffirelli Bohème remains.
The Met’s revival of Turandot on Saturday night was surprisingly contentious.
Eleanora Buratto at this fully matured point of her career has a warm, creamy full lyric soprano that has the roundness and sweet warmth of a Freni but can also expand into the spinto power of a Tebaldi.
In any case, we are now in the Queen’s garden of the Palace in Madrid. It is the day before the coronation of King Philip. Coronation? What coronation?
Teresa Zylis-Gara died in late August at 91 and Trove Thursday offers the Polish soprano in a wide-ranging collection of live material showcasing her great versatility.
Sondra Radvanovsky was a force of nature as Tosca on Thursday night at the Met.
You know in some of those old Jeanette MacDonald movies where she plays a prima donna and receives applause in a public setting? That’s just what happened when the three of us walked into that restaurant, one patron calling out “Brava!”
What is there to say about the Franco Zeffirelli Bohème? What is left to say?
Trove Thursday remembers Edita Gruberová with live recordings of two of the three operas I heard her perform at the Met: a 1985 Munich La Traviata with Neil Shicoff and Wolfgang Brendel conducted by Carlos Kleiber and an I Puritani from Vienna 1994 featuring two other artists who recently left us too soon: Marcello Giordani and Dmitri Hvorostovsky.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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