All about my mother
On her 90th birthday “Trove Thursday” presents the late great Belgian mezzo Rita Gorr parenting Régine Crespin in Massenet’s Hérodiade.
Georg Solti
66 pieces since 2011 — at 9 companies, most often at Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
66
pieces
9
companies
16
years
Heaven must be missing 14 angels
The Hänsel und Gretel discussions over the holidays plunged me down a YouTube rabbit hole.
Trick or trill
With help from the Met’s invaluable performance archive, here is a look back at just some of what you could have seen, and perhaps did see, on October 31st through the years at the Met.
Ne plus ultra
When LaCieca asked me to choose my favorite live recording, I had to think… and think.
A ‘Ring’ for the rest of us
I was once accused—by my own mother, mind you!—of having too many recordings of Verdi’s Aida. The blistering audacity of that recrimination did get me to thinking: How many recordings of Aida is too many? I mean, you’ve got the old classic you cut your teeth on. Then there’s he one where the tenor and […]
Che grido è questo mai?
Defying a computer breakdown and an online outage, I fled to a smoky Iranian Internet café to upload this performance of Don Giovanni. It was worth the trouble.
The oldest rule in the book
Something a little out of the ordinary from Jungfer Marianne Leitmetzerin this week: David Del Tredici‘s Final Alice, featuring the “original cast.”
Final chapter
None of my previous Elektra experiences prepared me for this stunning, overwhelming performance from the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence.
Fairy tale
“Conduct Salome and Elektra as if they were by Mendelssohn: Fairy music.” Seriously, how often has that happened?
Als wären Sie die Statue auf Ihrer eigenen Gruft
I am certain that we Parterrians are a very literate, even literary, group.
Opening knight
The 1965 season was a time of big changes at the Vienna State Opera.
By Adriel
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Under a linden tree
A new CD
features the ten most gorgeous minutes recorded by a tenor in Wagner since World War II.
The woman in white
This new DVD
release from EMI of the Royal Opera’s latest production of Puccini’s Tosca will no doubt be snatched up by hordes of grateful fans around the globe.
Summer knights
Richard Wagner believed the key to any legend was contrasting the supernatural with human nature, and showing how the combination had no chance of enduring. In Lohengrin, the title’s character’s insistence on unconditional love and trust collide with the conditional expectations of the real world. The challenge is capturing the tale’s somber majesty without losing […]
Splendidissima!
A 1989 production of Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera should have been another jewel in Herbert von Karajan’s already quite impressive crown. A stellar cast, an impeccable orchestra, an enormous period set –the grand opera of Salzburg under his regime. He had recently finished a studio recording with the cast, and was preparing them for […]
À l’opéra ce soir
When I was a kid growing up in Paris, there was a weekly TV broadcast of a theater play called Au Théatre Ce Soir that I loved. But that my father would rarely let me watch this show, because the plays were all were silly comedies, usually badly acted and filmed without any creativity or […]