One man’s Junker
Handel’s Deidamia — and one of its current champions, soprano Sophie Junker — are the subject of this week’s Grand Tier Grab Bag.
George Petrou
15 pieces since 2011 — at 2 companies, most often at Internationale Händel Festspiele Karlsruhe.
15
pieces
2
companies
16
years
The René Jacobs Giulio Cesare is so overrated
George Frideric Handel (born 341 years ago on Monday) composed over 40 operas including many masterpieces, but his Giulio Cesare is the one that everyone knows best.
Car Park Casta Diva
Fine music-making meets a clunker of a production in La Monnaie‘s revival of Norma
Mainly in the plain
I wonder why many New Yorkers have been led to believe that the only Handel conductor in the world is Harry Bicket.
Roman holiday
A brace of Handel operas at the George Enescu International Festival.
Let’s hear it for the boa
What happens in Karlsruhe stays in Karlsruhe!
Significant mother
Fans of divas who sing 19th and 20th century opera may find themselves searching in vain for CDs to buy with this season’s gift cards, since their idols so rarely put out solo recitals these days.
Maxed out
Might Max Emanuel Cencic be the countertenor for people who hate countertenors?
Saxon violence
His shaved head in striking contrast to his dark beard and glinting eyes, the implacable Tartar conqueror glowers at us from the CD cover, while the uncropped photo of countertenor Xavier Sabata (above) is even more disturbing, featuring his raised fist and forearm tightly wrapped in a leather belt.
Belief in a higher power
The behavioral phenomenon of limerence has been described as “an involuntary potentially inspiring state of adoration and attachment to a limerent object involving intrusive and obsessive thoughts, feelings and behaviors from euphoria to despair, contingent on perceived emotional reciprocation.”
Empire records
That’s what it must have been like in 1726 London when Handel composed Alessandro for perhaps the three most famous (and expensive) singers of the day.
Citius, Altius, Fortius
Of all the Olympics-related products created to honor the upcoming summer games in London, surely one of the oddest must be a brand new pasticcio just released on a two-CD set
by Naïve—L’Olimpiade.
Just my Gluck
For all his historical importance Christoph Willibald Gluck remains one of the least known and performed of the great opera composers.
All hell baroque loose
Many American opera-lovers take the “Grand Tour”—a pilgrimage to Europe to attend opera at its great houses—Peter Grimes at the Royal Opera in London or Otello at La Scala in Milan, or perhaps for the more well-heeled a visit to the summer festivals of Glyndebourne, Salzburg or Aix-en-Provence.
Beast seller
Other than binging on seven or eight Agatha Christie novels in seventh grade, I can’t recall ever again reading another mystery novel, or what they now call “crime fiction.” Perhaps it’s a coincidence but around that same age I attended my first opera and began subscribing to Opera News. Hence, Commissario Guido Brunetti, hero of […]
Win a Free Ticket to Opening Night at the Met!
Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen star in the Met's new Macbeth. We're giving away one ticket, so screw your courage to the sticking place and enter now!
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).
