A well-known Met Aïda with a starry cast from 1967 is TildyDiva’s Favorite Verdi Performance
This song has always been one of my favorites.
A sublime Reginald Mobley and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra are a balm for troubled times in a program of baroque selections and spirituals.
Following last week’s performances in Cleveland, Ronnie Banerjee compares six different versions of the Kostelnicka’s monologue from Leos Janácek’s Jenufa for “Perspectives on an Aria”
This week, Chris’s Cache offers a performance of Follies from 2007 featuring Lucine Amara as a rarely richly sung Heidi alongside Donna Murphy and Victoria Clark.
As for complete recordings of Il trovatore, which was discussed at some length last week, there are at least 200 of them, both studio and live.
Inspired by Harry Rose’s recent fine polemic about verismo performance practice, Chris’s Cache offers one of Opera Orchestra of New York’s most exciting evenings: Zandonai’s Francesda da Rimini from 1973 with Raina Kabaivanska, Placido Domingo, and Matteo Manuguerra.
When asked to express some “thoughts” here about Verdi’s Il trovatore, my immediate thought was “hmm… not a lot to think about there.”
As a burgeoning opera fan, I relied on YouTube to connect me with the art form.
Yes, there were other Giocondas if not of quite the same distinction. Chronologically…
parterre box is excited to present again Mike Richter’s collection of recordings of Rose Ader along with this biographical tribute in honor of a significant artist whose Jewish identity perhaps prevented her from achieving the renown she deserved
Chris’s Cache offers up a quintet of intriguing “forgotten” Leonora-Azucena pairings from the 1970s.
In voice, artistic sensibility and glamour, the singer was every inch a diva.
On this day in 1970 the Metropolitan Opera presented new productions of Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci.
Diva November meets Wagner December when Chris’s Cache this week offers Régine Crespin as both Elisabeth in Tannhäuser and Senta in Der Fliegende Holländer via a pair of American pirates from the 1960s.
On October 14, 1979 I spent my birthday attending my first all-star opera gala, thrilled at the chance to hear some of the great singers I’d only experienced on LPs, broadcasts or via my pirate reel-to-reel tapes.
Sondra Radvanovsky has an unconventional voice that is suited to unconventional characters and is best used in rangy, difficult music. The lack of lush beauty was no deficit in depicting Medea’s jealousy and vengeful rage.
After the break the ladies stepped up their game so much that it elevated the night into legendary status: definitely one for the books!
Quarantining during COVID dramatically increased my compulsion to collect and compare interpretations.
Franco Corelli was born on April 8, 1921 in Ancona and Trove Thursday celebrates the matinee-idol tenor’s centenary with a pair of his rare non-Met US appearances; seducing Marie Collier in La Fanciulla del West and vacillating between Ilva Ligabue and Grace Bumbry in Il Trovatore.
While the Met reruns over-familiar HDs, Trove Thursday offers a Puccini rarity: Edgar, the composer’s second opera, starring Latonia Moore and Marcello Giordani.
Over the course of 700 pages, Alex Ross exhaustively—and sometimes exhaustingly—examines an impact that began in the Wagner’s own lifetime and continues unbroken today, with references cropping up in contemporary works as different as The Matrix and Curb Your Enthusiasm.
With most of us dug in for the duration, there’s no better time to tuck into a CD box set of neglected treasures. Not that I needed an excuse, mind you.
Otto Nicolai’s Il Templario with Juan Diego Flórez, Clémentine Margaine and Luca Salsi.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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