If you remember, then follow
How many hours of our lives are spent looking back?
Gustav Mahler
60 pieces since 2006 — at 1 company, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
60
pieces
1
company
21
years
By company
Glorious excess
Despite the ever-increasing media coverage of San Francisco’s “doom loop,” June 2023 will be forever remembered as the time where San Francisco was the opera capital of the United States.
Creature of the stage
Nina Stemme’s program guided her audience through a period of musical history that explores themes of love and mortality with texts that traverse emotional extremes.
Natural woman
Joyce DiDonato’s Eden immerses listeners within a centuries-spanning musical meditation that channels the majesty of our natural world.
That indescribable feeling
Alma Deutscher’s quest for beautiful music permeates the score of her Cinderella from the hushed opening of the Overture.
Making her garden grown
Joyce DiDonato admits that she is “a problem solver, a dreamer, and—yes I’m a belligerent optimist.”
Listening to Bernard Haitink
In the month and a half leading to Bernard Haitink’s passing on October 21, my AirPods constantly channeled a musical festival of sorts centered on the Dutch giant’s expansive discography.
Halfway to heaven
All in all, Mahler’s ethereal evocation of the natural world, and the world beyond our own, is becoming old hat.
Chanson d’amour
Soprano Erin Wall died in early October, a month shy of her 45th birthday; Trove Thursday remembers her with a 2012 broadcast of Kaija Saariaho’s shimmering L’Amour de Loin.
Isn’t it warm, isn’t it rosy?
On this day in 1972, Stephen Sondheim‘s Company closed on Broadway, finishing a run of 705 performances.
An old-fashioned wedding
“Trove Thursday” presents a complete Prodanà Nevesta (aka Die Verkaufte Braut, of course) by Smetana plus extended excerpts from a broadcast of Spontini’s La Vestale in its rarely heard original French version.
Bolder sister
Brigitte Fassbaender‘s sound is piquant and, I’d hazard to guess, instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with her work.
Touch me in the mourning
“How far should we give way to grief? How far dare we, without disaster?”
Tears in heaven
There is a deep sense of culmination and finality when we discuss the last works of the great Masters.
Something With a ‘Ring’ to It
Cycle II represented an embarrassment of musical riches.
Turning over an old leaf
Is there any opera that can take more of a beating while still making an impact than Eugene Onegin?
Cryptic
Hearing Lucas Meachem perform Kindertotenlieder in the crypt of Harlem’s Church of the Intercession was a heart-warming, and ultimately uplifting experience.
Thousands cheer
Although Gustav Mahler never wrote an opera, his colossal Eighth Symphony “The Symphony of a Thousand” may give us some glimpses of what a Mahler opera might have sounded like
Follow her lead
Barbara Hannigan‘s electrifying performance with the Juilliard Orchestra on Friday night proves that she is as much a force to be reckoned with on the podium as she is onstage.
Love of the earth
Claudio Abbado passed away on the 20th of January five years ago, just months before I began my Ph.D.
Summer of the mezzo
August on “Trove Thursday” begins with Midsummer Mezzo Madness featuring a sterling quartet of lower-voiced ladies
We love you, Ms. Hannigan
Could Barbara Hannigan be Joni Mitchell’s classical counterpart?
‘Wunder’ of wonders
Opera Vlaanderen opened its 2017-18 season with a rare staging of Korngold’s Das Wunder der Heliane.
And three for Mahler
A poster outside Carnegie Hall proclaimed “Mahler Well Met” and to some degree it proved to be true.