In the beginning
In Jacopo Peri’s seminal Euridice, the Newberry Consort and Haymarket Opera made a compelling case for putting you in the room where it happened.
Hans Werner Henze
11 pieces since 2010.
11
pieces
17
years
Walking through the valley of death
Peter Sellars‘s triple bill of Viennese modernism featuring Erwartung and a concert performance of The Raft of the Medusa stare down death at the Salzburg Festival
Breaking the box
Jacquelyn Stucker talks to Kevin Ng about repertoire, tearing down the Fach system, and what it takes to make music from baroque to George Benjamin her own.
To the extreme
No other singer of Die Amme approaches the towering standard set by the German mezzo Tanja Ariane Baumgartner.
A boy’s best friend
At the opening of the Scottish Opera’s 2017 production of Turnage’s opera Greek, I was very sorry I’d missed Anna Nicole.
Say it with music
Capriccio was a great pleasure on Friday night, March 4. This was a co-production of Opera Philadelphia and The Curtis Institute, presented in the intimate Pearlman Theater at the Kimmel Center.
Rex appeal
Say this about Oedipus: The character’s got staying power.
We were dead, you know
The setting: a dark plaza extending directly in front of a storied opera house. The time: just after a ho-hum revival of something Puccini. The crowd streams out, moderately satisfied but also far from bowled over. A group open to a proposition, you could say.
Truth is stranger
The wealthy suburban community of Greenwich, CT is a place where diamonds are in no short supply. Yet there are still some diamonds of artistic excellence hidden in this seaside town, including the shockingly well-done production of Hans Werner Henze’s The Runaway Slave (El Cimarrón) by the Greenwich Music Festival. This most likely will be […]
Gettin’ Ligeti Wit It
When invited to participate in a discourse on artistic standards (hello, internet!), it’s easy — pleasurable, even — for an aesthete to bray about “the fall.” Where are the true heldentenors? Your kingdom for a Callas! (Or a Stratas, or a Rysanek!) And might the public, at long last, deserve a stable of directors who […]
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).