Less than hero
Iestyn Davies’s theatrical blandness combined with his vocal unsuitability for the role left a hole at the center of Rinaldo.
Harry Bicket
43 pieces since 2007 — at 8 companies, most often at The English Concert.
43
pieces
8
companies
20
years
You were dead, you know
Lyric Opera of Chicago opened its 2017-18 season on Saturday evening with a new production of Gluck’s Orphee et Eurydice in the 1774 Paris version.
One Handel, one heart
I don’t usually attend a performance of an opera I’ve known well most of my life expecting a revelation.
Morley marvelous
Sunday afternoon at Carnegie Hall two remarkable slices of soprano-heaven were served up, first by Carolyn Sampson and then by Erin Morley, during the second act of Handel’s Orlando.
Fast and furious
A 1984 performance of Handel’s Orlando with Marilyn Horne, Valerie Masterson, Marvis Martin, Jeffery Gall and Robert Lloyd, conducted by Charles Mackerras.
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.
In witch we serve
Sunday afternoon’s intermittently involving concert performance of Handel’s Alcina at Carnegie Hall starred an unusually intense Joyce DiDonato as a powerful sorceress blinded by her romantic delusions.
Theodora goes wild
Joined by the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, The English Concert concluded the US leg of its current tour at Carnegie Hall Sunday with a complete performance of the darkly moving Theodora, Handel’s penultimate oratorio.
Pyramid scheme
Giulio Cesare at the Met proved an evening that added up to much more than the sum of its uneven parts.
Thrace off
Nearly 30 years after a Handel opera last played there, Carnegie Hall presented The English Concert opening a three-year opera-oratorio project on Sunday afternoon with Radamisto.
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.
Brit star! would I were steadfast as thou art!
Rule Britannia? Often during the Olympics that famous number from Thomas Arne’s 1740 Alfred echoed in my ears.
Stealing Rome
L’incoronazione di Poppea nearly disappeared from the stage completely after its 1642 Venice premiere and a Naples revival in 1651.
The world is your balloon
If it wasn’t anything special as art or even entertainment, Lyric Opera of Chicago’s recent production of Rinaldo (March 24) does offer an excellent peg on which to hang an argument about the future of opera in America.
Pout and about
I could feel my face (to say nothing of my spirits) sink as I opened an envelope from La Cieca containing a new Decca CD
to review.
Miss Mannered
Joyce DiDonato enjoys the rare cachet of having three studio-recorded operas released in the past three years while other famous divas must be content with “just” DVDs. Although two of Renée Fleming’s Violettas have found their way onto video in less than five years (why??), “the people’s diva” has only recorded one studio opera in […]
Shirt tale
Among symbolic classical tropes, one of my favorites (perhaps because only another classicist will understand it) is Nessus’ Shirt, an emblem of glory (a promotion, say, or an expensive luxury) that destroys you.
E sempre Laura!
Our new correspondent Miss Laura Hope Cruisey finishes her report from Santa Fe. Everywhere we look there is Nicole Cabell – so exotic! Wow! Very interesting looking woman; and her new arias CD is the most advertised classical record around, and it is getting good reviews. She was kind of a Mrs. Obama on stage […]