A Trove Thursday Mega-Post © featuring the wonderful American soprano Erin Morley in Orff’s Carmina Burana and Richard Strauss’s Brentano Lieder, plus extended live excerpts from Handel’s Orlando, Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail, and Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots.
It was Matthew Jocelyn’s libretto, with its disorientingly deconstructive approach to its source text, that gave Brett Dean’s Hamlet its identity.
South African Jacques Imbrailo’s high-lying baritone did much to highlight the lyrical possibilities of the title role of Hamlet, originally conceived for a tenor.
Trove Thursday presents Michael Fabiano in one of his specialties as the dashing hero of Il Corsaro torn between Tamara Wilson and Nicole Cabell.
Peter Mattei, one of my two favorite baritones these days, in an unexpected title role, Britten’s Billy Budd.
Ah, finalmente!
There was a certain frisson in the air entering Chicago Lyric Opera last night, and not just in anticipation of attending the world premiere of a new work by Jimmy Lopez (music) and Nilo Cruz (libretto), Bel Canto.
When Winston Churchill was First Sea Lord, the story goes, an indignant admiral accused him of violating British naval tradition, to which Churchill replied that the only traditions of the British Navy were rum, sodomy and the lash.
After the Georges Antheil opera that was my first assignment from La Cieca, I have to confess feeling slightly relieved when I opened the parterre package to find: Billy Budd! And not only a Billy Budd, but one starring John Mark Ainsley! The rest of the cast looked similarly starry (pardon the pun), so I…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
×
Sign up for Parterre’s free newsletter.
Exclusive opera reviews, commentary, and top reads
delivered to your email weekly…ish.