44 pieces since 2012 — in 15 roles, at 6 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
18 pieces as Metropolitan Opera — stats above show all coverage for Javier Camarena.
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It may be blasphemy to admit—particularly this month—but usually I can either take or leave Donizetti’s serious operas. However, I love the composer in comic mode, so Chris’s Cache runs with that sentiment in offering three recordings of Don Pasquale.
On paper, the Met’s revival of L’elisir d’amore looked like a lovely evening. And at times it was—a few scenes hinted at what it could be and what it might yet become.
With no disrespect to Nadine Sierra, who as Lucia acquits herself honorably if not magically in vocal terms, the undisputed cause célèbre here is director Simon Stone.
Starring Pretty Yende, Stephanie Blythe, Kathleen Turner, Javier Camarena, and Maurizio Muraro, conducted by Enrique Mazzola. Production by Laurent Pelly. From March 2, 2019.
Happy New Year, dear readers, from me, Callum, and Christine Goerke’s headband-tiara!
La Fille du Régiment, Donizetti’s half-spoken ode to La France about a girl raised by a division of daddies, is at once infamous and beloved for the string of nine high C’s capping act one.
Alexander Birch Elliott‘ s dynamic if gauche Zurga added some pizzazz to an otherwise bland evening.
The new cast at the Met suggested an alliterative retitling of Lucia di Lammermoor was needed—perhaps Lost Loonies in Love or its Italian equivalent?
As a diehard completist I felt guilty as the Met’s scattered, campy revival of Semiramide lumbered toward its abrupt conclusion after nearly four hours.
Pretty Yende was still hanging around after her last Barbiere and she knows the role of Elvira, having sung it in Zurich last June.
Someone—a deranged purist no doubt—heckled Javier Camarena from the balcony of the opera house for withholding the infamous high F during “Credeasi, misera.”
Beaumarchais clearly delighted in this unobtrusive realm.
These days a cadre of voluble opera-goers regularly issues dire warnings that anyone about to attend this or that production at the Met should close her eyes and just listen rather than witness yet another Peter Gelb regie “atrocity.”
New York City isn’t a bad place to live, operatically-speaking.
My memory is fading but the events I recall most vividly of the last season seem largely to have been concert performances.
The Met stage was filled with considerable magic Monday night when its dizzily effervescent revival of La Cenerentola starring Joyce DiDonato and Javier Camarena stirred a bewitched audience to some of the most ecstatic ovations heard this season.
That’s the exact word I’d use to describe Olga Peretyatko’s debut in I Puritani last night at the Metropolitan Opera: “calm.”
The hostile reaction to the Mary Zimmerman production of La sonnambula was well documented after the premiere in 2009.
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).
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