Bembo eruption
Supported by an ingenious production and strong performances, Antonia Bembo’s Ercole Amante makes a successful Paris Opera debut.
Jean-Baptiste Lully
30 pieces since 2010.
30
pieces
17
years
Changing habits
A new production of Dialogues des Carmélites featuring Anna Caterina Antonacci proves that it’s hard to be an iconoclast in Venice.
Aged in oak
When the birthdays start to pile up in the double digits in big round numbers, you start to examine your past and review what you have done with your life.
Myth and meaning
Two short theatrical works and one sacred piece from the beguiling oeuvre of the guy who didn’t write Louise
Louis Louis
For those who relish 17th and 18th century vocal music, the annual visits to the Morgan Library by the singers and instrumentalists of the Boston Early Music Festival invariably guarantee delight
Spaced out
Before Wednesday I don’t remember gasping when I entered a concert venue.
Light up my Rameau
For those who complain (not entirely unfairly) that Handel operas are “just a string of da capo arias,” I sometimes mutter to myself, “Have they ever tried Rameau?”
Cradle song
While seasonally-awkward streams of Messiah abound, Trove Thursday turns instead to Berlioz’s exquisite L’Enfance du Christ from francophone forces including Stéphanie d’ Oustrac, Bernard Richter, Edwin Crossley-Mercer and Nicolas Testé (for once, sans sa femme).
“Operatic whitewashing”
On the day of the Super Bowl, I attended a near-sold-out screening of the Paris Opéra’s recent production of Rameau’s 1735 opéra-ballet Les Indes galantes at New York’s Alliance Française.
The lion king
Opéra Royal revives Grétry’s Richard Cœur-de-lion, one of the finest examples of the opéra comique genre.
A whole new world
The Paris Opera assembled an all-French cast to stage arguably the most well-known example of opéra-ballet, Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Les Indes Galantes.
Band in Boston
In the triumphant American premiere of Orlando Generoso at the Boston Early Music Festival last week, the hippogriff was among the many stars of the show.
I put a spell on you
Armide with a superbly grand Francophone heroine in Karina Gauvin and conducted by the always excellent Ivor Bolton.
Tragically Hippolyte
I had my head in my hands groaning in disbelief instead of joining in the general applause around me.
The Otter Limits
Scheming Anne-Sofie von Otter offs her brother and sons before the opera even begins? You bet!
Well-trod cinders in fitting slippers
Forgotten operas when revived may prove to be only their own reward.
Goodbye, gorgeous!
Can a surfeit of pleasure become—in the end—unsatisfying?
Venice to society
I was, to my astonishment, quite bored.
Myth opportunity
America hasn’t exactly been vigorous about commemorating the 250th anniversary of the death of Jean-Philippe Rameau.
Lyrists’ club
For one week every two years since 1981 the eyes—and ears—of those interested in period performance turn to the Boston Early Music Festival, particularly to its opera centerpiece, but that organization doesn’t rest on its laurels in between festivals.
Orpheus goes downtown
Marc-Antoine Charpentier came along at the wrong time for a composer of French opera.
A river runs through it
I can think of no other case that resembles Handel’s complex relationship to the story—derived from Ovid’s Metamorphoses—of the ill-fated love between the shepherd Acis and the sea nymph Galatea.
Divas merrily on high
Cecilia Bartoli and Joyce DiDonato are not the only ladies who have recorded recitals this year featuring music from the 17th and 18th centuries.
Enfin, elle est en notre présence
Almost exactly one hundred years ago on March 18, 1912, the Metropolitan Opera gave its final performance to date of Armide.