Baroque in the Bay Area
Under the baton of Nicholas McGegan, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale proves they have a magic touch in a program of Rameau and Handel.
Jean-Philippe Rameau
39 pieces since 2007.
39
pieces
20
years
All the fine young cannibals
Offenbach‘s Robinson Crusoé is salvaged from obscurity.
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.
Kevin Ng says you must watch Marie Antoinette
Sofia Coppola‘s cult classic Marie Antoinette is best known for blending a whimsically baroque visuals with a post-punk score.
By Kevin Ng
28 comments
Haircut and paste
Back to Rameau again this week with Samson at the Opéra Comique, my third Rameau production in as little as three months, after Les Fêtes d’Hébé in the same house, and Castor et Pollux at the Palais Garnier.
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.
Playing midwives to an egg
Nigel Wilkinson reports on Teodor Curentzis and Peter Sellars‘s new production of Rameau‘s Castor et Pollux in Paris.
One that was a woman
Earlier this month the opera world was stunned to learn of the death of Belgian soprano Jodie Devos who died of breast cancer at just 35, and Chris’s Cache remembers her with a broadcast from last November of Devos as Ophélie in Hamlet, her only US appearance.
Variations on salon themes
In French opera—until Pelleas et Mélisande anyway—there is always a great deal of dance; often, dance rather than song is the main event.
Trapped
What happens when you attend a performance and it doesn’t engage you?
Spaced out
Before Wednesday I don’t remember gasping when I entered a concert venue.
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).
Platée
Jean-Paul Fouchécourt is an irresistibly self-absorbed sea-nymph in Rameau’s Platée which also features a dazzling star-turn by Mireille Delunsch as La Folie.
Significant mother
As Phaedra’s tragic, all-consuming passion for her stepson Hippolytus has fascinated artists for centuries, Trove Thursday offers two of its lesser-known musical settings: Pizzetti’s opera Fedra with Régine Crespin and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson performing the cantata Phaedra, Britten’s final vocal work.
“Le Mozart noir”
Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint George is frequently referred to as “le Mozart noir.” While surely intended as a favorable comparison to Mozart, the sobriquet is diminishing, implying that Bologne’s music was somehow derivative of Mozart’s.
One goddess, one Hallenberg!
Although I usually pretend that I don’t have the diva-worship gene, sharp-eyed readers of parterre box will know that since I joined the site in 2011 as “DeCaffarrelli” I have often swooned as an Ann Hallenberg-fanboi.
Revelation
Beg. Borrow. Steal. Bargain. Cajole. Seduce. Threaten. Extort.
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.
L’Heure exquise
Although she didn’t sing that eponymous song by Reynaldo Hahn at Weill Recital Hall Thursday evening, Sabine Devieilhe did offer an “exquisite hour” of early 20th century French songs.
Frick show
French early music group Ensemble Correspondances offered two of the year’s very best concerts.
Tragically Hippolyte
I had my head in my hands groaning in disbelief instead of joining in the general applause around me.
Goodbye, gorgeous!
Can a surfeit of pleasure become—in the end—unsatisfying?
Venice to society
I was, to my astonishment, quite bored.
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.