There’s a parade in town
Les Brigands at the Paris Opera is an expensive joke that never lands
Jean-Pierre Ponnelle
42 pieces since 2010 — at 5 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
42
pieces
5
companies
17
years
I, Claudio
Claudio Abbado made his Met debut on 7 October 1968 conducting Verdi’s Don Carlo, led five more performances through 14 November, and then never returned. Chris’s Cache offers the only complete recording I’ve run across from that run.
Sea no evil
A muted production challenges a talented cast in San Francisco Opera’s Idomeneo
Duet to me one more time
Patrick Mack reviews yet another Puccini album from Jonas Kaufmann
Speaking of tradition
You can imagine my surprise at encountering an almost wholly traditional staging with one teensy difference.
I’m a stranger here myself
In 1982 I saw Turandot at the San Francisco Opera, the year after I became an opera fan, and it was my first live opera.
Donna Anna and the Dynamos
The new Opera News section of OPERA magazine already seems to be getting smaller, but the March issue features a long interview with Carol Vaness about Donna Anna.
On the steps of the palace
Anyone arriving at Lyric Opera of Chicago’s production of Rossini’s Cinderella (La Cenerentola) expecting the Disney-fied version of the story will be in for a surprise.
Rondo and rondo and rondo we go
A convocation of mezzos–and a pride of tenors–produce hundreds of sixteenth notes in a bewitching Rossini showpiece
Mozart for another time
Eagerly awaiting Met May Mozart Madness, Chris’s Cache presents a starry quintet of the master’s operas not being done next month.
Ocean, thou mighty monster
Michael Spyres’s nobly moving Idomeneo wasn’t just a bravura triumph: singing strongly throughout, he brought more colors to his portrayal of the tortured king than I had experienced from others in the Ponnelle production.
Reminiscences of Mozart
The great Spanish mezzo soprano Teresa Berganza died on May 13 at the age of 89, so Trove Thursday salutes one of its favorites with a pair of dazzling rare live Mozart performances.
Same as it ever was
I must confess to feeling a bit of “Tosca fatigue” as I entered the Lyric Opera of Chicago house for Wednesday’s matinee of the Puccini standard.
‘Così,’ cheap ‘n cheerful
In 2022, making Così fan tutte intimate is not a radical act. Making it enjoyable, however, is.
The key of dreams
My sister Julie celebrates an important birthday later this month which reminded me—as I also recalled I visiting her while she was living in Prague—that I should unearth Bohuslav Martin?’s Julietta with Lucia Popp and Dénes Gulyás for this week’s Trove Thursday.
A life-changing LP
I never fathomed I’d be writing words as these this soon.
Have yourself a merry little widow
Trove Thursday follows tradition and bids farewell to 2020 with an operetta: Lehár’s Die Lustige Witwe starring Edda Moser as a most commanding Hanna Glawari!
Dueling duels
Mr. Wilson’s production concept, according to his liner notes, has more to do with Paris at the time of the premiere and a “world of memory” than it does with the storytelling of civil war in medieval Spain.
Group therapy
As long as women have been preyed upon, Don Giovanni has been relevant.
It’s the Minnesinger not the song
Tannhäuser pales beside the other great Wagnerian operas in the degree to which it has innovated the Regisseur’s vocabulary for set design and dramaturgy.
I had too much to dream last night
Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt in a 1967 Vienna broadcast appropriately featuring three American stars: John Alexander, Marilyn Zschau, and George London.
“To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up”
Tosca, as it exists now, can’t be real, spontaneous drama-it’s just Camp.
The quality of mercy
“Trove Thursday” offers Mozart’s late opera seria in a Paris “pirate” featuring the high-voltage diva-duo of Anna Caterina Antonacci and Elina Garanca.
Take the long way Rome
Russell Thomas’s opening aria, “Del piu sublime soglio” displayed an intense attention to the text and some surprisingly beautiful piano phrasing that I’ve never heard risked before and it brought wonder and gooseflesh.