This performance of Poulenc‘s “Les Chemins de l’amour” is a gem.
I had heard the renowned Dutch soprano on recordings and was an admirer of hers. I was unprepared, however, for such a truly memorable evening.
Jessye Norman really embraces elements of the song falling somewhere between classical art song and popular ballad.
A sublime Reginald Mobley and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra are a balm for troubled times in a program of baroque selections and spirituals.
Though there are a number of fine recording of holiday music by opera singers (Eileen Farrell!), this great performance of Jessye Norman was captured on video as well.
Like Type 2 Diabetes, symptoms of YAS (Yuletide Aversion Syndrome) commonly creep up on gay men after manopause.
J’Nai Bridges makes a sophisticated companion to the Morgan Library & Museum’s Renoir Drawings exhibit.
Kevin Ng sits down with PEN/Faulkner Award-winning novelist and critic Garth Greenwell to talk about sex, queerness, and the “promise of opera.”
It took me a while to “warm up” to Wagner.
Pénélope at the Bayerische Staatsoper’s summer festival spotlights the crossroads between the nostalgic and the progressive.
Chris’s Cache offers an early 80th birthday salute to Jessye Norman with broadcasts of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius, and Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder plus a pair of opera arias by Verdi and Mascagni from a 1979 Atlanta Symphony concert with Robert Shaw.
Chris’s Cache offers ten more sopranos singing Strauss‘s Vier letzte Lieder: Sena Jurinac, Gundula Janowitz, Jessye Norman, Roberta Alexander, Edith Mathis, Helen Donath, Malin Byström, Christiane Karg, Jacquelyn Wagner, and Corinne Winters.
Following last week’s multiple versions of three prime concert arias, Chris’s Cache concludes its Mozart month by offering more of those special vocal works, this time twenty-five arias for mezzo, tenor or bass, as well as more for soprano.
Lisette Oropesa, a product of the Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Program, has not been seen much on the stage of the Met in recent seasons.
When my editor suggested to me a round-up of my favorite recordings of Jacques Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann I was très, très, intrigued.
Quite simply, the singers are not around today who are steeped in the tradition of verismo, or for that matter the later part of the 19th century.
Chris’s Cache offers three striking interpretations of another Gluck masterpiece Alceste from Janet Baker, Anna Caterina Antonacci, and Véronique Gens
My sole live encounter with Seiji Ozawa coincided with his final appearances at the Metropolitan Opera, where he conducted its 2008 revival of Tchaikovsky’s Pikovaya Dama.
Nothing says “diva” like an insane recital program.
Welcome, beloveds, to the Jessye Norman Memorial Museum. I’ll be the docent for your tour today.
It doesn’t get more classic than John Dexter‘s Dialogues des Carmélites.
The worst criticism perhaps was the gleeful Schadenfreude noting Edita’s voice wasn’t as under her command as it used to be.
The Met’s recent Ariadne auf Naxos and Elektra combo left me wanting more and more Richard Strauss, so Trove Thursday offers a complete Capriccio with Jonas Kaufmann (his one-and-only Flamand) and Christopher Maltman vying for Soile Isokoski.
We have two reasons for celebrating Jessye Norman and the first is a release on the BBC / London Philharmonic Orchestra label of a Richard Strauss concert.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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