43 pieces since 2010 — in 15 roles, at 9 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
Later this month the Met at last revives its striking Herbert Wernicke production of Die Frau ohne Schatten, prompting a Chris’s Cache preview of three live recordings of Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s fanciful if knotty masterpiece.
On first hearing, Paul Dukas’ 1907 opera Ariane et Barbe-bleue (Ariane and Bluebeard) sounds like the love child of a three-way between Wagner, Strauss, and Debussy.
Chris’s Cache sends Renata Scotto a valentine ahead of her 89th birthday next week with rare in-house recordings of eight (!) mid-career performances spanning 1971-1977.
Trove Thursday uncovered two broadcasts of Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia that share a fascinating nexus: in each an enduring superstar tenor—José Carreras/Alfredo Kraus—is poisoned by a soon-to-vanish rising-star soprano—Vasso Papantoniou/Margarita Castro-Alberty.
Jules Massenet’s Don Quichotte was one of a number of commissions from the Monte Carlo Opera that occupied the composer at the end of his life.
One of the more unfortunate losses from the Met’s closure is its revival of Simon Boccanegra, so Trove Thursday steps up with a 1975 Berlin performnace of Verdi’s dark masterpiece with Ingvar Wixell, Gundula Janowitz, José van Dam and Bruno Prevedi.
Philippe Sly is sublime as Messiaen’s Saint François D’Assise in Salzburg, though Romeo Castellucci‘s production could brush up on its catechism.
Chris’s Cache follows up its Gounod R&J installment with a widely varied quintet of additional Romeos and Juliets
According to Mary Garden’s autobiography, Claude Debussy first encountered the Scottish-born diva at the Opéra Comique. After rehearsing her at the piano in a few scenes from his newly completed opera, Debussy said to Garden: “To think that you had to come from the cold far North to create my Mélisande.” He then turned to […]
During the 70s, Kiri Te Kanawa, particularly singing Mozart, became one of my favorite singers.
Defying a computer breakdown and an online outage, I fled to a smoky Iranian Internet café to upload this performance of Don Giovanni. It was worth the trouble.
Berlioz apparently couldn’t decide if his was an oratorio or an opera, so he labeled it a “légende dramatique.” Since its 1846 Paris premiere, it remains on both opera stages and in concert halls, with its first Met staging in 1906.
Trove Thursday looks forward to spring via Haydn’s beguiling oratorio Die Jahreszeiten (The Seasons) in a splendid rendition from the 1981 Salzburg Festival with Ileana Cotrubas, Francisco Araiza and José van Dam, James Levine conducting.
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.
When LaCieca asked me to choose my favorite live recording, I had to think… and think.
Faithful and sharp-eared member of the cher public reedroom notes, “…an observation about the Levine 40th Wozzeck CD (Anja Silja/Jose van Dam)—the second CD (acts 2 and 3) has to be a different performance, different cast and different year. It is undoubtedly Hildegard Behrens on the 2nd CD. I don’t know who the baritone is […]
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