The chaos is nonstop, the comedy is broad and physical, and requires a large ensemble of singers who can execute Rossinian polysyllabic patter while taking pratfalls.
Diana Damrau‘s performance as Violetta was the work of a very ordinary artist, one susceptible to vocal flubs, poor intonation, and an all too banal approach operatic performance.
Sunday’s sold out Carnegie Hall recital became a veritable love-fest between the Peruvian tenor and those assembled in the Hall.
Armide with a superbly grand Francophone heroine in Karina Gauvin and conducted by the always excellent Ivor Bolton.
While one sympathized with Matthew Aucoin’s urge to add his voice to the Orpheus canon it was difficult to figure out how his work complemented Gluck’s.
At “Trove Thursday” it’s May Night, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s 1880 comic opera, in a recent broadcast from Moscow led by pianist-conductor Mikhail Pletnev.
April brought I Puritani to Palermo’s centerpiece Teatro Massimo.
Edita Gruberova essentially revived and propagated the bel canto repertoire in central Europe, specifically in the German-speaking countries.
If opera as a genre in justified in its claim to one particular story, history confirms that the Orpheus myth would be that story.
Neumeier adapted the story close to home, making Orpheus a choreographer and his wife a star ballerina.
Anticipation of events like the Metropolitan Opera’s 50th Anniversary bash turns me back into the newly opera-soused kid who begged his parents to let him watch the highlights of the Bing Gala on the family color television.
A simply gorgeous performance of Gluck’s Orphée et Euridice starring Juan Diego Flórez.
Among the highlights were concert performances of Jules Massenet’s Thaïs and Otto Nicolai’s Il templario.
LoftOpera offered an unusually satisfying, immensely entertaining production of Rossini’s scintillating portrait of an inveterate seducer.
“Trove Thursday” continues its mini Shakespeare festival with a delightful performance by the New York City Opera of Die Lüstigen Weiber von Windsor.
Javier Camarena offered a performance carefully calibrated to a more intimate venue that nonetheless offered emotionally potent results.
These days a cadre of voluble opera-goers regularly issues dire warnings that anyone about to attend this or that production at the Met should close her eyes and just listen rather than witness yet another Peter Gelb regie “atrocity.”
There is a self-effacing quality to Jonas Kaufmann’s concert film An Evening with Puccini.
The sound of Joyce DiDonato, Lawrence Brownlee and John Osborn nailing La Donna del Lago’s thrilling second-act trio alone made worthwhile enduring one of the ugliest, most bone-headed productions seen at the Metropolitan Opera in many a year.
There might be nothing in the world as joyous as a Rossini overture.
For her third solo recording, Olga Peretyatko summons the two men who launched her career less than a decade ago
Whatever happened to Stefania Bonfadelli?
Three decades before Joyce DiDonato and Juan Diego Flórez dazzled the world with their La donna del lago roadshow, another deluxe team headed by Frederica von Stade and Marilyn Horne shone in Rossini’s neglected masterpiece.
Saturday evening conductor Will Crutchfield revived Donizetti’s La Favorite—unheard in New York for fifteen years.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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