A snarky commentator might dub last night at the Met “Boris of the divo hair flip” but that would do a disservice to a serious, often effective performance of the challenging original version of Mussorgsky’s masterpiece.
In anticipation of the Met’s reopening performance on September 11, another serving of pandemic-hoarding arrives on Trove Thursday with 10 rare live performances of the Verdi Requiem’s concluding “Libera me.”
Trove Thursday offers Mozart’s Requiem with Lucia Popp, Christa Ludwig, Peter Schreier and Walter Berry conducted by James Levine from the 1981 Salzburg Festival.
Following last week’s Golden Cockerel, Trove Thursday offers another classic Russian opera not in Russian: Borodin’s Fürst Igor with Nelly Miricioiu, Marjana Lipovsek, Bodo Brinkmann, Evgeny Nesterenko, Robert Schunk and Sergei Koptchak conducted by Mark Ermler.
Two of the leading postwar Czech sopranos appear together in Janacek’s Kát’a Kabanová when Trove Thursday presents Gabriela Benacková‘s gleaming heroine in her US debut relentlessly persecuted by Nadjezhda Kniplová’s implacable mother-in-law.
Later this month Asmik Grigorian will star in Covent Garden’s new Jenufa, which Trove Thursday anticipates presenting the acclaimed Lithuanian soprano in a broadcast from 2014 of Tchaikovsky’s rare opera The Enchantress (Charodeyka).
Trove Thursday presents that perennial holiday favorite Berg’s Wozzeck.
Karita Mattila’s Ortrud, taut conducting, and a remarkable debut emerge from Richard Jones’s dreary Lohengrin Konzept.
The San Francisco Opera, perhaps incidentally, continued their exploration of operas based on literary works by mounting the revival of Giacomo Puccini’s first success, Manon Lescaut.
“Trove Thursday” remembers the company’s very first Lady Macbeth via Leonie Rysanek’s NYC debut in a concert performance of Verdi’s Shakespeare masterpiece less than a year before her first Met appearance.
David Alden’s acclaimed production of Leos Janácek’s Jenufa was mounted for its final performance of the season during the evening that I experienced my first opera at Santa Fe.
For more than 40 years, the magnificent opening image from Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites has served as an icon for the Met.
It was quite a pleasure—a privilege, really—to see John Dexter’s legendary production of Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites.
Christian Thielemann is widely regarded as our time’s preeminent master of the Austro-German symphonic ensemble.
A 1985 broadcast of Don Giovanni featuring Cheryl Studer, Gundula Janowitz (as Elvira!), Krisztina Laki, Gösta Winbergh, Hermann Prey (in a rare outing as the Don) and Malcolm King conducted by Jeffrey Tate.
When a work is named for its lovers one might legitimately expect that pair to dominate its performance but in my experience that is never the case with Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande.
Rufus Wainwright is determined to offer a spectacle and that intention overrides all other considerations.
Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America provides ample fodder for the legions of amateur opera sleuths seeking to confirm their theory of “Who Killed City Opera?”
August on “Trove Thursday” begins with Midsummer Mezzo Madness featuring a sterling quartet of lower-voiced ladies
If Das Rheingold is an opera about infinitude, the illusory idea that the world is large enough to satisfy all of our desires, passions, and lusts, Die Walküre is an opera about scarcity.
I struggle to articulate the notion of an erotics of art.
The Met’s magnificent revival which opened on Monday night with a superb cast under the mesmerizing leadership of Yannick Nézet-Séguin nearly converted me into a devoted Parsifal disciple.
The more ignorant segments of the public and the critical establishment continue to shout praise to David McVicar‘s torpid Tosca as the greatest triumph of the reactionary since the Bourbon Restoration.
The Met got exactly what it asked for: a safely opulent, resolutely unchallenging Tosca that was far from shabby or little but couldn’t have been less shocking
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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