A barrel of laughs
Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer‘s bubbly The Judgement of Paris brings a distinctly Californian terroir to operatic comedy.
Kent Nagano
21 pieces since 2010 — at 6 companies, most often at Bayerische Staatsoper.
21
pieces
6
companies
17
years
By the (little red) book
Kent Nagano gives a boost to the Opéra national de Paris‘s revival of Nixon in China.
They call me the wanderer
Kent Nagano‘s and the Richard-Wagner-Akademie‘s historically informed Ring Cycle takes on Siegfried in Dresden
Selvaggia e aspra e forte
Pascal Dusapin‘s dynamic and demanding traversal of Dante‘s Commedia arrives at the Paris Opera
Back over the rainbow bridge
“Let’s start at the very beginning” of Kent Nagano’s pioneering complete Ring project which was recently discussed here in depth in Montagu James’s review of Die Walküre.
Text and ach
Unlike more surface-level historically informed practice which has become the norm in early music ensembles, this project stands out in its surprisingly deep engagements with the ethical and practical challenges posed by “recreating” Wagner’s sound.
All dolled up
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.
Macabre fascination
Can György Ligeti‘s only opera be understood as the composer’s own grappling with trauma, death, and memory of a past life?
Direct-to-video
As a burgeoning opera fan, I relied on YouTube to connect me with the art form.
Miracle on 64th Street
Only connect! So sayeth E.M. Forster (via Margaret Wilcox) in Howard’s End.
Distinctive and unreservedly commendable
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.
‘Don’ or dinner party
A revival of Peter Konwitschny’s rightly legendary Don Carlos and Dmitri Tcherniakov’s confounding new Salome: both turned out to be unforgettable!
Immersed in eternal light
Christian Gerhaher delivers a Kindertotenlieder of such conciliatory tact that it erases all others.
Dancing lady
I entered the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Saturday night for LA Opera’s 30 year old revival of their production of Salome with a combination of enthusiasm and apprehension.
‘Tale’ of the unexpected
I am happy to finally add Les contes d’Hoffmann to the playlist in a Salzburg performance from 2003 with Neil Shicoff in one of his parade roles.
Fireworks
As I leaned forward the woman in front of me turned to her seatmate and very quietly, in a voice thick with emotion and not a few tears, said, “it’s so beautiful.”
A tsar is torn
In Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, all the Russian people starve and suffer, but none has suffering like the mental agonies of Tsar Boris.
Belief in a higher power
The behavioral phenomenon of limerence has been described as “an involuntary potentially inspiring state of adoration and attachment to a limerent object involving intrusive and obsessive thoughts, feelings and behaviors from euphoria to despair, contingent on perceived emotional reciprocation.”
She Dodon him wrong
Our Doyenne demonstrated her omniscience once again by sending me a DVD of Rimsky Korsakov’s Le Coq d’Or (Zolotoy Petushok) to review. I’m with musicologist Richard Taruskin who stated that Rimsky Korsakov was “perhaps the most underrated composer of all time” (and I’m sure his editor insisted on including the “perhaps”).
June, moon
Last year, La Cieca dedicated a blog post to a production of Salomé scheduled to take place in the Palais Opéra in Liège, with two surprising late career debuts by June Anderson as Salomé and Kammersängerin Mara Zampieri as Hérodiade. Now, a year later, I could not resist La Cieca’s request for a review, especially […]
Mostly armorless
I’d never actually seen a production of Lohengrin before I agreed to review a new Decca DVD of Richard Jones‘s staging for the Bayerische Staastoper, starring Jonas Kaufmann, so I hope I’ve got this right: It’s about this architect named Elsa, who lives in an Orwellian steampunk Germany that has videocamera technology but still dresses like […]
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).
Win a Free Ticket to Opening Night at the Met!
Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen star in the Met's new Macbeth. We're giving away one ticket, so screw your courage to the sticking place and enter now!
