No one who followed Trove Thursday will be surprised that Diva November on Chris’s Cache today features Ann Hallenberg and Sandrine Piau.
Next Wednesday is the composer’s 337th birthday, so Trove Thursday previews this spring’s most enticing Handel performance with two very different live versions of his delightful Serse,.
“What fools these mortals be!”
The advance publicity about Zhang Huan’s production of Handel’s luscious Semele currently having its US premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music prominently featured a provocative claim.
His shaved head in striking contrast to his dark beard and glinting eyes, the implacable Tartar conqueror glowers at us from the CD cover, while the uncropped photo of countertenor Xavier Sabata (above) is even more disturbing, featuring his raised fist and forearm tightly wrapped in a leather belt.
My impossible wish would be to hear one of the great castrati who dominated opera for most of the 18th century.
Giulio Cesare at the Met proved an evening that added up to much more than the sum of its uneven parts.
That’s what it must have been like in 1726 London when Handel composed Alessandro for perhaps the three most famous (and expensive) singers of the day.
Natalie Dessay coyly bares a breast on the cover of Virgin Classics’ new Giulio Cesare.
Rule Britannia? Often during the Olympics that famous number from Thomas Arne’s 1740 Alfred echoed in my ears.
Here’s the thing about puns, Betsy: summer going to enjoy them and summer not.
By the end of its 2012-13 season, the Met will have presented four HD transmissions in less than two years featuring countertenors in prominent roles.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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