22 pieces since 2011 — in 9 roles, at 7 companies, most often at Gran Teatre del Liceu.
Decca has released a remarkable performance of Massenet’s great romantic tragedy Werther. Filmed live in January 2010, this performance stands out primarily for the great singing and dramatic vitality of the principals, particularly the remarkable Werther of Jonas Kaufmann. It is rare to hear a tenor voice with this much heft, body and color phrase […]
And what a luxury it is to experience this musically outstanding Parsifal with a cast of this caliber!
The studio opera recording is a rare beast these days and its arrival always a cause for celebration.
As said at the beginning, I implied I’d rather see Don Carlo(s) and listen to Forza.
“Has anyone ever seen a truly great production of this opera?”
Psychology is encoded in the composer’s vocal lines more than his librettist’s words.
“Hailed ‘the Meryl Streep of opera’…” begins one sentence of a promotional piece for a Diana Damrau recording of another opera, reproduced on the soprano’s website.
This year, I attended one of Natalie Dessay‘s only fully-sung Traviatas at the Met.
Matthew Travisano takes on Mimì’s Act III aria from La bohème — not that one, the other one — in the latest installment of the “Perspectives on an Aria” series
Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades straddles two genres. With a macabre plot that explores the boundaries of human obsession, it’s an early psychological thriller that makes the audience engage in a kind of voyeurism Alfred Hitchcock loved. Yet the plot drawn from Pushkin and the striking Romantic score with its references to Mozart, Bizet and Grétry firmly […]
Tamara Wilson and Stanislas de Barbeyrac are the standouts in Calixto Bieito’s underwhelming Die Walküre in Paris
Nigel Wilkinson takes on the first installment of the Paris Opera’s new Calixto Bieito-directed Ring Cycle
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