The René Jacobs Giulio Cesare is so overrated
George Frideric Handel (born 341 years ago on Monday) composed over 40 operas including many masterpieces, but his Giulio Cesare is the one that everyone knows best.
Marc Minkowski
40 pieces since 2009 — at 9 companies, most often at Les Musiciens du Louvre.
40
pieces
9
companies
18
years
The best thing I saw in 2025 was Robinson Crusoé
“When there’s so much to get right, unsurprisingly a lot can and, as we all know, does go wrong.”
All the fine young cannibals
Offenbach‘s Robinson Crusoé is salvaged from obscurity.
There’s a parade in town
Les Brigands at the Paris Opera is an expensive joke that never lands
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.
Decidedly un-HIP
Chris’s Cache celebrates Ewa Podles‘s long connection with Handel by featuring her in three complete, decidedly un-HIP operas spanning over twenty years
A three-hour tour
We may all be armchair Handelians, but some of us are more used to it than others.
The Multiverse of Morley
A Trove Thursday Mega-Post © featuring the wonderful American soprano Erin Morley in Orff’s Carmina Burana and Richard Strauss’s Brentano Lieder, plus extended live excerpts from Handel’s Orlando, Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail, and Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots.
Mainly in the plain
I wonder why many New Yorkers have been led to believe that the only Handel conductor in the world is Harry Bicket.
Light up my Rameau
For those who complain (not entirely unfairly) that Handel operas are “just a string of da capo arias,” I sometimes mutter to myself, “Have they ever tried Rameau?”
The high and the mighty
Last Wednesday the 92nd Street Y presented the friendliest-ever episode of American Gladiators when Lawrence Brownlee and Michael Spyres continued their bel canto bromance with a delirious (almost) all-Rossini recital accompanied by Myra Huang.
Cradle song
While seasonally-awkward streams of Messiah abound, Trove Thursday turns instead to Berlioz’s exquisite L’Enfance du Christ from francophone forces including Stéphanie d’ Oustrac, Bernard Richter, Edwin Crossley-Mercer and Nicolas Testé (for once, sans sa femme).
Platée
Jean-Paul Fouchécourt is an irresistibly self-absorbed sea-nymph in Rameau’s Platée which also features a dazzling star-turn by Mireille Delunsch as La Folie.
Fairies at the bottom of our Wagner
Ordinarily we’d be listening to Bayreuth Festival broadcasts this week but instead Trove Thursday steps up with a true Wagner rarity: Die Feen from the Wiener Staatsoper starring as Ada, the fairy in love with a mortal, Gundula Janowitz, who turns 83 on Sunday.
To comfort you
“Trove Thursday” features its two favorite baritones in a pair of comforting settings of the Requiem.
Telling the glory of God
“The heavens are telling” begins the famous chorus that ends the first section of The Creation.
The man who would be nymph
Sometimes the fates conspire, preventing an artist from recording the role for which he is his generation’s touchstone.
I put a spell on you
Armide with a superbly grand Francophone heroine in Karina Gauvin and conducted by the always excellent Ivor Bolton.
Summer night
The dream cast put together for this second revival of Kasper Holten’s Don Giovanni production shines at the Royal Opera House.
Contes stop the music
Trove Thursday wades into the murky musicological waters of Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann..
Tragically Hippolyte
I had my head in my hands groaning in disbelief instead of joining in the general applause around me.
Rome if you want to without anything but the love we feel
“Trove Thursday” marks Monteverdi’s 450th birthday with a rare broadcast of his towering final work L’Incoronazione di Poppea.
Iris, hence away
Endlessly extricating her from existing contracts then negotiating new ones must make being Sonya Yoncheva’s manager the hardest job in the music business.
And three for Mahler
A poster outside Carnegie Hall proclaimed “Mahler Well Met” and to some degree it proved to be true.