parterre box turns 30 on Sunday and writers from around the box are reflecting on the legacy of founder James Jorden and three decades of “remembering when opera was queer and dangerous and exciting and making it that way again”
To get right to the point, the performance did not come together despite some good elements and was a major missed opportunity.
It was thrilling to see and hear Will Crutchfield’s insights come to life onstage in performance when Teatro Nuovo performed Poliuto at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center Wednesday July 19.
On this day in 1974 Verdi’s I Vespri Siciliani had its Metropolitan Opera stage premiere.
On this day in 1956 the Metropolitan Opera opened its season with Maria Callas in Norma.
On this day in 1964 the Metropolitan Opera opened its season with a new production of Lucia di Lammermoor.
Sondra Radvanovsky has an unconventional voice that is suited to unconventional characters and is best used in rangy, difficult music. The lack of lush beauty was no deficit in depicting Medea’s jealousy and vengeful rage.
On this day in 2011, the Metropolitan Opera opened its season with a new production of Anna Bolena.
These are my findings and opinions (and I welcome rebuttals)!
The worst criticism perhaps was the gleeful Schadenfreude noting Edita’s voice wasn’t as under her command as it used to be.
This week’s Trove Thursday—Kodály’s Háry János in a 1955 RAI broadcast in Italian led by famed Hungarian conductor Ferenc Fricsay—may be a bit brief as C-19 finally arrived last week chez CC.
Your favorite box set-aholic here completely missed the release last August of Giuseppe Di Stefano – Complete Decca Recordings in honor of the great tenor’s centenary.
The great Spanish mezzo soprano Teresa Berganza died on May 13 at the age of 89, so Trove Thursday salutes one of its favorites with a pair of dazzling rare live Mozart performances.
It’s nice to see Sony Classical backing a serious operatic soprano and not some crossover refugee from Britain’s Got Talent or another syrupy Christmas album from the world’s reigning Heldentenor.
Trove Thursday offers Shostakovich’s 1962 Katerina Izmailova with Australian soprano Marie Collier as its anti-heroine and Jon Vickers as her lover.
On this day in 1959 soprano Leonie Rysanek made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Lady Macbeth.
Trove Thursday offers a nearly forgotten 19th century opera with a most marvelous name: Le Roi d’Ys by Éduoard Lalo featuring a superb French cast led by Alain Vanzo, Andrea Guiot, Jane Rhodes and Robert Massard.
In an era when the Metropolitan Opera cannot cast an Aida, Trovatore or Forza consistently, New Amsterdam Opera managed to cast large, attractive and fully technically capable voices in all the cruelly demanding principal roles in I Vespri Siciliani!
Though the formal recorded aria recital is the ultimate calling card of an artist, the invitation to the spectator to receive, listen, and critically behold of the offerings (on fire or burnt), they are but a souvenir and there are a few drawbacks inherent with the presentation.
The American Opera Society introduced many important singers to New York City audiences, but few were as controversial as the Greek soprano Elena Souliotis; Trove Thursday offers her local debut (at age 23) in Anna Bolena with Marilyn Horne, Janet Baker, Plácido Domingo and Carlo Cava.
Franco Corelli was born on April 8, 1921 in Ancona and Trove Thursday celebrates the matinee-idol tenor’s centenary with a pair of his rare non-Met US appearances; seducing Marie Collier in La Fanciulla del West and vacillating between Ilva Ligabue and Grace Bumbry in Il Trovatore.
Off-and-on since last fall my PPP (Personal Pandemic Project) has been assembling a chronology of the American Opera Society. For 19 years beginning in 1951 it presented a remarkable series of concert performances of works unperformed by either the Met or New York City Opera.
Maria Callas and Montserrat Caballé are two of the most highly-regarded and esteemed exponents of the great soprano roles in both bel canto and in the operas of Verdi, and their recordings are held as artistic triumphs of the highest order.
Giacomo Puccini’s La fanciulla del West may have its detractors (Stravinsky referred to it as a “horse-opera’) but you will not find me among them.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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