When the birthdays start to pile up in the double digits in big round numbers, you start to examine your past and review what you have done with your life.
The tragic speaker of Schubert’s Winterreise makes his fateful journey but once, yet some singers cannot help trodding the path again and again.
Two of France’s leading Early Music ensembles recently visited New York City to perform music by some of the 17th century’s leading composers.
If April is the cruelest month, it may be that spring’s arrival brings far too many things to do and see.
The English Concert’s annual Handel tour brings Solomon conducted by Harry Bicket to the US beginning Sunday March 5. In anticipation, Chris’s Cache offers Solomon plus four other oratorios by the master: Belshazzar, Hercules, Saul and Jephtha, all via broadcasts for which I feel a personal connection.
The always elegant Véronique Gens has recently returned often to her earliest roots in the French baroque.
Trove Thursday celebrates Pride with a Bible-based homoerotic sort-of opera not by the guy who wrote “Depuis le jour”: Charpentier’s David et Jonathas with Mark Padmore, Laurent Naouri and Jaël Azzaretti led by Emmanuelle Haïm.
For the fourth annual edition of “Handel for my birthday” Trove Thursday serves up three heaping portions of “old-fashioned oratorio.”
In this recital, the Polish bass-baritone Tomasz Konieczny and his pianist Lech Napierala present the world premiere recording of Stanislaw Baranczak‘s Podróz Zimowa (Winter’s Journey), which weds the poet’s meticulously crafted poetry to the music of Franz Schubert.
With Liber scriptus came the biggest discovery for me, the vocal talent of Elena Stikhina.
I had my head in my hands groaning in disbelief instead of joining in the general applause around me.
“Trove Thursday” provides a live broadcast of Mozart’s rarely performed cantata Davide Penitente by Les Arts Florissants conducted by William Christie.
This week features Roger Norrington leading a December 2006 performance of Berlioz/ Enfance du Christ from Berlin
New York City isn’t a bad place to live, operatically-speaking.
There was wonder and magic last night in Philly when The Philadelphia Chamber Music Society presented British tenor Mark Padmore and American pianist Jonathan Biss in a recital devoted to the songs of Schumann, Tippett, and Fauré.
Passion propels more operas than almost any other human emotion; however, many musical dramas have a very different sort of passion—the final days of Jesus—as their subject.
In recent years the enterprising Dell’Arte Opera Ensemble has brightened the usually arid weeks of August in New York City with some worthy operatic showcases for young singers.
When Winston Churchill was First Sea Lord, the story goes, an indignant admiral accused him of violating British naval tradition, to which Churchill replied that the only traditions of the British Navy were rum, sodomy and the lash.
You have only until Sunday to catch the most heart-breaking moments seen on New York City operatic stages this season.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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