This review attempts to capture my ecstatic reactions to Contra-Tenor, one of the greatest recordings I’ve ever heard.
Angela Meade, reportedly flown in at the very last minute to take on the role of Norma, absolutely triumphed, pulling out all the stops to deliver a commanding performance that should, indeed, go down in history.
Frankly I thought Sondra Radvanovsky had reached her pinnacle with her Norma but I was apparently mistaken. I’m happy to say her Turandot is completely next-level.
On the train ride home I was thinking that I don’t want to see or hear Norma ever again.
A stack of noteworthy recent baroque vocal CDs on my desk has been staring at me for weeks, so I’m tackling them on Handel’s birthday before the Met roars back into action beginning this weekend.
What happens when you attend a performance and it doesn’t engage you?
Michael Spyres’s nobly moving Idomeneo wasn’t just a bravura triumph: singing strongly throughout, he brought more colors to his portrayal of the tortured king than I had experienced from others in the Ponnelle production.
This tenor must be the finest classical singer in the world today.
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.
A good time seemed to be had by all though I don’t recall seeing a single child in attendance.
Since my previous CD round-up review the onslaught of solo recital disks of 18th century (and sometimes also 17th) vocal music has continued unabated.
Trove Thursday offers two very different live recordings of Halévy’s grand opera La Juive.
Lawrence Brownlee and Michael Spyres are two singers at the top of their game, as this concert showed, virtually peerless in music as punishing as it is pretty.
Erato’s irresistible Rossini collection Amici e Rivali is hands down my favorite vocal CD of 2020, featuring the inspired bravura sparrings of Lawrence Brownlee and Michael Spyres.
Joining the Met’s week of bel canto reruns and Tuesday’s premiere of Teatro Nuovo’s exciting new project, Trove Thursday presents Bellini’s I Capuleti ed I Montecchi with Tatiana Troyanos and Cecilia Gasdia.
Michael Spyres as Faust, despite a few flickers of indisposition, was nearly ideal.
Elina Garanca’s glorious Marguerite transformed La Damnation de Faust into the Met’s first essential must-see of the year.
“Trove Thursday” presents a complete Prodanà Nevesta (aka Die Verkaufte Braut, of course) by Smetana plus extended excerpts from a broadcast of Spontini’s La Vestale in its rarely heard original French version.
Elina Garanca was radiantly present at Carnegie Hall Friday night performing a ravishingly somber Rückert-Lieder with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the MET Orchestra.
The Paris Opera continued their 350th anniversary celebration January 26 with a brand new production of Alessandro Scarlatti’s 1707 oratorio Il Primo Omicidio ovvero Caino.
“Berlioz Takes a Trip” proclaimed the free psychedelic buttons available at Carnegie Hall Monday referring to Symphonie Fantastique,the evening’s surefire crowd-pleaser.
Those who want a rethought Lucia to allow the heroine more sense of agency will be especially confounded at Laurent Pelly’s reading.
Awaiting the return of Parsifal to the Met, “Trove Thursday” hops to the other end of Wagner’s oeuvre with a recent Rienzi der letzte der Tribunen.
Will Crutchfield’s Bel Canto at Caramoor program of concert operas concluded with a bang on Saturday with Bellini’s first success, Il Pirata.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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