When my editor suggested to me a round-up of my favorite recordings of Jacques Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann I was très, très, intrigued.
Two problematic 1990s Donizetti daughters
Trove Thursday adds two short works—Goyescas and L’enfant et les sortilèges—to Christian’s expansive recent survey of Bernard Haitink’s opera legacy.
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.
Trove Thursday previews Massenet’s Werther—due to return next month at the Met—with a 1984 Paris performance starring two marvelous protagonists, Tatiana Troyanos and Alain Vanzo.
Sometimes the fates conspire, preventing an artist from recording the role for which he is his generation’s touchstone.
Can a surfeit of pleasure become—in the end—unsatisfying?
Is there a more gorgeous male voice before the public today than Peter Mattei’s? Has Anna Netrebko ever sounded better?
When LaCieca asked me to choose my favorite live recording, I had to think… and think.
It seems almost comical to think now but the designer-director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, who died in 1988, was at one time considered the height of regie-theatre scandal.
What must have raced through the mind of the none-too-comely Spanish Infanta when she learned that the opera to be performed during the celebrations for her 1745 wedding to the French Dauphin revolved around the comeuppance of an ugly yet vain water nymph tricked into believing Jupiter was her ardent suitor?
These days, when James Levine is mostly in the news due to his back ailments, it is somewhat shocking to see this performance of Le nozze di Figaro begin with the Maestro fairly dancing around on the podium as he conducts a sparkling rendition of the overture. It starts off a classic performance of Mozart’s…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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