Donizetti wrote so much great music, it’s hard to single out a favorite opera, or even a preferred aria!
As several readers put forth Patrizia Ciofi as a favorite under-appreciated soprano; Chris’s Cache enthusiastically agrees by offering a Ciofi-copia that includes complete operas by Handel and Meyerbeer and extensive excerpts of a Bellini, plus a dazzling concert of rare late 18th century arias.
I first heard Patrizia Ciofi in a production of La traviata from Venice. It was a very modern production set in present day, but still she shown through her performance was just incredible.
Trove Thursday marks Mozart’s 264th birthday on Sunday with the 14-year-old’s remarkable opera seria Mitridate, Re di Ponto .
Just over a month ago the great Catalan soprano Montserrat Caballé died at age 85.
Caramoor imported the venerable West-Coast period orchestra Philharmonia Baroque to perform Atalanta, an obscure pastoral work by Handel.
This week Trove Thursday endeavors to broaden his exposure with a bubbly performance of Il Marito Disperato starring Sylvia Geszty.
The Teatro di San Carlo in Naples is a pearl itself and this presentation proffers some of the best that company has to offer.
After listening to “Stella di Napoli,” her mightily impressive new CD
of rare bel canto arias just released by Erato, I felt many of the old sparks reigniting.
I suspect most New York City opera-lovers had long since given up hope that the fascinating soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci would ever return to their city.
What we have here is the grandest opera never heard.
It is quite unusual to stage a new indoor production in the middle of summer in Italy when so many outdoor venues are open, but general manager of La Scala Stéphane Lissner – who will leave next year – decided to close the first half of this Verdi-Wagner year with a beloved hit of il cigno di Busseto.
Nearly 30 years after a Handel opera last played there, Carnegie Hall presented The English Concert opening a three-year opera-oratorio project on Sunday afternoon with Radamisto.
As if last week’s survey wasn’t enough, a few more recent diva-recital disks remain worthy of attention particularly since they arrive from five front-rank singers.
If you’re the sort who prefers his diva to be an unapproachable sphinx prone to infuriating cancellations while radiating ennui, I suspect that the sunny, hard-working, grateful persona of American mezzo soprano Joyce DiDonato will not appeal to you at all.
Here’s the thing about puns, Betsy: summer going to enjoy them and summer not.
Joyce DiDonato enjoys the rare cachet of having three studio-recorded operas released in the past three years while other famous divas must be content with “just” DVDs. Although two of Renée Fleming’s Violettas have found their way onto video in less than five years (why??), “the people’s diva” has only recorded one studio opera in…
In Robert Carsen’s 2004 production of La traviata for Teatro La Fenice, the Prelude is staged. During this haunting music, we see Violetta lounging on a huge bed while more than a dozen men pay her for her services with wads of oversized dollar bills. By the time Act One begins, the bed is virtually covered…
The subtitle for Il crociato in Egitto, the last of Meyerbeer’s great Italian operas, is “Historic Melodrama in Two Acts,” and boy is it! A melodrama, I mean. I’m not sure about the historic part.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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