I have a song to sing, O!
The lovely English soprano Valerie Masterson turns 84 today, prompting Trove Thursday to present her in a pair of her specialties.
Philip Langridge
19 pieces since 2009 — in 11 roles, at 5 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
19
pieces
11
roles
5
companies
18
years
By role
Role Colonel Fairfax
Role Don Basilio
Three quarters of a crazy day
Our JJ‘s review of the Met’s revival of Le nozze di Figaro didn’t make it into today’s New York Post for reasons that you should be able to figure out once you’ve read the piece. At the suggestion of his editor, La Cieca is publishing it here.
Role Don Quichotte
La Duchesse s’amuse
As promised, “Trove Thursday” offers Don Quichote chez la duchesse, a second nearly unknown opera based on Cervantes’ towering literary masterpiece.
Role Grimoaldo
Love, loss, and what I sang
Sunday is Handel’s 335th birthday, an event Trove Thursday celebrates with Rodelinda, Regina de’Longobardi, one of the composer’s most popular works.
Role Lucio Silla
The lady or the Tiber
On his 86th birthday last month, the great Austrian conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt announced his retirement.
Role Marquis
Loy meets girl
Christof Loy’s highly controversial 2009 production of Berg’s Lulu for The Royal Opera House has been released on DVD (Opus Arte), with beautifully realized film direction by Robin Lough. Antonio Pappano and the Orchestra of The Royal Opera House lead an extraordinary cast of singing actors in plumbing the musical and psychological depths of this […]
Role Mercure
A passel of pirates
Many live treasures (and some duds) began to take up more and more space—first in my dorm room, then in my first little studio apartment thanks to a group of quite special men, none of whom I ever met face to face.
Role Oedipus
Distinctive and unreservedly commendable
My sole live encounter with Seiji Ozawa coincided with his final appearances at the Metropolitan Opera, where he conducted its 2008 revival of Tchaikovsky’s Pikovaya Dama.
Role Prince Shuisky
Super tsar
Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov must be Russian’s most iconic opera and “Trove Thursday” presents it with Claudio Abbado leading an impressive team.
Role Tito
A mind not made
To be, or not to be? This is the question. But for the producers of opera on DVD, the question is really, to be an opera or to be a film. The producers of the 1991 DVD of Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito as produced by Glyndebourne that same year seemed to have been sitting […]
Role Tom Rakewell
Overview: Riccardo Chailly
Riccardo Chailly’s appointment as La Scala’s new music director was news that I greeted with enthusiasm when first announced in 2013.
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).
Win a Free Ticket to Opening Night at the Met!
Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen star in the Met's new Macbeth. We're giving away one ticket, so screw your courage to the sticking place and enter now!
