Rigoletto is the perfect opera. The story is straightforward and powerful; none of the action occurs backstage or between scenes or twenty-seven years before curtain rise; and the ethical anvil lands not once but twice, on the title character singing, “La maledizione!” The curse!
This video recording of Il trovatore is sensational for all the right and wrong reasons simultaneously.
I find it difficult to experience Madama Butterfly without also experiencing an odd fracturing of the self.
Trove Thursday offers Bellini’s La Sonnambula with Anna Moffo (San Francisco 1960) and Anna Netrebko (Vienna 2006).
The conclusion of our Fanciulla del West video overview in three parts looks at a trio of performances from the 2010s.
Verdi’s Rigoletto returned to the Met Friday in the stilted “Las Vegas” production by Michael Mayer, with mostly competent singing from a good-looking cast.
Two years before she brought the role to Wiener Staatsoper in a production somewhat dominated by Jonas Kaufmann, soprano Nina Stemme sang her first-ever Minnie in La fanciulla del West at Stockholm’s Royal Opera.
Strange as it is to encounter two such disparate works presented with the identical production concept, it’s odder still that the opera you’d think would be the slam dunk is anything but.
Everything about Aleksandra Kurzak’s new disc
is a variation on the term “fioritura.”
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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