Decadent genealogies
Arnold Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder and Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot are, in their different ways, the final decadent flowering of a musical tradition at its twilight.
Pierre Boulez
27 pieces since 2009 — at 2 companies, most often at Bayreuther Festspiele.
27
pieces
2
companies
18
years
By company
Femenine mystique
“What I am trying to achieve is to be what I am to the fullest. Black to the fullest, a musician to the fullest, a homosexual to the fullest.”
Color me impressed
Bay Area audiences starved for vocal fare during its opera’s winter/spring hiatus recently experienced two exceptional concerts with distinguished singing at the Davies Symphony Hall.
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.
Killer queen
Rossini’s Semiramide is a highly original and imaginative work of theater that impresses for its creative and beautifully scored orchestration, incisive recitatives and ensembles, and theatrically intriguing characters.
Der Meisterdirigent
Christian Thielemann is widely regarded as our time’s preeminent master of the Austro-German symphonic ensemble.
Once in love with Amy
“Trove Thursday” leaps to the end of the cycle with a slightly abridged Götterdämmerung featuring Amy Shuard as Brünnhilde.
Follow her lead
Barbara Hannigan‘s electrifying performance with the Juilliard Orchestra on Friday night proves that she is as much a force to be reckoned with on the podium as she is onstage.
Love of the earth
Claudio Abbado passed away on the 20th of January five years ago, just months before I began my Ph.D.
Surfacing: an appreciation in 20 fragments
I struggle to articulate the notion of an erotics of art.
With a song in my heart
Another five-Thursday month invites “Trove Thursday” to offer a combo of shorter works.
And one for Goethe!
Due to a small hiccup in scheduling at Casa della Cieca, this week you get two uploads!
I saw three ships
“Never in my life having enjoyed the true happiness of love I shall erect a memorial to this loveliest of all dreams…”
Forever young
Perhaps the most admirable project of Dominique Meyer’s Intendanz at Wiener Staatsoper is the traversal of the operas of Leos Janancek,.
Say it with music
Capriccio was a great pleasure on Friday night, March 4. This was a co-production of Opera Philadelphia and The Curtis Institute, presented in the intimate Pearlman Theater at the Kimmel Center.
From the house of the living
Pierre Boulez continuously challenged me and totally changed the way I listen to music.
Pierre Boulez 1925-2016
The composer and conductor died yesterday at his home in Baden-Baden, Germany. He was 90.
Ardori inospiti
The most recent Egyptian voluptuary of 2006 by our friend Franco has now been replaced by the most singularly spartan production of Verdi’s masterpiece I think I’ve ever seen.
Henry, sweet Henry
Although she began her career nearly 25 years ago recording and performing lots of baroque music, I was surprised to see German soprano Dorothea Röschmann promoted as the star attraction of an all-Purcell concert Sunday at Carnegie Hall.
Rock-a-bye your baby with a pentatonic melody
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.
Three nights in Paris
“Oh to be young and going to Paris for the first time,” exclaimed an elderly gentleman who donned his best sweatervest for a concert at the Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival this past August.
Rédempteur à toute vitesse
This week, Our Own Jungfer Marianne Leizmetzerin presents what is perhaps the briefest Bühnenweihfestspiel on record.
Hothouse flower
To some, Anne Schwanewilms will always be the soprano in the slinky black dress who replaced Deborah Voigt at Covent Garden a decade ago.
“Der Irrtum Werktreue”
“Theater ohne Regie gibt es nicht – das ist ganz einfach dann lediglich Literatur.” So writes Jürgen Flimm in the Berliner Morgenpost: “Theater without direction does not exist; it is simply only literature.” UPDATE: Our Own Batty Masetto has provided a translation after the jump.