I trust, fellow Parterre readers, that we can all agree that Riccardo Muti is a great opera conductor.
The one who got away was Anna Caterina Antonacci, a thrilling performer.
When I was a fledgling opera enthusiast, professors at a small-town Wisconsin college routinely travelled to Chicago for Lyric Opera performances.
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra explores love and death in an intense, intelligent program featuring soprano Corinne Winters.
I had heard the renowned Dutch soprano on recordings and was an admirer of hers. I was unprepared, however, for such a truly memorable evening.
Franz Welser-Möst leads a rigorous, if emotionally staid, performance of Verdi‘s Requiem at Carnegie Hall.
Mexican soprano Gilda Cruz-Romo died on 28 June at the age of 85 and Chris’s Cache remembers her with live recordings of a frequent role and a rather rare one: a last-minute Met Tosca plus perhaps her only stab at the Cherubini Medea.
For Niel Rishoi, a new CD of Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi by Eleonora Burrato for Pentatone can’t help but invite unflattering comparisons
In 1972, when I was 12 years old, my mother took me to the Salzburg Festival.
Michael Steinberg on Riccardo Muti, fascism, and who speaks through the collective voice of the Verdi Requiem.
As for complete recordings of Il trovatore, which was discussed at some length last week, there are at least 200 of them, both studio and live.
On June 11th, the Met Orchestra returned to Carnegie Hall with a diverse program led by music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
It would be enough to compare his official studio recording of this work with the recent performances in Turin to confirm that today Riccardo Muti is no longer totally ‘Mutian’
The newest Italian production of L’incoronazione di Poppea was a splendid example of how a 17th century opera can be performed in the best possible way today
Franco Bonisolli from age 28 to 33 in complete operas by Mozart, Cimarosa, Donizetti and Massenet.
For anyone who thought that Downton Abbey, with its plot lines divided between the gentry and their faithful (or not-so) servants was somehow unique, that particular tale, and lo its many variations, has been told in one form or another since Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais put quill to paper in 1778 with La Folle Journée, ou Le Mariage de Figaro.
What happens when you attend a performance and it doesn’t engage you?
We have two reasons for celebrating Jessye Norman and the first is a release on the BBC / London Philharmonic Orchestra label of a Richard Strauss concert.
In any case, we are now in the Queen’s garden of the Palace in Madrid. It is the day before the coronation of King Philip. Coronation? What coronation?
A pair of Hasse works: the all-male oratorio I Pellegrini al Sepolcro di Nostro Signore, plus the popular serenata Marc’Antonio e Cleopatra.
For those pining for Puccini with the Met out of commission. Trove Thursday steps up with the composer’s brief first opera Le Villi with Krassimira Stoyanova, José Cura and Franz Grundheber, led by Simone Young.
For this, the 250th edition of Trove Thursday, [hold for applause] a broadcast of a memorable evening at Carnegie Hall—and I was there: Smetana’s stirring Libuse, the Czech national opera, with a transcendent Gabriela Benackova as its titular prophetess.
I need to get something off my chest. I love bel canto.
Rosa Feola immediately established with her first group that she’s a serious artist who brought to the concert format both a warmly appealing coppery soprano as well as detailed and savvy dramatic instincts.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
×
Sign up for Parterre’s free newsletter.
Exclusive opera reviews, commentary, and top reads
delivered to your email weekly…ish.