The musical director of the Opera Royal de Wallonie at Liege is currently experiencing the early phase of a promising international career in music.
Riccardo Muti’s vision of Aida’s score largely emerged as one of subtlety, musicality, and restraint.
Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov must be Russian’s most iconic opera and “Trove Thursday” presents it with Claudio Abbado leading an impressive team.
Riccardo Chailly’s appointment as La Scala’s new music director was news that I greeted with enthusiasm when first announced in 2013.
Orfeo’s latest edition is a 1978 performance of Lucia di Lammermoor with a very estimable cast that on its surface may seem a tad mundane but the extensive liner notes (with performance photos) tell the story of why it held such magic.
Armide with a superbly grand Francophone heroine in Karina Gauvin and conducted by the always excellent Ivor Bolton.
To heck with Bayreuth and Salzburg, Glimmerglass and Santa Fe as Rosa Feola sang Mozart at Lincoln Center Friday night and I wouldn’t have been anywhere else!
August on “Trove Thursday” begins with Midsummer Mezzo Madness featuring a sterling quartet of lower-voiced ladies
Though orchestrally lavish, this “semi-staging” delivers less theater than no staging at all.
Edita Gruberova essentially revived and propagated the bel canto repertoire in central Europe, specifically in the German-speaking countries.
The third installment of my 50th anniversary tribute to Edita Gruberova was impossible to narrow down to one selection.
Usually the longer I know a work the more I look forward to rediscovering it, but that’s just not the case with the Verdi Requiem.
Ali Baba ou Les Quarantes Voleurs continues straight-tone September with Teresa Stich-Randall as its heroine while Alfredo Kraus scales the heights with another Nadir.
Today’s offering is an electric performance of Verdi’s early potboiler Attila conducted by Giuseppe Sinopoli.
“Trove Thursday” presents Altre Stelle, a fascinating performance piece which includes superb renditions of excerpts from operas by Berlioz, Cherubini, Gluck and Rameau.
These days a cadre of voluble opera-goers regularly issues dire warnings that anyone about to attend this or that production at the Met should close her eyes and just listen rather than witness yet another Peter Gelb regie “atrocity.”
Those who enjoyed (at least aurally) the Met’s recent La Donna del Lago may be craving more of the master from Pesaro, so 2015’s final “Trove Thursday” presents Torvaldo e Dorliska.
Remember that time you went to the opera and the entire evening was perfection?
On Thursday evening Jennifer Wilson “finally” made a belated, disappointing Met debut as Turandot.
Several prima donnas have ought to resurrect La Vestale, including Renata Scotto, whose priestess highlights this week’s “Trove Thursday.”
What gets me, La Cieca snaps, is not so much that Levine bit off more than he could chew, because that’s old news.
While the celebrity-studded, expensively-dressed audience gathered for the gala opening of the Metropolitan Opera’s 2015-2016 season seemed genuinely enthralled by Monday evening’s performance of Otello, it was more likely swept away by the power of Verdi’s genius than by Bartlett Sher’s puzzling, inert new production.
I’m a long-time fan of the Opera in English series funded by The Peter Moores Foundation that started, fittingly enough, with conductor Reginald Goodall’s performances of Wagner’s Ring cycle recorded live from the London Coliseum and released by EMI
Whenever opera-lovers are canvassed about what neglected operas they hunger to see revived, the resulting lists inevitably feature a goodly number of grand operas, those once wildly popular monstrosities–particularly by Meyerbeer–written primarily for Paris in the mid-19th century.
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.