Bel canto: Is it a bop?
I need to get something off my chest. I love bel canto.
Riccardo Muti
64 pieces since 2006 — at 9 companies, most often at Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
64
pieces
9
companies
21
years
Seductively compelling
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.
“I am finding my way as I go”
The musical director of the Opera Royal de Wallonie at Liege is currently experiencing the early phase of a promising international career in music.
Putting it together
Riccardo Muti’s vision of Aida’s score largely emerged as one of subtlety, musicality, and restraint.
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.
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.
Being alive
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.
I put a spell on you
Armide with a superbly grand Francophone heroine in Karina Gauvin and conducted by the always excellent Ivor Bolton.
Rosa’s turn
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!
Summer of the mezzo
August on “Trove Thursday” begins with Midsummer Mezzo Madness featuring a sterling quartet of lower-voiced ladies
“Tosca,” starring the Philadelphia Orchestra
Though orchestrally lavish, this “semi-staging” delivers less theater than no staging at all.
Elements of style
Edita Gruberova essentially revived and propagated the bel canto repertoire in central Europe, specifically in the German-speaking countries.
Königin of Mozart
The third installment of my 50th anniversary tribute to Edita Gruberova was impossible to narrow down to one selection.
Black Friday
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.
Steal me, sweet thieves
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.
Z to A
Today’s offering is an electric performance of Verdi’s early potboiler Attila conducted by Giuseppe Sinopoli.
Dancing with the stars
“Trove Thursday” presents Altre Stelle, a fascinating performance piece which includes superb renditions of excerpts from operas by Berlioz, Cherubini, Gluck and Rameau.
About a boy
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.”
To the rescue!
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.
The rite stuff
Remember that time you went to the opera and the entire evening was perfection?
Enigma variation
On Thursday evening Jennifer Wilson “finally” made a belated, disappointing Met debut as Turandot.
Keeper of the flame
Several prima donnas have ought to resurrect La Vestale, including Renata Scotto, whose priestess highlights this week’s “Trove Thursday.”
“What gets me…!”
What gets me, La Cieca snaps, is not so much that Levine bit off more than he could chew, because that’s old news.
A whiter shade of pale
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’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).