Follow your bliss
In recital for the Los Angeles Opera, tenor Ben Bliss makes the case for the next stage of his career.
Robert Schumann
24 pieces since 2007.
24
pieces
20
years
Flower maiden
Erin Morley closed Vocal Arts DC’s season on May 13th with a recital in the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater, partnered by pianist Gerald Martin Moore.
Still glowin’, still crowin’, still goin’ strong
Matthew Polenzani returned triumphantly to his comfort zone in a Philadelphia Chamber Music Society recital on April 2.
I’ll remember April
If April is the cruelest month, it may be that spring’s arrival brings far too many things to do and see.
Overachiever
The program for Jasmine Rice LaBeija’s concert as part of Works & Process at the Guggenheim on Wednesday, March 8 read a bit like a curriculum vitae.
No sex please, we’re German
Why is so twinkling, tuneful a score so little known?
I’ll have to say I love you in a song
Starting March 19, Vocal Arts DC’s latest virtual concert lavishes listeners with a sumptuous recital of art songs from the Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen.
Utterly bewitching
Who could doubt that Leontyne Price contains multitudes?
Close encounters
Zauberland: An Encounter with Schumann’s Dichterliebe touched on themes of forced migration, loss, exile, and dehumanization.
Bolder sister
Brigitte Fassbaender‘s sound is piquant and, I’d hazard to guess, instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with her work.
Bland date
With a program of Schumann, Wagner, Ravel and de Falla, mezzo-soprano Elina Garanca and pianist Kevin Murphy delivered a underdone performance at Carnegie Hall on Tuesday night.
Songs of disappointment
b>Lawrence Brownlee, star tenor of stage and NFL games is a real “pillar of the community.”
A little Proust
Though the novel’s structure and texture are often compared to musical forms such as Wagnerian music-drama, who would attempt to turn Proust’s A la Recherche de Temps Perdu into opera?
The last ruse of summer
Flotow’s Martha, a work of 1847 that was popular around the world for a hundred years.
Head space
The best part of Paul Appleby’s recital for the Philadelphia Chamber Society came in his last two groups.
C’est la chanson des rêveurs qui s’étaient arraché le coeur
Sandrine Piau‘s lovely recital with pianist Susan Manoff at The Philadelphia Chamber Music Society on February 14 entered around the themes of sleep, dreams and waking.
A free soul
To be honest, I have never seen anything quite like Matthias Goerne in recital. He seemed so wonderfully free.
Unadorned
There was wonder and magic last night in Philly when The Philadelphia Chamber Music Society presented British tenor Mark Padmore and American pianist Jonathan Biss in a recital devoted to the songs of Schumann, Tippett, and Fauré.
Zing went the strings
This DVD
of a Diana Damrau recital (accompanied only by the harpist Xavier de Maistre) is sure to please her legions of fans.
Peak performance
Robert Schumann said he devoted more love and energy to Manfred than any of his other compositions. It took him only about a month in 1848 to adapt a translation of Byron’s semi-autobiographical poem about a guilt-ridden noble into a program consisting of an overture and 15 pieces for chorus, orchestra and spoken voice. Schumann was […]
Barge and in charge
Some things, like hearing an evening of chamber music on a barge in the East River, sound better on paper than they actually are. And some things work exactly the opposite way: for example, the composer David del Tredici. Bargemusic presented soprano Courtenay Budd in a program of two song cycles from the 1990s by […]
The Memory of Singing
Austrian mezzo Angelika Kirchschlager left an incomplete impression as a Lieder singer Sunday night, in a quirky recital program of Brahms, Wolf, Mahler and Reynaldo Hahn, with pianist Warren Jones. Suffering from a cough and swallowing some words, Ms. Kirchschlager succeeded more in gesture than details. Breezing through Brahms’ songs “Meine liebe ist grün,” “Über die Heide,” and “Salome,” faux-naïve songs […]
Isn’t it romantic?
In the past ten years there has been a renaissance of the countertenor, perhaps from a renewed fascination with period pieces performed in authentic period style. While no one is thinking of lopping off body parts just yet (although with some of these Regie productions, who knows?), many major opera houses now engage David Daniels, […]
Zara Dolukhanova 1918-2007
The legendary mezzo-soprano of the Russian Soviet period, Zara Dolukhanova, died last week at the age of 89. Though she excelled in brilliant Rossini roles in the opera house, her greatest success was as a recitalist. Dolukhanova’s broad repertoire included music from arie antiche to Prokofiev and Stravinsky; unusually for Soviet-era singers, she often included […]
Win a Free Ticket to Opening Night at the Met!
Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen star in the Met's new Macbeth. We're giving away one ticket, so screw your courage to the sticking place and enter now!
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).
