While it may not be top-tier Rossini, Teatro Nuovo’s mounting of Il turco in Italia is still good summer fun.
No one in my experience both live and on records could swagger, spin out roulades, and ripple through Rossini and Handel like Samuel Ramey.
This performance features Samuel Ramey in what I consider one of the most powerful deliveries of this aria on record.
Nobody in my experience has come close to rivaling Samuel Ramey as the shy, lovelorn Englishman Lord Sidney from that first cast.
I came to The Rake’s Progress with a huge “Show Me” chip on my shoulder.
A brilliant L’italiana in Algeri in Rome has Larry Wolff once again thinking about “singing Turks”
In a satanic panic, this week Chris’s Cache presents trio of performances of Mefistofele
Les Contes d’Hoffmann is something of a puzzle in which some of the pieces are missing and others been altered to fit since Offenbach died before he could complete and revise the work.
When my editor suggested to me a round-up of my favorite recordings of Jacques Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann I was très, très, intrigued.
Yes, there were other Giocondas if not of quite the same distinction. Chronologically…
Chris’s Cache celebrates Ewa Podles‘s long connection with Handel by featuring her in three complete, decidedly un-HIP operas spanning over twenty years
The new Opera News section of OPERA magazine already seems to be getting smaller, but the March issue features a long interview with Carol Vaness about Donna Anna.
On this day in 1981 the Metropolitan Opera telecast its new and unremarkable production of La traviata.
On this day in 2017, Clémentine Margaine made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Carmen.
On this day in 2008 the Metropolitan Opera presented a gala new production of Puccini’s La rondine.
To celebrate Valerie Masterson‘s turning 85 tomorrow, Trove Thursday offers a second annual birthday salute to the English soprano.
Today is Mozart’s 266th birthday and I had already planned a Trove Thursday celebration when I learned that Maria Ewing had died on January 9.
Last Wednesday the 92nd Street Y presented the friendliest-ever episode of American Gladiators when Lawrence Brownlee and Michael Spyres continued their bel canto bromance with a delirious (almost) all-Rossini recital accompanied by Myra Huang.
In an era when the Metropolitan Opera cannot cast an Aida, Trovatore or Forza consistently, New Amsterdam Opera managed to cast large, attractive and fully technically capable voices in all the cruelly demanding principal roles in I Vespri Siciliani!
American soprano Gianna Rolandi died Sunday morning, according to a number of her friends and colleagues. She was 68.
Saturday marks the centenary of Julius Rudel’s birth which Trove Thursday celebrates with Le Coq d’or, Faust and Ariodante, a triple-bill showcasing his impressive versatility, featuring Beverly Sills and Norman Treigle, two of the most important artists he nurtured during his leadership of the New York City Opera.
During the 70s, Kiri Te Kanawa, particularly singing Mozart, became one of my favorite singers.
Soprano Erin Wall died in early October, a month shy of her 45th birthday; Trove Thursday remembers her with a 2012 broadcast of Kaija Saariaho’s shimmering L’Amour de Loin.
Produced at Carnegie Hall by Matthew Epstein in 1983 with June Anderson, Marilyn Horne, Samuel Ramey and Douglas Ahlstedt with Henry Lewis conducting.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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