Bergamo hosts an annual Donizetti festival, Salzburg presents a Mozart-woche every January, and of course there is Bayreuth for Wagner. But Handel gets two festivals every spring, and this year I was finally able to attend one of them.
Kudos to Opera Philadelphia for programming Handel’s Semele in its exceptionally interesting and wide-ranging Festival 2019; unfortunately, despite an extraordinary cast, James Darrah’s drably dull production doomed it.
Teatro Real continued their 200 years’ celebration by premiering a piece that they have never done before, Francesco Cavalli’s opera La Calisto.
It may have taken 28 years to see Robert Carsen’s production of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the U. S., but it was worth waiting for.
Few new operas have received the near-unanimous acclaim that has greeted Written on Skin since its first performance at the 2012 Aix-en-Provence Festival.
Joined by the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, The English Concert concluded the US leg of its current tour at Carnegie Hall Sunday with a complete performance of the darkly moving Theodora, Handel’s penultimate oratorio.
Handel’s 1711 opera Rinaldo was the first Italian opera ever written specifically for the London stage.
Rule Britannia? Often during the Olympics that famous number from Thomas Arne’s 1740 Alfred echoed in my ears.
My tolerance for 17th century opera is generally low, but even I can appreciate the value in an underappreciated composer like Francesco Cavalli.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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