All dolled up
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.
Victoria de los Ángeles
26 pieces since 2006 — in 8 roles, at 4 companies, most often at Bayreuth Festival.
26
pieces
8
roles
4
companies
21
years
Role Antonia
Role Butterfly
prepackaged pathos
Those of you cher public who ordered and enjoyed Decca’s bargain Wagner box may now be interested in a bargain Puccini edition offered by EMI. The set, Puccini: The Operas, retails for $59.98 (less than four bucks a disc) and includes complete performances of:Â
Role Elisabeth
It’s the Minnesinger not the song
Tannhäuser pales beside the other great Wagnerian operas in the degree to which it has innovated the Regisseur’s vocabulary for set design and dramaturgy.
The hill is greener
Live recordings of Hans Knappertsbusch conducting Parsifal seem to proliferate like stairways in M.C. Escher prints.
Role Manon
Bonisolli: the early years
Franco Bonisolli from age 28 to 33 in complete operas by Mozart, Cimarosa, Donizetti and Massenet.
Role Marguerite
Devil in disguise
On this day in 1953 the Metropolitan Opera opened its season with a new production of Gounod’s Faust.
Role Mimì
Loving him isn’t the right thing to do
Matthew Travisano takes on Mimì’s Act III aria from La bohème — not that one, the other one — in the latest installment of the “Perspectives on an Aria” series
Role Salud
“The trouble is you think you have time”
“Trove Thursday” presents Falla’s La Vida Breve in a live concert version with Victoria de los Angeles, one of Spain’s greatest singers, as Salud.
Role Violetta
There are no dead
John Danaher pays an operatic tribute to the writings of James McCourt, an author who captured the spirit of opera as queer and dangerous like no other.
There arose such a clatter
With Christmas Eve 2016 falling on a Saturday, the Met offers contrasting orchestral splendors at noon and 6 p.m.
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).
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!
