A convocation of mezzos–and a pride of tenors–produce hundreds of sixteenth notes in a bewitching Rossini showpiece
For the fourth annual edition of “Handel for my birthday” Trove Thursday serves up three heaping portions of “old-fashioned oratorio.”
Trove Thursday relishes neglected works, operas in translation and irreplaceable divas, and this week it presents a pair that embody all three affections: Cherubini’s Les Abencérages and Weber’s Oberon in Italian with the glorious Anita Cerquetti, conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini and Vittorio Gui respectively.
This year’s Salzburg Festival opens Saturday with a new production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, an opera often performed elsewhere in translation, so “Trove Thursday” offers two for the price (!) of one.
Trove Thursday offers a pair of live broadcasts of Médée featuring two compelling mid-20th century divas—Inge Borkh in German and Eileen Farrell in Italian.
“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.
All the daring and imagination of La Divina’s live work, particularly in the early years, is revealed in Warner Classics’ Maria Callas: The Live Recordings.
Falstaff, Verdi’s totally unexpected, final, great comedic roar.
Several prima donnas have ought to resurrect La Vestale, including Renata Scotto, whose priestess highlights this week’s “Trove Thursday.”
Despite the continued popularity of Der Freischütz in German-speaking countries, are the magical mature operas of Carl Maria von Weber otherwise really so problematic, their libretti so unwieldy to explain their continued absence from the world’s stages?
The Met stage was filled with considerable magic Monday night when its dizzily effervescent revival of La Cenerentola starring Joyce DiDonato and Javier Camarena stirred a bewitched audience to some of the most ecstatic ovations heard this season.
It’s kind of shocking, when you really think about it, that the kind of international operatic model that the Royal Opera now operates on barely existed only 50 years ago. Until around 1960 most of the performances at the Covent Garden were given in English and the casting choices were enough to make the Vicar…
Incredible, but true, I Puritani had not been performed in Great Britain since 1887 when Glyndebourne decided to stage it in 1960 with the main intention to showcase Joan Sutherland, who had been catapulted to international superstardom one year earlier in the legendary Lucia di Lammermoor at Covent Garden. Furthermore, Vittorio Gui, who had already…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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