A favorite Verdi performance from Tildy Diva
A well-known Met Aïda with a starry cast from 1967 is TildyDiva’s Favorite Verdi Performance
By Tildy Diva
36 comments
Waltraud Meier
41 pieces since 2007 — in 12 roles, at 6 companies, most often at La Scala.
41
pieces
12
roles
6
companies
20
years
By role
Role Amneris
Role Carmen
Trick or trill
With help from the Met’s invaluable performance archive, here is a look back at just some of what you could have seen, and perhaps did see, on October 31st through the years at the Met.
Role Giulietta
‘Tale’ of the unexpected
I am happy to finally add Les contes d’Hoffmann to the playlist in a Salzburg performance from 2003 with Neil Shicoff in one of his parade roles.
Role Isolde
A favorite Wagner performance from Yuval Sharon
This performance represents a perfect alignment of piece, performer, director, and conductor – the epitome of Gesamtkunstwerk.
By Yuval Sharon
50 comments
Wien disposition
Following classic recordings documenting the work of Karl Böhm and Herbert von Karajan. Orfeo’s 150 Years Wiener Staatsoper box moves on to new releases that are seeing their first incarnation on an officially available disc.
Wunderbare Träume
Patrice Chéreau, the humanist in provocateur’s clothing, returned to Wagner in 2007 at La Scala with Daniel Barenboim and Waltraud Meier.
Zaubernacht
A YouTuber new to La Cieca by the name of Promptersbox, has managed to make available the entire La Scala Tristan und Isolde. Your doyenne is not sure exactly where the intense magic in this performance comes from: Patrice Chéreau, Daniel Barenboim or Waltraud Meier. But magic it is!
Barenboim sings again!
Introducting a new guest critic, Giulia Grisi, who blogs regularly for “Il Corriere della Grisi.” La Scala’s 2007-8 opera season opened last night (December 7) with a new production of Tristan und Isolde. The Milanese theatre hadn’t presented Wagner’s masterpiece since 1978, when Carlos Kleiber‘s masterful interpretation became an instant classic, in spite of a […]
Role Klytämnestra
Der Meisterdirigent
Christian Thielemann is widely regarded as our time’s preeminent master of the Austro-German symphonic ensemble.
Bleak house
The haunted Mycenae of Patrice Chéreau’s enthralling production of Richard Strauss’s Elektra had seized its viewers in an unrelenting vise that never relaxed even at its quietly shattering conclusion.
Not only with words, but with lively gestures
“I will never sing the role again. It was frightful. We were a set of madwomen…There is nothing beyond Elektra. We have lived and reached the furthest boundaries in dramatic writing for the voice with Wagner. But Richard Strauss goes beyond him. His singing voices are lost. We have come to a full stop.”
Final chapter
None of my previous Elektra experiences prepared me for this stunning, overwhelming performance from the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence.
Fairy tale
“Conduct Salome and Elektra as if they were by Mendelssohn: Fairy music.” Seriously, how often has that happened?
Role Klytemnestra
Dancer in the dark
Patrice Chéreau‘s Elektra brims with ideas beyond its eschewing of the opera’s standard, hysterical trappings.
Role Kundry
Wholly Grail
Certain opera productions become the stuff of legend as much for the circumstances surrounding the performance as for the musical results.
Role Marie
Brute force
Alban Berg’s compact yet potent oeuvre has long played an outsized role in shaping my understanding of music’s aesthetic evolution.
Role Ortrud
Love of the earth
Claudio Abbado passed away on the 20th of January five years ago, just months before I began my Ph.D.
Role Sieglinde
A fjord in her future
Anja Silja staked a claim as a leading Senta of her era with a series of searing performances of Der Fliegende Holländer while in her early twenties.
Role Venus
Fresh, direct
Directors love directing Wagner, or rather, they love directing their versions of Wagner. They don’t seem to like the operas very much. We all know what we’re going to see if we travel to Bayreuth or Berlin or Stuttgart for an evening: the regietheater world of concept grafted over concept grafted over concept with the […]
Role Waltraute
A favorite Wagner performance from Roger Pines
I’d never heard Götterdämmerung in a live performance until 1985 at The Dallas Opera. OMG, so long ago!
By Roger Pines
58 comments
Def Man Glance
Since 2010 I’ve been reading nothing but horror being heaped upon the Met’s new Ring. It’s been like a cross between a cruise ship size buffet spread of internet snarking and a slasher film re-cast with music critics.