Yes and no
William Kentridge‘s eclectic The Great Yes, The Great No arrives at Cal Performances.
William Kentridge
21 pieces since 2010 — at 3 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
21
pieces
3
companies
17
years
By company
Soho meets Sybil
On Friday, MCal Performances—the performing arts organization based at University of California, Berkeley—presented the US premiere of South African multi-disciplinary artist William Kentridge’s Sybil, with music composed and conceived by Nhlanhla Mahlangu and Kyle Shepherd.
Sweet home Ithaca
Monteverdi’s late Homeric masterpiece Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria isn’t often performed in the United States.
Old masters
Jordi Savall and William Christie, 80 and 77 respectively, stand as the two senior masters whose recordings and appearances have done the most over the past decades to build a healthy local enthusiasm for pre-Classical music.
Lulu
Starring Marlis Petersen, Susan Graham, Daniel Brenna, Paul Groves, Johan Reuter and Franz Grundheber, conducted by Lothar Koenigs. From November 21, 2015.
Witch hunt
Later this month Asmik Grigorian will star in Covent Garden’s new Jenufa, which Trove Thursday anticipates presenting the acclaimed Lithuanian soprano in a broadcast from 2014 of Tchaikovsky’s rare opera The Enchantress (Charodeyka).
Every snarl and shimmer
Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra reigned supreme at the opening night of Wozzeck on Friday evening, rendering every snarl and shimmer of Berg’s score with gripping intensity.
Wir arme Leut!
Trove Thursday presents that perennial holiday favorite Berg’s Wozzeck.
The journey is the destination
In this recital, the Polish bass-baritone Tomasz Konieczny and his pianist Lech Napierala present the world premiere recording of Stanislaw Baranczak‘s Podróz Zimowa (Winter’s Journey), which weds the poet’s meticulously crafted poetry to the music of Franz Schubert.
Brute force
Alban Berg’s compact yet potent oeuvre has long played an outsized role in shaping my understanding of music’s aesthetic evolution.
Aggrieved is the glorious work
What could go wrong? As it turned out: just about everything!
Crepuscolo
“It’s not easy being green”: especially if you’re the two greatest Italian opera composers.
The leggy movie
This Met’s second production of Berg’s 1935 opera was the hot topic of November 2015.
Wer ein solches Weib errungen
Opera at Caramoor rallied Sunday afternoon with an admirable if erratic performance of Fidelio which was especially memorable for South African soprano Elza van den Heever’s thrilling first-ever Leonore.
Half a million marks
Unlike my friend Greg Freed, who entertainingly wrote of his ambivalence about seeing Il trovatore in a movie theater this season, I have embraced the Met Live in HD transmissions as a part of the modern operagoing experience.
Cherchez la femme (fatale)
Lilith. Pandora. Circe. Salome. “La Belle Dame sans Merci.” Carmen. Brigid O’Shaughnessy: the eternal “femme fatale” still fascinates us.
Summer of love
In just two years, Brooklyn’s LoftOpera has rapidly established itself as a bracing, essential addition to New York City’s musical life.
The Met: Can it be saved?
Short answer: yes. But let’s begin by dismissing the a blatant canard. One thing that the Metropolitan Opera does not need to do is to scale back the number of performances in a season.
Crack of doom
It took about 30 minutes for me to grow restless watching the world premiere video of Gyorgi Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre from Gran Teatre del Liceu.
For the birds
Die Zauberflöte is a perennial favorite with audiences, and modern productions have attracted top singers and production teams. Yet every production struggles with the performance text, particularly with the issues of race and sex. The dreams of the Enlightenment may be lovely, but the social mores of their dreamers have not aged gracefully. Despite a […]
Theatrical Ligeti, Dramatically Realized (TL;DR)
Look, this is a very special piece of music for me. You were twenty once, right? You were self-righteous. You had your musical heroes, and your mind was being remolded every fifteen minutes or so by a rapid succession of new experiences that challenged your notions of what music could do.