J.S. Bach doesn’t get a lot of attention on this site although he wrote tons of vocal music.
Endlessly extricating her from existing contracts then negotiating new ones must make being Sonya Yoncheva’s manager the hardest job in the music business.
Anticipation of events like the Metropolitan Opera’s 50th Anniversary bash turns me back into the newly opera-soused kid who begged his parents to let him watch the highlights of the Bing Gala on the family color television.
The wild tempest that whipped and drenched the audience as it exited the Met after Tuesday’s season premiere of Wagner’s Der Fliegende Holländer mirrored the finer features of the evening.
“Trove Maundy Thursday” offers a recent un-HIP version of Handel’s Messiah.
Today’s Rusalka video overview covers filmed performances of Dvorák’s opera since 2010.
If you’ve been following the coverage of the Nézet-Séguin succession, you will note that a good deal of the coverage centers on whether the incoming maestro will “champion” this composer or that.
While D.C. Wagnerians wait for Nina Stemme’s Brünnhilde to arrive next week, “Trove Thursday” presents the erstwhile Valkyrie of another compelling diva: Anna Caterina Antonacci as Brunehild, the heroine of Ernest Reyer’s Sigurd, a French grand opera also based on the Nibelungenlied.
La Cieca thinks she knows who the murderer is.
William Christie’s Les Arts Florissants made a much-anticipated appearance at Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival Saturday performing Theodora.
While the celebrity-studded, expensively-dressed audience gathered for the gala opening of the Metropolitan Opera’s 2015-2016 season seemed genuinely enthralled by Monday evening’s performance of Otello, it was more likely swept away by the power of Verdi’s genius than by Bartlett Sher’s puzzling, inert new production.
The winter 2014 final run of the Met’s first/only Rusalka production (a new one is scheduled in a few seasons) seemed both a nod to the theater’s past and a hint of its future.
James Levine turns 72 this year. Even though his health has improved considerably in the past year and he may continue to conduct for a decade or more, it seems inevitable that he will step down as the Met’s Music Director sometime in the next few years to assume the role of Conductor Laureate.
“Oh to be young and going to Paris for the first time,” exclaimed an elderly gentleman who donned his best sweatervest for a concert at the Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival this past August.
The legend of the mermaid is ancient, and recently scientists have theorized that these legends might have arisen when humans encountered marine mammals such as whales, seals, or sea lions.
The 19th century could not cope with Così fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti (Thus Do They All, or The School for Lovers) with a libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte and music by Mozart, first presented in Vienna in 1790.
My mother asked me once, whilst staring aghast at my CD collection, why I needed so many copies of Don Giovanni.
Rule Britannia? Often during the Olympics that famous number from Thomas Arne’s 1740 Alfred echoed in my ears.
It is, as Noel Coward remarked, astonishing how potent cheap music is. According to Brockway and Weinstock’s World of Opera, Gounod’s Faust was performed, after a rather lackluster debut in 1859, a thousand times inParis at the Opera between 1869 and 1894—a gobsmacking average of once every nine days.
The interpretation of Carmen by Latvian mezzo-soprano Elina Garanca has been much debated, many finding her cold and remote, others admiring her subtly smoldering quality. A new Deutsche Grammophon DVD documenting the Met’s January 16, 2010 performances offers us an opportunity to examine the gypsy in close-up. This is certainly not the lusty, passionate, mercurial Carmen…
Don Carlo is truly a grand opera, Verdi’s biggest, no matter if it’s the four or five act version. It is a bitch.
After a rather long afternoon at the Met, a member of the cher public writes: “The Don Carlo final dress was worth catching.” Our spy has more to say after the jump.
Reviewing a CD of someone you have never heard live is always a dicey proposition. As we all know, a voice sounds very different in a big hall than it does up-close and personal. So if Marc Hervieux is your favorite new tenor, please don’t put me in the “crosshairs” just yet. I freely admit…
I thought that it would be fun to tell you about a little concert last Sunday here in Montréal, with Renée Fleming, Diana Damrau, Joyce DiDonato and Matthew Polenzani. It was actually the first time that I have heard any of them in the flesh, so I was most curious to see if the voices…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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