The juice is on the loose
The bonkers, bewildering Die ägyptische Helena begets a suitably lush musical and creative treatment at Bard SummerScape.
American Symphony Orchestra
Dodging a bullet
Dull conducting makes Der Freischütz miss its mark at Carnegie Hall.
O stars of wonder, stars of night
A starry (and potentially annual) Christmas gala lights up Carnegie Hall.
He plays the violin
This Bard production, led by Leon Botstein, makes the strongest possible case musically, dramatically and visually for Smetana’s opera Dalibor.
You can go your own way
Eli Jacobson on a luscious evening of early Strauss with Guntram at Carnegie Hall
Decadent genealogies
Arnold Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder and Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot are, in their different ways, the final decadent flowering of a musical tradition at its twilight.
Repent for the time is at hand
Traditional Christianity has always used the threat of dying unabsolved and going to Hell as a tool to get us not only to accept Jesus but also obey the dictates of the Church. Last week in New York, two classical works touched on the theme of repentance and absolution.
Suspicious conduct
There is a strong case to be made that George Fridrich Handel is the composer most suited to the present moment.
I’ll plant my own tree
Richard Strauss’ “Bucolic Tragedy in One Act” Daphne is one of his most beautiful and most frustrating works.
Someday she’ll come along, the girl I love
In Richard Strauss’s Arabella, the heroine is consumed with finding the right man—der Richtige—but who is the right Arabella?
Silent treatment
It is perhaps a misperception to suggest that Die Schweigsame Frau is stronger in the uncut version.
French kiss
To celebrate Valerie Masterson‘s turning 85 tomorrow, Trove Thursday offers a second annual birthday salute to the English soprano.
The Multiverse of Morley
A Trove Thursday Mega-Post © featuring the wonderful American soprano Erin Morley in Orff’s Carmina Burana and Richard Strauss’s Brentano Lieder, plus extended live excerpts from Handel’s Orlando, Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail, and Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots.
The key of dreams
My sister Julie celebrates an important birthday later this month which reminded me—as I also recalled I visiting her while she was living in Prague—that I should unearth Bohuslav Martin?’s Julietta with Lucia Popp and Dénes Gulyás for this week’s Trove Thursday.
Round Table discussion
Like many composers of his generation, Ernest Chausson was enthralled by Wagner and he too turned to legend for his only opera, one that would consume him for final decade of his brief life.
Semiramide
Produced at Carnegie Hall by Matthew Epstein in 1983 with June Anderson, Marilyn Horne, Samuel Ramey and Douglas Ahlstedt with Henry Lewis conducting.
Trial by Korngold
What is the best metaphor for this year’s Bard Music Festival?
A Lesbian in distress
Zelmira, a work of 1822, was the last of the eight operas Rossini composed for the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, then the largest opera house in Italy—perhaps in Europe.
Poetess without portfolio
Washington Concert Opera on the occasion of Gounod’s 200th birthday presented the American premiere of his first opera, Sapho.
I’m no angel
Bard cultish Summerscape series continues to test our esoteric limits with Demon, Anton Rubinstein’s little-known opera about a demon who hankers for a Georgian princess.
No retreat, Nono surrender
Intolleranza was presented by Leon Botstein and his American Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall on Thursday night, holding the audience rapt and intrigued for 65 minutes.
Horne in the morning and June at night
Semiramide produced at Carnegie Hall by Matthew Epstein in 1983 with June Anderson, Marilyn Horne, Samuel Ramey and Douglas Ahlstedt with Henry Lewis conducting.
Catch a falling tsar
You’d think by now I’d know better than to make snap judgments about an opera or a singer—but apparently not.
When the sun comes out
This year as part of Bard’s “Puccini and His World” festival audiences may witness the resurrection of Mascagni’s distinctly odd Iris.
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).