Up an Octavia
The operatic offerings of Boston Early Music Festival — Keiser‘s Octavia and Telemann‘s Pimpinone and Ino — are delectable discoveries
Boston Early Music Festival
25 pieces since 2011.
25
pieces
16
years
Concerto barocco
Christopher Corwin on three stylish sopranos delighting audiences live in New York and on recording in a trio of new releases.
Milling around
On Tuesday night, in the commodious concert hall of the Morgan Library, the Boston Early Music Festival forces brought Georg Philipp Telemann’s Don Quichotte auf der Hochzeit des Comacho to New York.
Halle if ya hear me
Bergamo hosts an annual Donizetti festival, Salzburg presents a Mozart-woche every January, and of course there is Bayreuth for Wagner. But Handel gets two festivals every spring, and this year I was finally able to attend one of them.
Garden varieties
Those of us in New York City who relish 17th century Italian vocal music were offered an enticing banquet over the past few weeks.
Louis Louis
For those who relish 17th and 18th century vocal music, the annual visits to the Morgan Library by the singers and instrumentalists of the Boston Early Music Festival invariably guarantee delight
Spaced out
Before Wednesday I don’t remember gasping when I entered a concert venue.
Green-eyed monster
Last night should have seen my favorite of this season’s revivals but instead Trove Thursday must step up with Jean-Marie Leclair’s irresistibly captivating Scylla et Glaucus conducted by Christophe Rousset.
Sweet 1600s
Over the past week New York City was blessed by two appealing 17th century presentations: John Blow’s Venus and Adonis from Opera Lafayette and La Storia di Orfeo courtesy of the Boston Early Music Festival.
The Isle is full of noises
Dell’ Arte Opera Ensemble theme this summer is women composers, which is timely, and the more to be applauded as likely to turn up unusual works.
Band in Boston
In the triumphant American premiere of Orlando Generoso at the Boston Early Music Festival last week, the hippogriff was among the many stars of the show.
Alexander was great
As the first of the 2018 opera productions last Saturday, the Merola Opera Program chose Mozart’s rarely-performed early serenata, Il re pastore.
I love you to death
New York fans of 17th century Italian vocal music should be rejoicing this month.
My new philosophy
A rollicking performance of his delightful comic opera Der geduldige Sokrates featuring a fine cast and the magnificent Akademie für Alte Musik conducted by René Jacobs.
Venice to society
I was, to my astonishment, quite bored.
Beyond the forest
An opera revolving around chastity vows, adultery, slut-shaming, lesbianism, transvestism and much more!
In Bruges
They say that Boston, despite many cultural distinctions, ain’t no opera town, and for some decades—generations?—this has been true. But tides of change will break, even on the shores of the Hub.
Practical magic
Notable purveyor of mayhem and infanticide Medea has lately been missing from the local operatic scene, but Sunday afternoon sections of the recently renovated Alice Tully Hall were singed by Canadian soprano Dominique Labelle’s blazing incarnation of the Greek sorceress.
Lyrists’ club
For one week every two years since 1981 the eyes—and ears—of those interested in period performance turn to the Boston Early Music Festival, particularly to its opera centerpiece, but that organization doesn’t rest on its laurels in between festivals.
Belief in a higher power
The behavioral phenomenon of limerence has been described as “an involuntary potentially inspiring state of adoration and attachment to a limerent object involving intrusive and obsessive thoughts, feelings and behaviors from euphoria to despair, contingent on perceived emotional reciprocation.”
Teen queen
Handel’s first surviving musical composition is Almira, the opera he wrote in a hurry when shake-ups at the Hamburg opera house, where the 19-year-old had been playing in the violin section, left a planned production unfinished.
Pyramid scheme
Giulio Cesare at the Met proved an evening that added up to much more than the sum of its uneven parts.
Mission statement
Can it be nearly a quarter-century ago that an Italian mezzo-soprano in her early twenties recorded her first recital?
Grand, hotel
Sneaking in under the wire during the final week of May were two highpoints of New York’s opera season: the Cleveland Orchestra’s Salome with a stunning Nina Stemme and operamission’s revelatory US stage premiere of a complete edition of Handel’s first opera Almira.
Win a Free Ticket to Opening Night at the Met!
Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen star in the Met's new Macbeth. We're giving away one ticket, so screw your courage to the sticking place and enter now!
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).
