Riccardo Muti is a great opera conductor
I trust, fellow Parterre readers, that we can all agree that Riccardo Muti is a great opera conductor.
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
32 pieces since 2012.
32
pieces
15
years
Turkish delight on a moonlit night
While it may not be top-tier Rossini, Teatro Nuovo’s mounting of Il turco in Italia is still good summer fun.
Aix tremendae, salva me
Festival d’Aix-en-Provence confronts the living and the dead — and its own future — through audacious productions and an intimate world premiere.
Heaven, here within my heart
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra explores love and death in an intense, intelligent program featuring soprano Corinne Winters.
Girl of summer
parterre box looks forward to the official start of summer tomorrow with a wistfully pointed performance of Samuel Barber‘s “Knoxville: Summer of 1915” by soprano Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha
Die Sterne des Himmels werden zur Erde fallen
Chris’s Cache highlights the erstwhile Chicago Symphony Orchestra @ Carnegie series with not one but two starry operas conducted by Georg Solti: Salome with Birgit Nilsson and a performance of Moses und Aron
Girl next door
My first introduction to Béla Bartók’s one-act opera Bluebeard’s Castle was the musicologist Susan McClary’s infamous book Feminine Endings. Here, McClary likened her search of a feminist musicology to Judith’s journey through the seven doors; a journey that ends in Judith’s symbolic death.
Seria processing
You probably won’t leave Idomeneo ready to burst out in song, but what the opera lacks in melodic immediacy it makes up for in sheer virtuosity.
It may not have been echt, but it was fun!
On June 11th, the Met Orchestra returned to Carnegie Hall with a diverse program led by music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
Muti point
It would be enough to compare his official studio recording of this work with the recent performances in Turin to confirm that today Riccardo Muti is no longer totally ‘Mutian’
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.
Vierzig Letzte Lieder
Quarantining during COVID dramatically increased my compulsion to collect and compare interpretations.
Shining through
Trove Thursday celebrates Christa Ludwig with live excerpts from 1955 through 1982.
Undead of the night
For those pining for Puccini with the Met out of commission. Trove Thursday steps up with the composer’s brief first opera Le Villi with Krassimira Stoyanova, José Cura and Franz Grundheber, led by Simone Young.
Idol gossip
During the 70s, Kiri Te Kanawa, particularly singing Mozart, became one of my favorite singers.
Seductively compelling
Rosa Feola immediately established with her first group that she’s a serious artist who brought to the concert format both a warmly appealing coppery soprano as well as detailed and savvy dramatic instincts.
A Norman conquest
When I first heard of this broadcast my thought was to save it to celebrate Jessye Norman‘s 75th birthday in 2020.
The Lady in the vanguard
“Trove Thursday” remembers the company’s very first Lady Macbeth via Leonie Rysanek’s NYC debut in a concert performance of Verdi’s Shakespeare masterpiece less than a year before her first Met appearance.
Putting it together
Riccardo Muti’s vision of Aida’s score largely emerged as one of subtlety, musicality, and restraint.
Thousands cheer
Although Gustav Mahler never wrote an opera, his colossal Eighth Symphony “The Symphony of a Thousand” may give us some glimpses of what a Mahler opera might have sounded like
Love of the earth
Claudio Abbado passed away on the 20th of January five years ago, just months before I began my Ph.D.
Super tsar
Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov must be Russian’s most iconic opera and “Trove Thursday” presents it with Claudio Abbado leading an impressive team.
Man of the camellias
Tuesday the Met unveils its sixth new production of La Traviata since moving to Lincoln Center.
Rosa’s turn
To heck with Bayreuth and Salzburg, Glimmerglass and Santa Fe as Rosa Feola sang Mozart at Lincoln Center Friday night and I wouldn’t have been anywhere else!
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).
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!
