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
2 pieces since 2010.
2
pieces
17
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.
Un paio in tre
Christopher Corwin and Andrew Lokay provide dual perspectives on the National Symphony Orchestra‘s performances of Puccini’s triple-bill.
By Christopher Corwin and Andrew Lokay
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Heaven, here within my heart
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra explores love and death in an intense, intelligent program featuring soprano Corinne Winters.
Faith in their hands shall snap in two
Franz Welser-Möst leads a rigorous, if emotionally staid, performance of Verdi‘s Requiem at Carnegie Hall.
Stealing fire
Esa-Pekka Salonen and The Los Angeles Philharmonic serve a feast for all five senses.
Everything is “and,” not “or”
James Gaffigan, the incoming Music Director of Houston Grand Opera, strikes a balance between New World precision and Old World flair in repertoire, staging, and wine
I’m never gonna dance again
A starry cast is hampered by Christof Loy‘s dour production of Rusalka in Barcelona
All about her stepmother
A new recording by the London Symphony Orchestra is the latest landmark in a spring full of Janácek‘s Jenufa
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
Masc et femme fatale
parterre box celebrates the beginning of Pride Month with a throwback to one of the queerer events in recent operatic memory: a bit of Carmen starring Jamie Barton and Stephanie Blythe!
Reconcilable differences
Cameron Kelsall reports on a transcendent Jenufa from the Cleveland Orchestra
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.
Afraid of their own shadows
Later this month the Met at last revives its striking Herbert Wernicke production of Die Frau ohne Schatten, prompting a Chris’s Cache preview of three live recordings of Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s fanciful if knotty masterpiece.
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.
Playing in the rafters
Opera took center stage on the final weekend of the Philadelphia Orchestra season.
Everything the light touches
Like Emily discovering her gift in The Weight of Light, Vanguard fellows (ideally) come through a process of intense multivocality with a stronger sense of their own individual voice.
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’
Christian science monitored
In any case, we probably got as good a Tannhäuser cast as could be assembled these days.
Celebrating 30 Years of parterre box
Readers, writers, and stars reflect on the 30th anniversary of “the most essential blog in opera” (NYT)
I’ll plant my own tree
Richard Strauss’ “Bucolic Tragedy in One Act” Daphne is one of his most beautiful and most frustrating works.
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).