Being alive
Orfeo’s latest edition is a 1978 performance of Lucia di Lammermoor with a very estimable cast that on its surface may seem a tad mundane but the extensive liner notes (with performance photos) tell the story of why it held such magic.
Germany
Summer of the mezzo
August on “Trove Thursday” begins with Midsummer Mezzo Madness featuring a sterling quartet of lower-voiced ladies
Making out like a bandit
“Trove Thursday” turns for the third of Verdi’s four Schiller adaptations to a recent I Masnadieri with risen stars Lisette Oropesa and Russell Thomas.
All about that bass-baritone
In Bellini’s opera Norma, the “padre” role of Oroveso, it may be safely said, is “undistinguished”—dull and conventional. The bass entrusted with the role usually will engender two reactions: more frequently than not, “Cut this boring music,” and rather more rarely: “What a pity Oroveso doesn’t have more music.”
Songs of disappointment
b>Lawrence Brownlee, star tenor of stage and NFL games is a real “pillar of the community.”
The queen’s throat
“Trove Thursday ” presents Heinrich Marschner’s Hans Heiling in a 2001 performance from Berlin featuring Alessandra Marc as the title character’s mom, the Queen of the Elves.
They live by night
A heady audience paid top price to pack Carnegie Hall Thursday for just 80 minutes of unstaged Wagner.
The best of everything
Munich’s Bayerische Staatsoper’s victory lap at Carnegie Hall concluded Thursday night with a sumptuous Der Rosenkavalier spectacularly conducted by Kirill Petrenko
Testament of youth
“Trove Thursday” offers a vernal take on Massenet’s magical Cendrillon (in English) featuring two sopranos: Margaret Price—not yet 30—and Anne Pashley, then just 35.
Less than hero
Iestyn Davies’s theatrical blandness combined with his vocal unsuitability for the role left a hole at the center of Rinaldo.
Frau Minne
“Trove Thursday” presents a live Tristan 2 concert featuring one of my favorite dramatic sopranos. Gertrude Grob-Prandl.
“The trouble is you think you have time”
“Trove Thursday” presents Falla’s La Vida Breve in a live concert version with Victoria de los Angeles, one of Spain’s greatest singers, as Salud.
Women on the verge
“Trove Thursday” offers Così fan tutte with Pilar Lorengar, Josephine Veasey, Lucia Popp, Luigi Alva and Kieth Engen with Georg Solti conducting.
“The most significant dramatic creation since Les Huguenots”
Awaiting the return of Parsifal to the Met, “Trove Thursday” hops to the other end of Wagner’s oeuvre with a recent Rienzi der letzte der Tribunen.
With a song in my heart
Another five-Thursday month invites “Trove Thursday” to offer a combo of shorter works.
Z to A
Today’s offering is an electric performance of Verdi’s early potboiler Attila conducted by Giuseppe Sinopoli.
Wine coolers are the first thing, morals follow on
Skirting the leafy, patrician Berkshires of Western Mass, and flush with wine coolers and white people, pastoral Tanglewood doesn’t much resemble the dark Nibelung settings of Norse myth.
Tomb service
An outstanding performance of Weber’s Euryanthe to share on “Trove Thursday.”
The song is you
Met audiences might have to wait a very long time for Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
Fire Walk with Me
This week brings another opera about which we’ve heard a lot but have had few opportunities to see onstage: The Fiery Angel by Sergei Prokofiev.
Leonie on the Nile
Leonie Rysanek, would have turned 90 today.
Search for Tamara
The 2016 Richard Tucker Award recipient is Tamara Wilson.
“Something great in itself”
Now we have considered the three “winners” in the Tristan competition, let’s turn to the also-rans, or, to be more optimistic, the runners up.
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).