There is no spoon
Can a work with indisputably great music fail to add up to a successful opera? I puzzled over that Sunday during Teatro Nuovo’s essential concert staging of Rossini’s La Gazza Ladra at SUNY Purchase.
Italy
I had too much to dream last night
Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt in a 1967 Vienna broadcast appropriately featuring three American stars: John Alexander, Marilyn Zschau, and George London.
Mistress class
Everett Quinton’s Galas is a star at the end of her tether, and she goes nova with the best.
È la solita storia del tenore
While Luciano Pavarotti may have brought opera to the people, once he realized how lucrative it could be, there was a string of promoters who helped him turn all that adoration into cold hard cash.
Mr. Fabulous
Michael Fabiano is a boss. This is a fact.
Touch me in the mourning
“How far should we give way to grief? How far dare we, without disaster?”
Et voila l’histoire
To mark Beverly Sills’s 90th birthday (May 25, 1929) “Trove Thursday” offers the late diva’s acclaimed Massenet heroine opposite her ideal Des Grieux, Alain Vanzo.
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.
Get in the ‘Ring’
Wagner’s Ring is an artistic masterpiece that is peerless in its ability to continually reveal layers of musical, theatrical, and philosophical insight
Once in love with Amy
“Trove Thursday” leaps to the end of the cycle with a slightly abridged Götterdämmerung featuring Amy Shuard as Brünnhilde.
Dames
A double-barreled “Trove Thursday” birthday salute to Renée Fleming who turns 60 today.
The farce of destiny
The chaos is nonstop, the comedy is broad and physical, and requires a large ensemble of singers who can execute Rossinian polysyllabic patter while taking pratfalls.
Love of the earth
Claudio Abbado passed away on the 20th of January five years ago, just months before I began my Ph.D.
Down for the Comte
We close 2018 with Le Comte Ory with an enviable nearly all-Italian cast of prime-time Rossini specialists: Mariella Devia, Cecila Bartoli, Ewa Podles, William Matteuzzi, Claudio Desderi and Pietro Spagnoli.
Alzare le spalle
“Non mi dispiace” seemed to be the general consensus in the loggione December 7 when Verdi’s Attila came roaring into La Scala to open the 2018-19 season.
Overview: Riccardo Chailly
Riccardo Chailly’s appointment as La Scala’s new music director was news that I greeted with enthusiasm when first announced in 2013.
Man of the camellias
Tuesday the Met unveils its sixth new production of La Traviata since moving to Lincoln Center.
Dancer in the dark
Patrice Chéreau‘s Elektra brims with ideas beyond its eschewing of the opera’s standard, hysterical trappings.
Faust of fury
“Trove Thursday” keeps the evil deeds going this All Saints’s Day with a vintage La Scala broadcast of Arrigo Boito’s only completed opera Mefistofele.
Dishonored in the breach
Uneven operas, like Verdi’s Ernani, which just recently finished its Scala run, more often work as theatre on the micro level than the macro.
Original sin
This new production of the 1847 original version of Verdi’s first stab at Shakespeare features the extraordinary performances of Luca Salsi and Anna Pirozzi as the Thane of Cawdor and his merry wife.
Another Hun bites the dust
Verdi’s Attila is hardly a rarity in Italy the way it is in the United States.
Golden ‘Girls’ season finale
The conclusion of our Fanciulla del West video overview in three parts looks at a trio of performances from the 2010s.
Ceci n’est pas un ‘Trovatore’
America’s longest-standing theatrical lightning rod, Robert Wilson premiered his ethereal, time-collapsing production of Le trouvère.
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).