“Trove Thursday” offers a sparkling performance of Rossini’s La Cenerentola from our nation’s capital featuring the scintillating conducting of Claudio Abbado and Lucia Valentini-Terrani in the title role.
Jonas Kaufmann announced that he feels ready to return to the stage after calling in sick since last autumn
Anita Cerquetti had one of the most remarkable, most brief careers in opera in the past century.
“Take a good deal of trouble with it, because it is a fine subject, delicate and full of pathos.”
Patrice Chéreau, the humanist in provocateur’s clothing, returned to Wagner in 2007 at La Scala with Daniel Barenboim and Waltraud Meier.
Just 85 years ago, four of Italy’s greatest opera stars gathered at Teatro all Scala for an historic event: the first-ever recording of Arrigo Boito’s sole complete opera, Mefistofele.
I was hopeful that my next operatic engagement would offer greater rewards: Norma at the Edinburgh Festival.
“The music’s fun, but doesn’t Rossini repeat himself?”
It’s time to add more legends to my Mixcloud site: Mario Del Monaco, Raina Kabaivanska, and Tito Gobbi star in this 1962 performance of Otello from Covent Garden led by Georg Solti.
That little place just two hours from the city is on the list of things I shall never understand, like the plot of Parsifal.
This week, I offer you a classic rendition of Richard Strauss’ tale of the House of Atreus starring Ursula Schröder-Feinen, Astrid Varnay, Leonie Rysanek, Theo Adam, and Hans Hopf under Karl Böhm’s direction.
Sunday afternoon’s all-Richard Strauss concert served as a de facto commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the debut of Renée Fleming, long one of the house’s biggest stars.
The grand illusion is that we know it all. From four hundred years of opera, we’ve distilled the worthy survivors.
Too often I allow my memories of great singers to be dulled by late career behavior, delving into unsuitable roles or just plain laziness.
Giuseppe Verdi was so unhappy with the first production of his Giovanna d’Arco at La Scala in 1845 that he swore an oath to himself that he would never entrust that theatre with a prima again.
By the time Roberto Devereux saw its premiere at Napoli’s Teatro San Carlo on 29 October, 1837, Gaetano Donizetti had lost, in an 18-month time frame, both his parents, two still-born children, and his beloved wife Virginia.
Myto’s transfer of Herbert von Karajan’s star-bedecked 1958 Die Walküre from La Scala gives collectors on a budget access to one of the legendary performances committed to tape.
The wonderful Spanish mezzo Teresa Berganza celebrates her 81st birthday next week and “Trove Thursday” gets the party started.
There is a self-effacing quality to Jonas Kaufmann’s concert film An Evening with Puccini.
t’s with great joy that I am able to give you Carmen, sung in Italian, from La Scala in 1931. I love this kind of stuff.
The Canadian Robert Carsen would appear to love the theater to the point of fixation.
Gather around while I play Ghost of New Year’s Eve past!
Maria Agresta‘s delicately-acted, sumptuously-sung seamstress transformed what might have been just an average Wednesday night revival into something finer.
A much-loved diva overdue for this site is Anna Moffo.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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