Past is prologue
Simon Boccanegra has never felt as foreboding or prophetic as it did at a recent performance at La Fenice.
La Fenice
18 pieces since 2008.
18
pieces
19
years
This summer I’m reading Verdi: A novel of the opera
According to the memoirs of Alma Mahler, her third husband, Franz Werfel used to wander around the cafés of Paris with one of his chums, singing arias from obscure Verdi operas at the top of their lungs until the management would ask them to move on.
By John Yohalem
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Audiences expect miracles
Following a review by Christopher Corwin, figures from in and around the box react to Pablo Larraín‘s new film Maria
On the road again
When it premiered at the Opéra Comique in 1875, Carmen shocked audiences with its frank depictions of female sexuality, the proletariat, and violence: subjects that have ensured the piece’s continued relevance and that have inspired numerous retellings and revisions.
Dogecoin
In sum: not a perfect Simon Boccanegra—is there such a thing?—but a grand and often great one.
The boys from Syracuse
Trove Thursday begins February with two striking versions of Rossini’s Tancredi.
American woman
Trove Thursday presents Alzira—derided by some as Verdi’s worst opera—in a 1968 Carnegie Hall concert with Gianfranco Cecchele, Louis Quilico (star of last night’s Met Rigoletto stream) and Elinor Ross, who died in March at age 93.
Civilized pleasures
We can delight in films that make use of motif to give opera-lovers an extra little jiggle.
Thou mighty monstre sacré
Trove Thursday relishes neglected works, operas in translation and irreplaceable divas, and this week it presents a pair that embody all three affections: Cherubini’s Les Abencérages and Weber’s Oberon in Italian with the glorious Anita Cerquetti, conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini and Vittorio Gui respectively.
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.
Rigoletto on the fringe
Tanglewood may bring the classical music crowd to Lenox, but for opera, it’s all about neighboring Pittsfield, Mass.
You shall know them by their ‘Flutes’
This year’s Salzburg Festival opens Saturday with a new production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, an opera often performed elsewhere in translation, so “Trove Thursday” offers two for the price (!) of one.
Senza nube e senza vel
I attended the Sunday, May 13, performance with bittersweet anticipation.
No retreat, Nono surrender
Intolleranza was presented by Leon Botstein and his American Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall on Thursday night, holding the audience rapt and intrigued for 65 minutes.
Diva, unfiltered
How many books have been published about Anna Maria Sofia Cecilia Kalogeropoulou Meneghini Callas, great operatic goddess of the dark arts?
È nata una stella
Few things in opera are more exciting than a beloved young singer taking on a new role, especially in a new Fach.
Drama queen
Say what you will about Naxos, but this company has created a sizeable number of recordings of works on the periphery of the standard repertory and have managed to document quite a few interesting singers in the bargain-and at bargain prices.
Queen of the Pirates
[This article originally appeared in the print zine precursor to this site, one of a series of surveys of live recordings by critic Leila de Lakmé.] Leyla Gencer. The very name is exotic. She was an artist of Turkish ancestry who, during the 1950s and 60s, held her own despite the presence of Maria Callas, […]