Wintertime, and the living is easy
Porgy and Bess, George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward’s 1935 “folk” opera, graced the stage of Dutch National Opera for the first time last month, and it was resounding success from start to finish.
Lyric Opera of Chicago
General Elektra
Nina Stemme’s Elektra is familiar to me in three different incarnations.
Revenge served cold
Of course, Stemme had the character’s frenzied fury at her father’s murderers in hand, but she had far more nuance—at times this Elektra was seductive, sympathetic, loving, even humorous in her bitterness.
Mad about the Prey
A 1985 broadcast of Don Giovanni featuring Cheryl Studer, Gundula Janowitz (as Elvira!), Krisztina Laki, Gösta Winbergh, Hermann Prey (in a rare outing as the Don) and Malcolm King conducted by Jeffrey Tate.
To the extreme
No other singer of Die Amme approaches the towering standard set by the German mezzo Tanja Ariane Baumgartner.
Brute force
Alban Berg’s compact yet potent oeuvre has long played an outsized role in shaping my understanding of music’s aesthetic evolution.
Dream a little dream
Jules Massenet’s version of the Cinderella fairy tale, Cendrillon, seems to be back in vogue after many years of obscurity.
Great Chicago fire
If sheer clarion vocalism is what draws you to the opera, then hie thee to Lyric Opera of Chicago’s rousing revival Of Verdi’s Il Trovatore, the oddly plotted but musically sublime opera that opened last night in the David McVicar production, originally seen in 2006.
First action hero
Director David Pountney and his splendid designers have brought Lyric Opera of Chicago a visually spectacular Siegfried full of daring ideas.
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.
Beyond the sea
Those readers who know my musical tastes will not be shocked to find that I have a somewhat conflicted view of Mozart’s operatic works.
Best in snow
Lyric Opera of Chicago resumed its season on Wednesday evening with the new-to-Chicago production of Puccini’s perennial audience pleaser La bohème.
E lucevan le stelle
The Stars of Lyric Opera weren’t under the stars last night, prevented by a persistent cloud bank, but they nonetheless provided a stirring evening of music in Chicago’s Millennium Park.
Rosa’s turn
To heck with Bayreuth and Salzburg, Glimmerglass and Santa Fe as Rosa Feola sang Mozart at Lincoln Center Friday night and I wouldn’t have been anywhere else!
Summer of the mezzo
August on “Trove Thursday” begins with Midsummer Mezzo Madness featuring a sterling quartet of lower-voiced ladies
Who’s that girl?
“Trove Thursday” goes modest with Donizetti’s domestic comedy Don Pasquale featuring Ileana Cotrubas, Alfredo Kraus, Vicente Sardinero and Wladimiro Ganzarolli.
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.
Jesus hopped the L train
Just a few years back it would have been seen as ridiculous to put “Lyric Opera of Chicago” and “Jesus Christ Superstar” in the same sentence.
Bell de jour
Next week the Italian soprano Mariella Devia celebrates her 70th birthday so “Trove Thursday” salutes her with one of her earliest New York successes: Delibes’s Lakmé
Thanks for scaring
I found Fellow Travelers intellectually and politically riveting, musically thrilling, and profoundly moving. It was a triumph.
Less than hero
Iestyn Davies’s theatrical blandness combined with his vocal unsuitability for the role left a hole at the center of Rinaldo.
Every day a little death
Neumeier adapted the story close to home, making Orpheus a choreographer and his wife a star ballerina.
Reframing
The production is at all times visually arresting, but it’s also extremely distracting.
Puritani, as the driven snow
It was an afternoon of spectacular singing, particularly from the two principals and the glorious Lyric Opera Chorus.
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).