Not in Kansas anymore
Christopher Corwin speaks to rising bass-baritone Le Bu about his journey from Yancheng, China to the Met (with a stop in Wichita) and what important roles await him.
Manhattan School of Music
18 pieces since 2009.
18
pieces
18
years
Swing and miss
The oddball pairing of Bernie Williams and Jonathan Tetelman doesn’t quite knock it out of the park at Carnegie Hall.
Garden varieties
Those of us in New York City who relish 17th century Italian vocal music were offered an enticing banquet over the past few weeks.
Nighthawks
Edward Hopper’s paintings from the 1930s and 1940s are simply lousy with windows.
Manon of the gowns
A double bill (with a choral intermezzo) that just finished four nights’ run at the Manhattan School of Music is a delight, musically whimsical and reminiscent, wittily and colorfully staged.
Nooks and crannies
Nathan Hull was an operatic Quixote who did not go it alone, but inspired bands of optimists, giving proper employment to the many worthy New Yorkers mad enough to study voice and pleasure rare elsewhere to those of us thrilled to take it in.
A dark horse in every closet
Mozart and Donizetti could humanize characters in a farce—Mercadante in I due FIgaro cannot get a handle on them.
The need for speed
Beauteous Trinidadian soprano Jeanine De Bique appeared Sunday afternoon with the visiting Budapest Festival Orchestra under Ivan Fischer.
Come what May
At “Trove Thursday” it’s May Night, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s 1880 comic opera, in a recent broadcast from Moscow led by pianist-conductor Mikhail Pletnev.
Well-trod cinders in fitting slippers
Forgotten operas when revived may prove to be only their own reward.
Mad about the Boyar
“Trove Thursday” offers a belated 55th birthday nod to Dmitri Hvorostovsky with a blazing live performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride.
Arrivederci, Romany!
In the same season that Manhattan School of Music revived The Gypsy Baron, Riverside Theater around the corner is the site of Amore Opera’s “Season of Gypsy Operas.”
Haydn in plain sight
The operas of Franz Josef Haydn are seldom presented in the great opera houses of the world, but then, they weren’t composed for the great opera houses of his own world.
Light my foyer
Each year, Leon Botstein leads the American Symphony Orchestra in a concert opera or two.
He who gets kicked
A last minute scheduling conflict at the New York Post (curse you, Tony season!) meant that my planned review of Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny at Manhattan School of Music had to be 86ed.
With a little bit of Gluck
The best joke in Offenbach’s delicious Orphée aux Enfers is the opening premise: Orphée and Eurydice are miserably married, due to her utter boredom with his old-fashioned music.
Switcheroo
Last night, Manhattan School of Music presented a charming, funny and partially polished Le Nozze di Figaro that showcased the ability of the school’s opera program to take a pleasing singer and create a great performer, making for a wonderfully entertaining performance.
A loom of one’s own
We all know and love Fauré, but how many of us can say we’ve seen his opera Pénélope live and in person? As of last night, I number myself among the few.