This week Chris’s Cache features Maria Chiara, Elena Mauti-Nunziata, Rita Orlandi-Malaspina and Orianna Santunione in L’Amico Fritz, Mefistofele, Simon Boccanegra and La Fanciulla del West, respectively.
Teatro Nuovo took a spirited journey of rediscovery into the valley of forgotten operas and resurrected Federico and Luigi Ricci’s 1850 opera buffa Crispino e la Comare last Thursday at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center.
The Aix festival organized two back-to-back evening concerts dedicated to the Russian masters. One was an embarrassment of Slavic riches, the other… well, just an embarrassment.
This showcase concert gave notice that countertenor Hugh Cutting is among the most promising artists of his generation.
On June 20, a rather breezy, pleasant cool summer evening, the soprano Gabriella Reyes, tenor René Barbera and baritone Will Liverman took over the Summerstage space with a wide-ranging, ambitious recital program with Dimitri Dover tickling the ivories.
Today’s Chris’s Cache features live recordings of Otello most noteworthy for their Desdemonas: (in chronological order) Teresa Stratas, Julia Varady, Eva Marton and Karita Mattila.
On June 16, San Francisco Opera concluded their excellent Centennial Season with a heartfelt 100th Anniversary Concert, featuring a starry cast, three conductors (including current and former Music Directors) and the SF Opera Orchestra and Chorus.
“I joyfully await the exit—and I hope never to return” were the last words written by the visionary Mexican painter, Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón (famously known simply as Frida Kahlo), according to her 2002 biography by Hayden Herrera.
Although somewhat flawed, Days of Wine and Roses draws from the same musical language that made Piazza so instantly distinctive, and it features a specificity that I noticed in Adam Guettel’s earlier breakthrough work, Floyd Collins.
Renée Fleming arrived at Carnegie Hall on May 31 with something to prove.
This Holländer offers neither a clear narrative vision for the work nor a sense of turbocharged drama; it simply sits on the Met’s cavernous stage as a dull gray mass.
Out of sheer morbid curiosity last evening I pulled up the “orders” page of my Amazon account and searched Otello to discover that over the past 11 years. I’ve ordered 15 items with that title (one as recently as last night!)
In the five short years that I’ve been in New York, I have seen that crusty old Franco Zeffirelli production of La bohème more times than I can count on one hand. And there are certainly times when that peeling mise-en-scène really shows its age.
The wicked poisoner showed herself in fine form, full of purple passion and lusty music-making that would gladden the heart of any bel canto enthusiast or opera lover in general.
Simon McBurney’s Die Zauberflöte, the second new production of the Met’s May Mozart Miracle, opened on Friday to rousing near-unanimous cheers.
Like a sommelier of male entitlement, Peter Mattei paired with precision moves from a wide-ranging vocabulary of gesture.
On this day in 1946 the Metropolitan Opera presented La Gioconda on tour in Chicago.
If April is the cruelest month, it may be that spring’s arrival brings far too many things to do and see.
Old opera productions at the end of their performing life can be sad affairs.
At all of these vocal contests, including this one, I find myself fascinated and perplexed by the same question: What exactly are the judges looking for?
On this day in 1944, the Metropolitan Opera, on tour in Chicago, presented Tosca.
Eagerly awaiting Met May Mozart Madness, Chris’s Cache presents a starry quintet of the master’s operas not being done next month.
To paraphrase Terence Blanchard’s Champion, what makes an opera an opera?
Welcome, beloveds, to the Jessye Norman Memorial Museum. I’ll be the docent for your tour today.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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