It may not have been echt, but it was fun!
On June 11th, the Met Orchestra returned to Carnegie Hall with a diverse program led by music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
Midwest
Playing in the rafters
Opera took center stage on the final weekend of the Philadelphia Orchestra season.
Everything the light touches
Like Emily discovering her gift in The Weight of Light, Vanguard fellows (ideally) come through a process of intense multivocality with a stronger sense of their own individual voice.
Muti point
It would be enough to compare his official studio recording of this work with the recent performances in Turin to confirm that today Riccardo Muti is no longer totally ‘Mutian’
Christian science monitored
In any case, we probably got as good a Tannhäuser cast as could be assembled these days.
Celebrating 30 Years of parterre box
Readers, writers, and stars reflect on the 30th anniversary of “the most essential blog in opera” (NYT)
I’ll plant my own tree
Richard Strauss’ “Bucolic Tragedy in One Act” Daphne is one of his most beautiful and most frustrating works.
Trapped
What happens when you attend a performance and it doesn’t engage you?
Queen’s evidence
Trove Thursday’s belated contribution to last weekend’s Platinum Jubilee is a broadcast from Aldeburgh of Benjamin Britten’s Gloriana with Christine Brewer and Tom Randle as Elizabeth and Essex, an opera which premiered 69 years ago yesterday.
Everyone’s gone to the moon
The Met’s recent Ariadne auf Naxos and Elektra combo left me wanting more and more Richard Strauss, so Trove Thursday offers a complete Capriccio with Jonas Kaufmann (his one-and-only Flamand) and Christopher Maltman vying for Soile Isokoski.
The key of dreams
My sister Julie celebrates an important birthday later this month which reminded me—as I also recalled I visiting her while she was living in Prague—that I should unearth Bohuslav Martin?’s Julietta with Lucia Popp and Dénes Gulyás for this week’s Trove Thursday.
Vierzig Letzte Lieder
Quarantining during COVID dramatically increased my compulsion to collect and compare interpretations.
Shining through
Trove Thursday celebrates Christa Ludwig with live excerpts from 1955 through 1982.
Undead of the night
For those pining for Puccini with the Met out of commission. Trove Thursday steps up with the composer’s brief first opera Le Villi with Krassimira Stoyanova, José Cura and Franz Grundheber, led by Simone Young.
Idol gossip
During the 70s, Kiri Te Kanawa, particularly singing Mozart, became one of my favorite singers.
Love, loss, and what I sang
Sunday is Handel’s 335th birthday, an event Trove Thursday celebrates with Rodelinda, Regina de’Longobardi, one of the composer’s most popular works.
Seductively compelling
Rosa Feola immediately established with her first group that she’s a serious artist who brought to the concert format both a warmly appealing coppery soprano as well as detailed and savvy dramatic instincts.
A Norman conquest
When I first heard of this broadcast my thought was to save it to celebrate Jessye Norman‘s 75th birthday in 2020.
The Lady in the vanguard
“Trove Thursday” remembers the company’s very first Lady Macbeth via Leonie Rysanek’s NYC debut in a concert performance of Verdi’s Shakespeare masterpiece less than a year before her first Met appearance.
Wien disposition
Following classic recordings documenting the work of Karl Böhm and Herbert von Karajan. Orfeo’s 150 Years Wiener Staatsoper box moves on to new releases that are seeing their first incarnation on an officially available disc.
The boys of summer
“Trove Thursday” turns to a quintet of baritone/bass voices: Matthias Goerne, Simon Keenlyside, Georg Nigl, Thomas Quasthoff and René Pape performing works by Pfitzner, Sibelius, Adams, Martin and Schubert.
Putting it together
Riccardo Muti’s vision of Aida’s score largely emerged as one of subtlety, musicality, and restraint.
Thousands cheer
Although Gustav Mahler never wrote an opera, his colossal Eighth Symphony “The Symphony of a Thousand” may give us some glimpses of what a Mahler opera might have sounded like
General Elektra
Nina Stemme’s Elektra is familiar to me in three different incarnations.
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).