Tack on a little symphonic Beethoven and some particularly zany hosting patter from Bernadette Peters, and you start to lose focus, or at least some sense of, um, what matters mostly.
In The Gypsy Baron (Der Zigeunerbaron), currently (through Sunday) enjoying a revival by the Manhattan School of Music Opera Theater, you get Strauss waltzes and patriotic marches.
My memory is fading but the events I recall most vividly of the last season seem largely to have been concert performances.
Handel’s Orlando is one of three operas Handel based on episodes from Ariosto’s best-selling sixteenth-century epic, Orlando Furioso. The story was, in 1733, well known throughout the Mediterranean world, and everyone set it to music—Vivaldi’s and Haydn’s settings have enjoyed recent revivals, and the libretto Handel set had originally been devised for Domenico Scarlatti. Intricate…
Despite baby-steps over the years, America’s musical scene, especially opera, remains decidedly un-HIP. (HIP: “historically-informed performance,” also called “period performance.”) While European opera houses turn increasingly to “original instrument” orchestras and specialist singers for seventeenth and eighteenth century works, this rarely occurs in the US.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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