“A valiant if not completely successful attempt”
On this day in 1986, the Metropolitan Opera opened its season with a new production of Wagner’s Die Walküre.
New York
Calling cards
On this day in 1968 mezzo-soprano Shirley Verrett made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Carmen.
Uncloistered
Let’s all cast our minds back to March of 2020. Or, better, let’s not.
Tauride zone
This week Trove Thursday presents Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride in three stirring broadcasts starring Rita Gorr, Gré Brouwenstijn and Sena Jurinac
Great and happy, but not quite live
This was a great and happy event, but it wasn’t so much a musical one.
Love for sail
Last weekend, On Site Opera presented What Lies Beneath, a program of maritime-themed operatic excerpts staged aboard the 19th century schooner Wavertree (now a part of the South Street Seaport Museum).
Tenors al fresco
Lawrence Brownlee and Michael Spyres are two singers at the top of their game, as this concert showed, virtually peerless in music as punishing as it is pretty.
Get ready for the judgment day
In anticipation of the Met’s reopening performance on September 11, another serving of pandemic-hoarding arrives on Trove Thursday with 10 rare live performances of the Verdi Requiem’s concluding “Libera me.”
Uninvited ghost
Trove Thursday sends best wishes to Michael Tilson Thomas, currently recovering from a recent surgery to remove a brain tumor, and presents him in a broadcast leading the UK premiere of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Mlada with Makvala Kasrashvili, Felicity Palmer, Jon Frederic West and Sergei Leiferkus.
Round Table discussion
Like many composers of his generation, Ernest Chausson was enthralled by Wagner and he too turned to legend for his only opera, one that would consume him for final decade of his brief life.
The 50-Year-Old Virgin
Joan of Arc inspired many splendid works of art including Tchaikovsky’s Orleanskaya Deva which Trove Thursday presents today in a 1975 broadcast featuring the great Russian mezzo Irina Arkhipova and her husband tenor Vladislav Piavko.
Rossini al fresco
Last night, for the first time in nearly a year and a half, opera returned to Lincoln Center.
Color Me Barbiere
Live opera returns to Lincoln Center when Teatro Nuovo presents Il Barbiere di Siviglia on July 27 and 28.
Headless “Girl” in a topless bar
Today’s listener has heard the scores of the classic Westerns that borrowed from Puccini (and Wagner!) to create the sound of the myth of the West.
“Jonathan loved him as his own soul”
Trove Thursday celebrates Pride with a Bible-based homoerotic sort-of opera not by the guy who wrote “Depuis le jour”: Charpentier’s David et Jonathas with Mark Padmore, Laurent Naouri and Jaël Azzaretti led by Emmanuelle Haïm.
Love letters
March 2, 2020 – June 18, 2021: Those 15 months were the longest I’ve gone without attending a live opera performance since high school.
Gianna Rolandi 1952-2021
American soprano Gianna Rolandi died Sunday morning, according to a number of her friends and colleagues. She was 68.
Two by two
Were Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Horne 20th century opera’s ultimate same-sex pairing?
Desperate housewife
As New Yorkers swelter in the Fahrenheit 90s. Trove Thursday escapes to wintry Vienna 1920s for Richard Strauss’s Intermezzo (in English) sumptuously conducted by Julius Rudel and starring the incomparable Elisabeth Söderström as the delicious, exasperating wife of Alan Titus.
La Fille du Régiment
Starring Pretty Yende, Stephanie Blythe, Kathleen Turner, Javier Camarena, and Maurizio Muraro, conducted by Enrique Mazzola. Production by Laurent Pelly. From March 2, 2019.
I have a song to sing, O!
The lovely English soprano Valerie Masterson turns 84 today, prompting Trove Thursday to present her in a pair of her specialties.
Stratas in the Sixties
Teresa Stratas turned 83 yesterday and Trove Thursday features one of the recent past’s most interesting yet frustrating artists in two rare broadcasts.
Ladies of Spain
I’ve enjoyed these streamed recitals, warts and all, and always appreciate the chance to watch performers let their hair down, so to speak.
Vierzig Letzte Lieder
Quarantining during COVID dramatically increased my compulsion to collect and compare interpretations.
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).