Double cross
“Trove Thursday” offers due local Lombardi: one with Renata Scotto and José Carreras, the other with Aprile Millo and Carlo Bergonzi.
Opera Orchestra of New York
The unusual suspects
Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America provides ample fodder for the legions of amateur opera sleuths seeking to confirm their theory of “Who Killed City Opera?”
I think we’ve got her number
“Are we Team Guelf or Team Ghibelline?”
Senza nube e senza vel
I attended the Sunday, May 13, performance with bittersweet anticipation.
A touch of the stone
“Trove Thursday” turns its Rossini-150 series to one of the composer’s least known but tastiest comic gems La Pietra del Paragone with Julia Hamari, Justino Diaz, Alessandro Corbelli, Claudio Desderi and Paolo Barbacini conducted by Roberto Abbado.
Bell de jour
Next week the Italian soprano Mariella Devia celebrates her 70th birthday so “Trove Thursday” salutes her with one of her earliest New York successes: Delibes’s Lakmé
Peak performance
“Trove Thursday” ushers in February with Catalani’s La Wally with a mountain-top cast of Renata Tebaldi, Renata Scotto, Mario del Monaco, Giangiacomo Guelfi and Giorgio Tozzi conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini.
“The most significant dramatic creation since Les Huguenots”
Awaiting the return of Parsifal to the Met, “Trove Thursday” hops to the other end of Wagner’s oeuvre with a recent Rienzi der letzte der Tribunen.
Black Friday
Usually the longer I know a work the more I look forward to rediscovering it, but that’s just not the case with the Verdi Requiem.
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.
Stage struck
“Trove Thursday” presents a performance from 40 years ago: an inspired Renata Scotto as Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur.
Z to A
Today’s offering is an electric performance of Verdi’s early potboiler Attila conducted by Giuseppe Sinopoli.
Catch a falling tsar
You’d think by now I’d know better than to make snap judgments about an opera or a singer—but apparently not.
Woman on the Vergy
“Trove Thursday” offers Gemma di Vergy with the lovely, largely now forgotten Adriana Maliponte in the title role.
The zoo story
A week from Saturday Will Crutchfield’s “Bel Canto at Caramoor” ends a 20-year run with Il Pirata.
From Hell
In March 1973, OONY’s second season featured Francesca da Rimini starring Raina Kabaivanska, Plácido Domingo and Matteo Manuguerra.
Fifty shades of gold
Anticipation of events like the Metropolitan Opera’s 50th Anniversary bash turns me back into the newly opera-soused kid who begged his parents to let him watch the highlights of the Bing Gala on the family color television.
Blood and Gorr
Massenet’s La Navarraise in a live performance featuring Rita Gorr as Anita and George Shirley as Araquil.
“Troppo” notte
Thanks to the generosity of a parterre reader, “Trove Thursday” presents a rare recording from the famed Carnegie Hall series curated by Matthew Epstein to commemorate Handel’s tercentenary.
All about my mother
On her 90th birthday “Trove Thursday” presents the late great Belgian mezzo Rita Gorr parenting Régine Crespin in Massenet’s Hérodiade.
Wan lake
The sound of Joyce DiDonato, Lawrence Brownlee and John Osborn nailing La Donna del Lago’s thrilling second-act trio alone made worthwhile enduring one of the ugliest, most bone-headed productions seen at the Metropolitan Opera in many a year.
Something extramarital
Saturday evening conductor Will Crutchfield revived Donizetti’s La Favorite—unheard in New York for fifteen years.
The year in Corwin
New York City isn’t a bad place to live, operatically-speaking.
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).