While everyone tries to figure out what on earth Strauss and Hofmannsthal are up to in Die Frau ohne Schatten, now playing at the Met, Chris’s Cache offers a later, simpler, shorter Strauss with three live broadcasts of his “bucolic tragedy” Daphne.
Later this month the Met at last revives its striking Herbert Wernicke production of Die Frau ohne Schatten, prompting a Chris’s Cache preview of three live recordings of Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s fanciful if knotty masterpiece.
When my editor suggested to me a round-up of my favorite recordings of Jacques Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann I was très, très, intrigued.
Chris’s Cache celebrates Ewa Podles‘s long connection with Handel by featuring her in three complete, decidedly un-HIP operas spanning over twenty years
Quarantining during COVID dramatically increased my compulsion to collect and compare interpretations.
While D.C. Wagnerians wait for Nina Stemme’s Brünnhilde to arrive next week, “Trove Thursday” presents the erstwhile Valkyrie of another compelling diva: Anna Caterina Antonacci as Brunehild, the heroine of Ernest Reyer’s Sigurd, a French grand opera also based on the Nibelungenlied.
In his first appearance on the stage of Paris’ Palais Garnier, Roberto Alagna, as the newly knighted Rodrigue, was confronted with a profound dilemma.
“Michael Volle is not into bling,” begins an article in ACT-O, the glossy magazine of the Grand Théâtre de Genève.
Karita Mattila is a gift to this planet.
Too late, I’m afraid, for a holiday gift, but what looks to be the must-have CD of the season has just become available. It’s a “new” Elektra, — actually a release of a live 1990 performance with the Valhalla-level pairing of Dame Gwyneth Jones and Leonie Rysanek as daughter and mother. (This is of course […]
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).
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