It’s hard to be a saint in the city
It was thrilling to see and hear Will Crutchfield’s insights come to life onstage in performance when Teatro Nuovo performed Poliuto at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center Wednesday July 19.
Rose Theater
20 pieces since 2011.
20
pieces
16
years
The need for speed
Beauteous Trinidadian soprano Jeanine De Bique appeared Sunday afternoon with the visiting Budapest Festival Orchestra under Ivan Fischer.
Anna one, Anna two
Trove Thursday offers Bellini’s La Sonnambula with Anna Moffo (San Francisco 1960) and Anna Netrebko (Vienna 2006).
There is no spoon
Can a work with indisputably great music fail to add up to a successful opera? I puzzled over that Sunday during Teatro Nuovo’s essential concert staging of Rossini’s La Gazza Ladra at SUNY Purchase.
Boy meets world
A beautiful concert of 18th century sacred music arrived at Weill Recital Hall performed by the soulful Polish Wunderkind Jakub Jósef Orlinski.
Sound bite
Only the Sound Remains introduced Americans to the latest collaboration between dazzling Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho and hirsute metteur-en-scène Peter Sellars.
The man who would be nymph
Sometimes the fates conspire, preventing an artist from recording the role for which he is his generation’s touchstone.
I put a spell on you
Armide with a superbly grand Francophone heroine in Karina Gauvin and conducted by the always excellent Ivor Bolton.
Aggrieved is the glorious work
What could go wrong? As it turned out: just about everything!
Pretty little lyres
While one sympathized with Matthew Aucoin’s urge to add his voice to the Orpheus canon it was difficult to figure out how his work complemented Gluck’s.
Not much gold, but plenty of rush
Is this not Puccini’s greatest opera, his most human, least manipulative?
Clash of symbols
La Campana Sommersa (The Sunken Bell), which is being presented by the New York City Opera at the Rose Theater through April 7, is a true oddball.
“Tosca” at the Séance
New York City Opera has officially launched its “renaissance” at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater last night with a production of Puccini’s Tosca that should please a lot of older, conservative audiences, if not the adventurous operagoers that City Opera courted in the past.
Myth opportunity
America hasn’t exactly been vigorous about commemorating the 250th anniversary of the death of Jean-Philippe Rameau.
Disguise and dolls
While many performing arts organizations have been reducing their schedules or even closing, Opera Lafayette, a Washington DC-based group dedicated primarily to 17th and 18th century opera, has proven remarkably prosperous.
Appearing nightly
I suspect most New York City opera-lovers had long since given up hope that the fascinating soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci would ever return to their city.
New fashioned wedding
After the success of its Don Giovanni in 2011, Lincoln Center invited Iván Fischer and his Budapest Festival Orchestra to return for the Mostly Mozart Festival premiere (!) of the first of Mozart-da Ponte’s three masterpieces Le Nozze di Figaro late Sunday afternoon at the Rose Theater.
A boozy short leave
After 23 years, the Queen of Carthage has finally made it to Manhattan.
Rock stars
Scanning this summer’s Mostly Mozart schedule one wondered if New York really needed another Don Giovanni right now? And one with a non-starry cast where the best-known name was the Commendatore, Kristinn Sigmundsson?