As said at the beginning, I implied I’d rather see Don Carlo(s) and listen to Forza.
All in all, this was truly a superb achievement for San Francisco Opera and an auspicious first chapter in the Wagner opera journey with Eun Sun Kim.
I love it, truly, just not that much.
It’s been eight decades since darling Aix-en-Provence was under attack—its last formal invasion, at least by non-operagoers, was in 1942 during the German occupation of southern France. But on Friday, the town was besieged once again by its annual festival, with two dazzling premieres that examined the cruel and constructive dimensions of war and revolution.
Welcome, beloveds, to the Jessye Norman Memorial Museum. I’ll be the docent for your tour today.
Frankly I thought Sondra Radvanovsky had reached her pinnacle with her Norma but I was apparently mistaken. I’m happy to say her Turandot is completely next-level.
A stack of noteworthy recent baroque vocal CDs on my desk has been staring at me for weeks, so I’m tackling them on Handel’s birthday before the Met roars back into action beginning this weekend.
Arts Council England, as a global policy trendsetter, may have sounded the death knell for the international opera industry as we know it.
One wonders whether an obsession with metrics and measurement has the potential to create arts organizations that are more preoccupied with finding systems that quickly and efficiently tick the Arts Council’s boxes than with creating meaningful, impactful art.
“Opera needs a reset. We think there needs to be a fundamental shift in the ecology.”
The main reason to see this revival is Benjamin Bernheim’s Duca.
Dame Ethel Smyth’s third opera, The Wreckers, opened at Houston Grand Opera on October 28 and runs through November 11.
To celebrate Valerie Masterson‘s turning 85 tomorrow, Trove Thursday offers a second annual birthday salute to the English soprano.
I wonder why many New Yorkers have been led to believe that the only Handel conductor in the world is Harry Bicket.
In any case, we are now in the Queen’s garden of the Palace in Madrid. It is the day before the coronation of King Philip. Coronation? What coronation?
In the last weeks of January, as the Metropolitan Opera season wound to a close (prior to the winter hiatus) two striking sopranos were thrust into the limelight.
Un ballo in maschera—but instead of a tragedy, an opera buffa—and in Danish?
In their realization of Alcina, Harry Bicket and his ensemble recreated a dramatically vivid and musically nuanced character study out of the opera’s central figures.
In the month and a half leading to Bernard Haitink’s passing on October 21, my AirPods constantly channeled a musical festival of sorts centered on the Dutch giant’s expansive discography.
This week Trove Thursday presents Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride in three stirring broadcasts starring Rita Gorr, Gré Brouwenstijn and Sena Jurinac
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.”
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.
For this revival of Tosca Teatro Real has configured several casts with some of the best singers in the world: Sondra Radvanovsky, Maria Agresta, Anna Netrebko, Joseph Calleja, Michael Fabiano, Yusif Eyvazov, Jonas Kaufmann, Carlos Álvarez, Gevorg Hakobyan and Luca Salsi.
As soon as James Clutton, the new Opera Holland Park director, stepped on stage to welcome the audience, we all knew that we were not at the typical English summer opera festival.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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