Snow business
Los Angeles saw the first U.S. performance of Giacomo Puccini’s snow-dusted weeper in 1897 just a year after the young Toscanini led the prima in Turin.
West Coast
Stop me if you’ve heard this one
Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, and a slew of their members of court are hanging out in the afterlife…
To live and die (with honor) in L.A.
Los Angeles first saw Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly presented at the Mason Opera House downtown in 1908 by the English Grand Opera Company. Rumors that LA Opera Artistic Director Placido Domingo portrayed Cio-Cio San’s little boy in that production remain unsubstantiated.
La lune est encore sur la mer
There was a general feeling of homecoming in the hall on Friday evening in anticipation of what promised to be a special return visit on many levels.
I shall marry the Miller’s daughter
I grew up with the Anna Moffo recording of Luisa Miller, so it was fortuitous that the Met gave the premiere of a new production in 1968, around the time RCA released the album.
Sweetness and light
This was a Rosenkavalier that aspired to excellence and almost achieved it.
Out there in the dark
The revival of Mozart’s The Magic Flute at the Music Center downtown, last seen at LA Opera in 2013, is reason for jubilation for everyone except perhaps the singers engaged.
Love hears, love knows, love answers
This week “Trove Thursday” brings a rare in-house recording of a visit to the Metropolitan Opera House by the Staatsoper Hamburg presenting Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress with a deluxe cast
Not since Ilium
As I mentioned in a previous post, one of my two favorite operas is Les Troyens,
Everytime we say goodbye
Gather around while I play Ghost of New Year’s Eve past!
Rescue me
Fidelio but with an unhappy ending, Bedrich Smetana’s stirring Dalibor opens 2016’s “Trove Thursday” in a 1968 German-language broadcast from Bavarian Radio.
The rite stuff
Remember that time you went to the opera and the entire evening was perfection?
Busyness as usual
Emilio Sagi’s production of The Barber of Seville is ungepotchket in the flesh.
Wahn for a day
Die Meistersinger is a bold stroke of programming, in a not particularly exciting way.
Consider the subtleness of the sea
Hopefully the assignment of Herman Melville’s endless whaling opus Moby-Dick as compulsory reading for High School students is a thing of the past.
Pa-Pa-Pa-Planter’s Punch
With a primary color, projection-heavy English-language Magic Flute that’s going to feel like a matinee whenever you see it, the SFO season has lived up to its initial promise.
All my Edgardos
Well that’s a terrible place to start a review, and it’s not quite fair to SFO’s Lucia di Lammermoor, but…
Leave it to cleaver
If I’d gotten an hour less sleep you’d now find me mixing everything up and writing about Mrs. Lovett making her entrance on a bronze horse like Peter the Great.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one
Gala this; gala that; who knew rich people wore clothes so badly?
Moor than a feeling
While Bernard Herrmann is remembered primarily for the seven films on which he collaborated with Hitchcock, he also composed one opera: Wuthering Heights, written between 1943 and 1951.
Superglottal
In attempting to get a little bit of everything onto my Mixcloud page, I realized that I inadvertently neglected some essentials: 1) Leyla Gencer 2) La Gioconda.
Rolling along
You might be surprised, though, when that title turns out to be Show Boat.
Warhorse
Three blocks from the opera house is a terrible time to realize there was homework.
Married to the mobcap
I have an idea (soon to be angrily debunked in the comments section) that Le nozze di Figaro is rarely a source of unalloyed bliss to the chronic operagoer.
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).