Fou fighter
It is easy to become overly identified with opera—as a cleverer friend of mine once noted: being a sports fan is an interest, but if you like opera, everyone thinks of it as a crippling obsession.
West Coast
Fireworks
As I leaned forward the woman in front of me turned to her seatmate and very quietly, in a voice thick with emotion and not a few tears, said, “it’s so beautiful.”
The devil is in the details
Certain operas are better in theory than practice.
Rock-a-bye your baby with a pentatonic melody
It seems almost comical to think now but the designer-director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, who died in 1988, was at one time considered the height of regie-theatre scandal.
The year in Greg
I would love to contribute a top ten list but I didn’t even go to ten things this year.
An old-fashioned wedding
Jungfer Marianne Leitmetzerin notes: while this performance of Janácek’s Jenufafeatures the same three principal singers from the legendary Carnegie Hall concert of 1988, the fact that it is a staged performance raises the temperature even higher.
La vie de broham
Imagine the good fortune of attending La Bohème with someone who’s never seen it!
Angelina’s ashes
Kitsch is alive and well in Rossini’s La Cenerentola at the War Memorial.
In witch we serve
Sunday afternoon’s intermittently involving concert performance of Handel’s Alcina at Carnegie Hall starred an unusually intense Joyce DiDonato as a powerful sorceress blinded by her romantic delusions.
Vissi d’artist
The San Francisco Opera is batting a thousand where young singers are concerned this season.
Top hatters
Christopher Alden‘s production of Handel’s Partenope is so erudite and theatrically audacious and also such a rollicking ride, it’s hard to believe it isn’t crap.
Running, jumping, or burning Gaul
Far be it from me to join the Schadenfreudian chorus of “Bye, Bye, Berti!” you may have been hearing in certain quarters, but the first thing I am duty-bound to report about San Francisco Opera’s Norma (of which three performances remain) is that they’ve hit the jackpot, coverwise.
Yours, mine and ours
Our own Jungfer Marianne Leitmetzerin goes all-American with a performance of The Ballad of Baby Doe starring Ruth Ann Swenson, James Morris and Judith Forst.
Porgy on the bay
A new DVD of The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess features an enjoyable live performance from the San Francisco Opera from June of 2009.
Goodness had everything to do with it
The Met stage was filled with considerable magic Monday night when its dizzily effervescent revival of La Cenerentola starring Joyce DiDonato and Javier Camarena stirred a bewitched audience to some of the most ecstatic ovations heard this season.
The Met: What is to be done?
Coming as Peter Gelb did from the music industry, opera lovers hoped that he would display a more distinctive knack for casting and an improved talent pipeline than Joe Volpe offered during the waning years of his tenure.
The Met: Can it be saved?
Short answer: yes. But let’s begin by dismissing the a blatant canard. One thing that the Metropolitan Opera does not need to do is to scale back the number of performances in a season.
Pick your poison
I think we’re all aware by now of the wicked libel that the French dramatist Victor Hugo concocted about the fair Lucrezia Borgia with his depiction of her as a murderous virago.
Est-ce vrai? Grand merci!
Among the many reasons La Cieca has to be thankful: the legacy of Mike Richter on his CD-ROMs.
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.
Diabolical variations
Whenever I encounter Eric Owens, he’s plotting to conquer the universe.
Bark, not Bayreuth
Is Der Ring des Nibelungen responsible for the transformation of Seattle from a gray, damp, low-rise Boeing company town where half the jokes had punchlines in Norwegian (and were about lutefisk in any case) into today's booming cultural metropolis? I like to think so.
Jest the way you are
I’m happy to report that Rigoletto from the 30 DVD Tutto Verdi set from the Teatro Regio di Parma is a blockbuster
.
The Piotr principle
A Dutch-speaking parterrian has graciously translated the interview with Piotr Beczala that’s been causing such a foofaraw lately.
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).