I would happily go hear Anna Caterina Antonacci sing the phone book, or even a list of donors to the New York City Opera, which sponsored the soprano’s only U.S. appearances this season in a recital last night in Zankel Hall, repeated tonight. Read more »
In have a special admiration for singers who can perform well in French. The reasons include both a personal bugaboo (I can remember almost choking over the word gloire the first time I ran across it in a choral piece), and the technical difficulties that the language imposes on any singer. Executing the complex range of dark vowel sounds and schwas requires near perfect control over vowel shape and inflection, even as the high dramatic content of so much of the French repertoire gives a singer plenty of other things to think about. Read more »
Celebrated conductor William Christie, widely considered among the foremost interpreters of early-music for modern audiences, and his acclaimed ensemble Les Arts Florissants have delighted audiences at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) for 30 years. On March 1st, they return with Rameau, maître à danser, featuring two rarely seen operas originally penned by 18th-century French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau for the court of Louis XV.
A pastoral atmosphere prevails throughout La naissance d’Osiris, a one-act ballet set to a libretto by Louis de Cahusac commissioned to celebrate the birth of the Duke of Berry, future Louis XVI; Daphnis et Églé tells the story of two lovers ignorant of their own love for each other, charming audiences with its use of classic European dance styles like sarabande, gavotte, gigue, minuet, tambourin, and contredanse.
Both operatic miniatures served as a symbol of the court’s opulence as well as a source of evening entertainment; together, as Rameau, maître à danser, they serve as a sublime showcase for Christie’s singular brilliance and the ravishing power of baroque music. At the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House Mar 1—3. Read more »
Three blocks from the opera house is a terrible time to realize there was homework. And yet, there I was at Larkin Street or so when I remembered that Two Women was based not only on a movie (or rather, on the same novel as that movie) but on one that is apparently beloved of Italians, featuring the most glamorous star of the Italian cinema. Indeed, in her interview with David J. Baker, Anna Caterina Antonacci goes so far as to say that every Italian of her generation has seen La Ciociara “at least three times.” Ah well, I thought. I’ll wing it. Read more »
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.
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.
Goddess Anna Caterina Antonacci takes the “Sophia Loren” starring role in La Ciociara, a new work premiering at San Francisco Opera in June, 2015.
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.
Cher Public