Orpheus, mythology’s greatest musician, has fascinated artists for centuries from Poussin to Rilke to Cocteau to Balanchine to Tennessee Williams. But opera composers have naturally held him most dear; even the genre’s first surviving work involved him although Jacopo Peri’s Euridice was named after his doomed wife. Read more »
One trend of summer 2017 must be Brooklyn does baroque! Following LoftOpera’s muddled Stabat Mater of Pergolesi, Wednesday brought Christopher Alden’s grimly dark and violent take on Handel’s Aci, Galatea e Polifemo at National Sawdust. Neither of these works was written to be staged but the latter production worked infinitely better both dramatically and musically. Read more »
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Highlights of the Metropolitan Opera’s 2019-2020 season will include the company premiere of Glass’s Akhnaten featuring Anthony Roth Costanzo and first local Turandot of Anna Netrebko (not pictured), according the always intriguing Met Future Wiki. Read more »
Akhnaten, seen at the Los Angeles Opera on November 13 tells the story of the Pharaoh who abandoned traditional Egyptian polytheism.
Philip Glass is indisputably one of the most prolific composers of the last half century, yet none of his more than 20 operas has found a place in the standard repertoire.
What is an Orphic moment? A song so sweet that even Hades must release the dead back to the living?
St. Paul’s Chapel is the perfect site for Saul, Handel’s finest dramatic oratorio.
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.
Cher Public