I wondered if there truly is a future for opera other than as an overpriced museum piece for an aging audience who likes their sets lavish, their productions non-challenging, and their singers telegenic.
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The Albanian soprano Ermonela Jaho is surely the reason that Covent Garden has made a commercial release of this “Live to Cinemas” relay from March of 2017.
The conclusion of our Fanciulla del West video overview in three parts looks at a trio of performances from the 2010s.
Puccini’s Girl closes out the 20th century and gallops into the 21st.
On Thursday, Puccini’s seventh opera, the California Gold Rush romance La fanciulla del West, returns to its birthplace for its first Met performances since 2011.
Well here we are, beloveds, still swathed in the warm glow of the Leonard Bernstein centennial. Box sets abound like bunnies in a hutch.
Der Rosenkavalier (on Blu-ray and DVD) is from the Met HD broadcast which also happened to be the final performance of the run, becoming a true souvenir of the farewells of its two leading ladies.
Even those of us who consider Guillaume Tell Rossini’s greatest opera understand why it has not been his most frequently staged.
Psychology is encoded in the composer’s vocal lines more than his librettist’s words.
C-major has made available the first DVD/Blu-ray of Franco Faccio’s Amleto.
The second DVD/Blu-ray with Plácido Domingo as Verdi’s other beleaguered Doge, Francesco in I due Foscari.
No amount of scholarly diligence has kept Les contes d’Hoffmann from being the messiest of all standard-repertory messes.
In May of last year tenor Piotr Beczala and soprano Anna Netrebko sang in Lohengrin for the first time under the baton of Christian Thielemann in his home house at the Staatskapelle Dresden.
Kevin Newbury‘s familiar production of Bellini’s Norma with its most frequent leading lady, the American Sondra Radvanovsky.
“Time is a strange thing,” the lady observes, to a young man who cannot begin to understand what she is talking about.
“In my music, there’s not repetition. Something is always going on.”
The subject of timidity has been in my thoughts in these waning days of February 2017. One would almost think there had been some big announcement recently, preceded by a series of smaller ones, to turn a U.S.-based opera fan’s thoughts in this direction.
This Met’s second production of Berg’s 1935 opera was the hot topic of November 2015.
Today’s Rusalka video overview covers filmed performances of Dvorák’s opera since 2010.
The beautiful singing here is less in the sound than in the way the voice moves.
Now we find Mariella Devia, a diva held in near mythic regard due to her vocal longevity, with competing videos of two of her performances that were released, literally, on the same day.
Andrea Andermann is the veteran film producer who had the notion to assemble top-flight talent from the worlds of music and cinema for a generously funded film of Tosca.
The DVD of Thomas Agerfeldt Olesen‘s 2013 opera The Picture of Dorian Gray.
“Take a good deal of trouble with it, because it is a fine subject, delicate and full of pathos.”
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