The UK’s first-ever production of Poliuto, now available from Opus Arte on DVD, set the lions of Rome among the lambs of Glyndebourne.
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Director Barrie Kosky’s Glyndebourne 2015 production of Handel’s 1739 oratorio Saul (released on Opus Arte DVD) shows imagination as well as a strong cast and design team.
The Teatro di San Carlo in Naples is a pearl itself and this presentation proffers some of the best that company has to offer.
“Never in my life having enjoyed the true happiness of love I shall erect a memorial to this loveliest of all dreams…”
With the performance of Dessì we move onto a different plane than the other singers.
Sometimes when you find the club that will have you as a member, you do not easily give up your spot.
Richard Wagner viewed dance as an essential element of art, though he used it sparingly in his operas.
“Has anyone ever seen a truly great production of this opera?”
What we really need, some seem to believe, is fuller representation of the 19th century.
Giuseppe Verdi was so unhappy with the first production of his Giovanna d’Arco at La Scala in 1845 that he swore an oath to himself that he would never entrust that theatre with a prima again.
The original conductor of Nielsen’s opera summed the piece up well I think…
A woman reads from the Bible. There is a dance scene in a tavern. The discovery of blood gives away the protagonist.
The Canadian Robert Carsen would appear to love the theater to the point of fixation.
Is Manon Lescaut a cold, clinical tale of the splendors and pitfalls of transactional sex, or is it a romantic Italian opera at its most lush and melodic?
It would be generous to say that history comes alive on the operatic stage.
Enthusiasm is contagious–you have to cover up carefully lest it make you sick.
The most recent Egyptian voluptuary of 2006 by our friend Franco has now been replaced by the most singularly spartan production of Verdi’s masterpiece I think I’ve ever seen.
Giacomo Puccini’s final opus interruptus is and shall always remain my favorite opera. The reasons for this preference are so varied and numerous that if they were printed and bound the volume would most assuredly require its own stand.
There might be nothing in the world as joyous as a Rossini overture.
For all their orchestral and vocal attractions, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s 15 operas are rarities in the West.
“Hailed ‘the Meryl Streep of opera’…” begins one sentence of a promotional piece for a Diana Damrau recording of another opera, reproduced on the soprano’s website.
Enthusiasts of Janácek’s opera will want to pick up this video immediately.
The winter 2014 final run of the Met’s first/only Rusalka production (a new one is scheduled in a few seasons) seemed both a nod to the theater’s past and a hint of its future.
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