“Along with every other music journalist in New York, I was blindsided by this news. If ever there was a company that appeared the picture of fiscal and artistic good health, it was Gotham.”
By La Cieca
6 comments
Gotham Chamber Opera is ceasing operations and will be closing.
By La Cieca
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is a problematic opera—or, rather, it is an opera that has, in the last century or so, become problematic.
By La Cieca
Xavier Montsalvatge is best known in these parts for the songs of his “Antilles” period in the 1940s, the exquisite “Cinco Canciones Negras” and so on, making use of rhythms and melodies with a Caribbean flavor.
By John Yohalem
Gotham Chamber Opera, which began to operate twelve years ago with a double bill of Bohuslav Martinu’s quirky little pieces, opened its 2014-15 season with two more, Alexandre bis (Alexander, twice) and Comedy on the Bridge.
By John Yohalem
The NY Phil Biennial, a new music festival that is dedicated to new music, kicked off its first season at a drowsy time on the performing arts calendar, the week after Memorial Day.
By La Cieca
Recently, opera showed up at both Mets, the Metropolitan Opera and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
By La Cieca
Marc-Antoine Charpentier came along at the wrong time for a composer of French opera.
By John Yohalem
“Two Boys demonstrates that Mr. Muhly is capable of very great things indeed, offering extended glimpses of the kind of masterpiece he just missed writing here, and, more happily, of the kind of masterpiece I feel confident he will write in the future.”
By La Cieca
Baden-Baden 1927 is the title Gotham Chamber Opera has given to its evening of four brief operas that premiered together at a festival in, yes, Baden-Baden on July 17, 1927.
By John Yohalem
For our weekly meander through mendacity, we turn to no less than Gotham Chamber Opera’s own Neal Goren, who writes, “People repeat as fact that women ruin their voices, or at least sacrifice their high notes, by singing in chest voice. So untrue!”
By La Cieca
Nathaniel Hawthorne, the repentant Puritan—that is, he repented that his family had once been Puritans—describes the voice of Rappaccini’s Daughter, Beatrice, as “rich as a tropical sunset, … which made Giovanni, though he knew not why, think of deep hues of purple or crimson and of perfumes heavily delectable.”
By John Yohalem
Those of you who so readily groan, “Oh, dear god, no, not another Carmen! Give it a bleeding rest!” (and you know who you are) may lose that long face, temporarily at least, when you hear the exotic repertoire promised by Gotham Chamber Opera next season.
By La Cieca
Short as Roman emperor Eliogabalo’s reign was, the world sighed in relief when it was over.
By La Cieca
Gotham Chamber Opera stumbled so badly Friday night with Francesco Cavalli’s 1668 Eliogabalo at The Box, it was hard to know whether to feel sad or angry—or both.
Although married five times including to the heretofore off-limits Vestal Virgin, he patronized hundreds of prostitutes while also showering political favors on his male lovers.
Count on Gotham Chamber Opera to spice up the spring season.
By La Cieca
It’s hard to think of a rare work by a great composer more tailor-made for a twenty-first century reexamination than Mozart’s Il Sogno di Scipione.
Some days you can feel like a hero just getting out of bed in the morning.
By La Cieca
It will come to no surprise to the parterriani (though perhaps something of a relief to Peter Gelb) that the most coveted ticket of the fall season in New York is Anna Bolena, the Donizetti premiere at the Met featuring Anna Netrebko‘s lovely head. Complete results of the more than 1,100 votes cast in the…
By La Cieca
Enterprising Manhattan troupe Gotham Chamber Opera will announce tonight their participation in the commission of a new American opera, Dark Sisters, composed by Nico Muhly with libretto by Stephen Karam, conducted by Neal Goren, and directed by Rebecca Taichman.
By La Cieca
