Happy February 1!
To celebrate the birthday of Renata Tebaldi, our friends at Opera Depot are offering a free download of live performances by this great diva.
our own jj
Catch of another day
“A charming musical performance welded to a dramatic production so old and stale that, like fish left out too long, it’s starting to smell.”
B. F. deal
Tenors Bryan Hymel (pictured) and Joseph Calleja redeem otherwise routine Puccini revivals at the Met, says Our Own JJ in the New York Observer.
Curious “Case”
“…a perfect marriage of text and music, creating a series of tableau-like scenes, as if Paul’s story is being related through a series of exquisitely posed still photographs…”
Queens logic
Saturday afternoon at 12:30 on WQXR’s magazine show Operavore, our own JJ talks about Mathilde Marchesi and Antony Roth Costanzo discusses his Orlofsky role in the Met’s Fledermaus.
The wrong note drag
“…the Met’s brand new production of Die Fledermaus, which premiered on New Year’s Eve, is overproduced, undersung and interminable, less a holiday entertainment than a checklist of opera-making skills the company can’t seem to master.”
Towards zero
Our Own JJ (not pictured) counts down his 10 favorite New York opera performances of 2013 in the New York Observer.
Come to the unstable
How, then, to explain the perplexing performance last Friday night of Falstaff, Mr. Levine’s first new production since his return?
Life of the party
Our dear friends at Operavore (to whence Our Own JJ will be returning for another season early in 2014) have called for nominations for favorite operatic “party records.”
Freeze frame
Our Own JJ takes on an old frame (Der Rosenkavalier) and a new (Eugene Onegin) in his latest review for the New York Observer.
Light reading
“Opera isn’t all about the music: On the most basic level, it’s a grotesquely expensive form of entertainment.”
Desk set
“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.”
Golden “Boys”
Who knows what to expect from an opera about the Internet?
The private life of implants
“The queen of tabloid TV arrived at BAM Tuesday night in Anna Nicole, an opera brimming with wit and good taste. In other words, they got Anna Nicole all wrong.”
In Ring und Reih’ die Hall’ erfüllen die Helden
Our Own JJ has been thinking about Bayreuth some more, this time in the pages of Musical America.
Annagnorsis
Our Own JJ debuts in the pages of the New York Observer.
Ring? What ring?
All right, I admit it; I finally broke down and read the program notes for the Ring in the Bayreuth program book.
The Platz thickens
I’m told that the public were, if hardly enthusiastic, at least ambivalent toward the Frank Castorf Ring up until the first performance of Siegfried, at which point things got really ugly and the booing started in earnest.
Flame off
First things first: working from the limited evidence of half or less than half of Frank Castorf’s production of the Ring, I don’t see any evidence of contempt for the audience or whatever you want to call it.
Here in Bayreuth
Our Own JJ (right) reports he is ready and relatively un-jetlagged for Das Rheingold tonight at Bayreuth. He'll have comments afterward.
Blind item
If you’re a hard-core opera buff who finds the Met’s flashy sets and costumes distracting, have I got a show for you!
Monkey do
Opening last night, the most buzzed-about show at the Lincoln Center Festival was inspired by a 16th-century Chinese folk tale of a sassy Monkey, who uses his magic powers and awesome kung fu skills to retrieve holy scriptures from India.
Man in chair
The question on everyone’s lips at Carnegie Hall was, “Is Jimmy back in form?”
Win a Free Ticket to Opening Night at the Met!
Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen star in the Met's new Macbeth. We're giving away one ticket, so screw your courage to the sticking place and enter now!
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).
