Purity woman
That’s the exact word I’d use to describe Olga Peretyatko’s debut in I Puritani last night at the Metropolitan Opera: “calm.”
Review
State of grace
Lawrence Brownlee’s new album Virtuoso Rossini Arias demonstrate both how far the tenore di grazia has come in the operatic world.
No limits
The scene: a vocal audition, sometime in the past. A young, blond soprano approaches the podium. Her aria: “Un bel di.” She sings. Before she gets to the second “Chi sara” she’s rudely interrupted.
Low-fat Schoenberg
With orchestral and choral forces that could outnumber a small European village, Arnold Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder is a composition designed to overwhelm.
On the beach
The sea, the sky, the wind, the storms that are so frequently depicted in the music of Benjamin Britten are brilliantly illuminated in the new DVD of Peter Grimes on Aldeburgh Beach, a collaboration between Aldeburgh Music, film director Margaret Williams, and stage director Tim Albery.
Big D-elight
Who is the most happy fella, he who perfectly fits societal definitions of fitness and attractiveness, or he who attains self-acceptance in spite of whatever personal idiosyncrasies he may confront?
Till there was June
After her marvelous Pat Nixon at the Théâtre du Châtelet two years ago, June Anderson returned there last Wednesday with pianist Jeff Cohen for a recital of French melodies and Broadway songs.
No business like snow business
Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin is his masterwork and its themes of social convention and unrequited longing surely struck a deep chord in a composer who, in late 19th century Russia, was gay and had to conduct himself carefully.
Critic in crinoline
About this evening: the opera we saw was Arabella, written by a gentleman named Mr. Richard Strauss.
By Ivy Lin
Submerged
As part of the celebration of the three-year long restoration of the Theatre Royal de Liege (and, from what we can see in this DVD it is a glorious restoration indeed), the Opera Royal de Wallonie went all the way to find as Belgian an operatic experience as was possible.
Kraus purposes
Perhaps there are not that many people in the world who would look at a CD cover and think “Oh, goody, goody! A libretto by Eugène Scribe I’ve never come across before!”
Ladies in their sensitivities
As someone who thinks Verdi is the greatest composer who ever lived and who feels pretty meh about Mozart, I expected to love the Verdi and be bored by the Mozart. I wasn’t far wrong.
Where the boys are
When Norman Lebrecht is declaring on an almost daily basis that classical music is dead, it’s perhaps heartening that four of today’s prominent tenors have recently released what might be called fluff/vanity albums.
A dream walking
The hostile reaction to the Mary Zimmerman production of La sonnambula was well documented after the premiere in 2009.
Sex please: we’re British
The finer performances of Tristan und Isolde have a way of sounding like a four-hour improvisation, the fruit of a single moment of inspiration that makes one forget how emotionally manipulative and painstakingly crafted the music really is.
By Adriel
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A pretty boy milking his bows
This afternoon at the Met, Grigolo sold his performance like the rent was due tomorrow and he was down to his last penny.
Full of beans
It’s been a bitterly cold winter in NY. When it’s bitterly cold, the air is dry.
Partial eclipse
We must be doubly grateful that The English Concert’s recent Theodora was so quickly followed by the American Classical Orchestra’s fine Samson on Tuesday evening at Alice Tully Hall.
The cup runneth over
I am grateful to Sony for this new release
of the Metropolitan Opera’s latest production of Parsifal and I hope I’m not the only one who discovers what a rich experience this opera can be because of it.
A dream deferred
Andris Nelsons led the Vienna Philharmonic in a performance of Salome that provided just the sort of thing one hopes for in a concert performance of an overflowingly rich operatic score.
Whispers and cries
We were not at Carnegie Hall to hear superb opera singers bestow their vocalism upon Alban Berg’s Wozzeck; we are there to hear the Wiener Staatsoper’s house band work their magic upon an intricate, spooky, devastating score.
Farinelli from heaven
My impossible wish would be to hear one of the great castrati who dominated opera for most of the 18th century.
A sense of occasion
On February 29, 1812 (thanks to Pope Gregory’s calendrical reforms), Gioachino Rossini celebrated his fourth birthday.
Winter wonder man
Life is not fair. There are rules that apply to Jonas Kaufmann, and rules that apply to everyone else.