Le jazz tiède
The crossover album: a hint that that an artist has either exhausted all the repertory at her command and owes her record label a new release or that her waning vocal resources really shouldn’t be taxed much further than an octave.
Review
Red letter day
The Cologne Opera Fledermaus, announced as a concert performance turned out to be a much livelier and funnier affair than expected. Thanks to the excellent direction of the singers, the beautiful costumes, an unusually sparkling ensemble composed of great local favorites, and star singers for the two lead roles, this was as joyful and exciting a performance as any fully staged version.
Orpheus goes downtown
Marc-Antoine Charpentier came along at the wrong time for a composer of French opera.
Game theory
I first became aware of the work of Austrian film director Michael Haneke a few years back when I followed a tip from a friend and rented the well-reviewed The White Ribbon.
Golden oldie
Eight hundred years ago, the “youth of Beauvais” in the north of France created a sacred festival “play,” Ludus Danieli (ludus—meaning a sacred event? a performance? a game? a joke?) for the annual Fool’s Night on January 1 at the cathedral.
Critical care
The experience of watching Wagner’s final opera Parsifal is frequently elevated to a spiritual occurrence, and productions have historically emphasized the religious dimension of the opera’s core themes of redemption and the dangers of temptation.
Glyph you hadn’t, but you did
f you like opera to look like a museum, the Arena di Verona’s latest video of Aida should jump to the top of your wish list.
Bowled over
I never thought I’d see the day when Giuseppe Verdi and Benjamin Britten would battle it out for musical superiority but that’s exactly what happened in Los Angeles this year.
Light my foyer
Each year, Leon Botstein leads the American Symphony Orchestra in a concert opera or two.
He is big
Falstaff, Verdi’s final opera, is exuberantly inventive, bubbling and roiling with ideas the 79-year-old composer was too impatient to develop.
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.
Pick your poison
I think we’re all aware by now of the wicked libel that the French dramatist Victor Hugo concocted about the fair Lucrezia Borgia with his depiction of her as a murderous virago.
Britten on the wind
Ambiguity. That’s the theme of the operas of Benjamin Britten (ennobled as Baron Britten of Aldeburgh).
Disoriented
What we go to Grattacielo for is fresh young voices singing their guts out.
Appearing nightly
I suspect most New York City opera-lovers had long since given up hope that the fascinating soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci would ever return to their city.
Two ladies in the shade…
The simple fable at the heart of Die Frau ohne Schatten shouldn’t be difficult to parse, but Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s libretto juggles its vaguely Jungian, vaguely Arabian Nights symbolitry as if with intent to mystify and bewilder.
Semi: Colon
The abrupt withdrawal of Katharina Wagner from an abridged seven-hour Ring cycle she was to direct at the Teatro Colon last year prompted no shortage of scorn and Schadenfreude.
A river runs through it
I can think of no other case that resembles Handel’s complex relationship to the story—derived from Ovid’s Metamorphoses—of the ill-fated love between the shepherd Acis and the sea nymph Galatea.
Show business
Now that many of us are leaping to the altar unfettered by those pesky legalities of yore the problem of what to put on the bridal (or groomal) registry has become an atrocious head scratcher. So many of us have had housekeeping set up for so long now that we really don’t want for anything. […]
Beyond the Valley of the Freemasons
An impresario with a hit on his hands—Emanuel Schikaneder, for instance, after the initial run of Die Zauberflöte—will crave nothing so much as an opportunity to hit the same bell.
Bo, concept
The surprises, and puzzles, of Dmitri Tcherniakov‘s production of Don Giovanni in this DVD of a performance at the Aix-en-Provence festival begin before a note has been played or the curtain has risen.
Hell night
I got quite a surprise when I opened the latest packet of goodies from La Cieca – a DVD of Orphée aux Enfers, but in German as Orpheus in der Unterwelt.
The music lovers
The curious things about accepted wisdom is that sometimes it’s correct.
Brother act
The Jesi foundation continues its tireless quest of making Pergolesi operas available on video.
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).