After the success of its Don Giovanni in 2011, Lincoln Center invited Iván Fischer and his Budapest Festival Orchestra to return for the Mostly Mozart Festival premiere (!) of the first of Mozart-da Ponte’s three masterpieces Le Nozze di Figaro late Sunday afternoon at the Rose Theater.
I was led through a small labyrinth of white curtains, sheer like veils, to a row of seven chairs jutting in between the stage risers.
Leslie Uyeda’s When the Sun Comes Out is being premiered by Vancouver’s Queer Arts Festival as “Canada’s first Lesbian opera” at the Roundhouse Community Center in Yaletown. I caught the second performance; there is one more tomorrow night.
I’ve long been a fan of Kenneth Branagh, even though this fandom feels a bit like being a camel in the desert.
After Heart of a Soldier, The Perfect American, The Gospel According to Mary Magdalene, et al., the premiere of Theodore Morrison’s Oscar in Santa Fe last Saturday came as a welcome relief.
Sergey Taneyev, pupil of Tchaikovsky and teacher of Scriabin and Rachmaninov, composed just one opera, Oresteia, premiered in 1895 when he was 39.
The behavioral phenomenon of limerence has been described as “an involuntary potentially inspiring state of adoration and attachment to a limerent object involving intrusive and obsessive thoughts, feelings and behaviors from euphoria to despair, contingent on perceived emotional reciprocation.”
It may have taken most of Verdi’s canon to do it, but the “Tutto Verdi” collection finally manages to do justice to Verdi in his last two operas.
It is quite unusual to stage a new indoor production in the middle of summer in Italy when so many outdoor venues are open, but general manager of La Scala Stéphane Lissner – who will leave next year – decided to close the first half of this Verdi-Wagner year with a beloved hit of il cigno di Busseto.
Giuseppe and I have always had a complicated relationship.
I’m happy to report that Rigoletto from the 30 DVD Tutto Verdi set from the Teatro Regio di Parma is a blockbuster
.
Between Fidelio and Der Freischutz there was “Romantische Oper,” a type of musical drama descended from medieval mystery plays in which ghosts, gnomes and other “invisibles” get entangled in the lives of unsuspecting people.
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!
Everything about Aleksandra Kurzak’s new disc
is a variation on the term “fioritura.”
Of all of Verdi’s operas. Aida is the one I find least interesting dramatically.
The Tutto Verdi series from the Teatro Regio Parma may be said to relate to the great Giuseppe Verdi’s oeuvre as the burning of the library at Alexandria did to classical literature.
Could Marek Janowski do for Wagner what the early music movement did for the Baroque and Classical repertory?
Name a Verdi opera, based on a play by Voltaire, described in the immortal words of the composer as “Questo e proprio brutto.”
Ailyn Pèrez is a soprano on the rise.
Christian Thielemann has proved himself to be the preeminent Strauss interpreter of the current generation of conductors and he’s in striking form here.
When I acquire DVDs of opera performances, I look for performances which truly merit a video recording; performances in which the totality of the musical and dramatic elements are worth preserving for repeated viewing.
Morningside Opera’s ¡Figaro! (90210) is a staging/translation (into English, Spanish, et al.) of Le Nozze as if in contemporary Beverly Hills (as if!), and it’s playing at the NSD Theater on Bank Street near the Meatpacking District through next Sunday.
In August 1845 Alexandre Dumas fils ended his brief but passionate affair with Parisian courtesan Marie Duplessis. He sent her a bitter letter that is often quoted in program notes about La Traviata.
In an ever-changing world it’s comforting to know that the Parmigiani of the Teatro Regio continue their campaign through the Verdi canon not unlike the Allied Forces’ rout of the Germans at the beginning of 1945.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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