Run of the “Miller”
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.
Review
Springtime for Wagner
Could Marek Janowski do for Wagner what the early music movement did for the Baroque and Classical repertory?
By Adriel
9 comments
The new world
Name a Verdi opera, based on a play by Voltaire, described in the immortal words of the composer as “Questo e proprio brutto.”
Female on the beach
Christian Thielemann has proved himself to be the preeminent Strauss interpreter of the current generation of conductors and he’s in striking form here.
One of three
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.
Servant of new masters
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.
Backstory
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.
Rogo for it
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.
Self-conquest
Probably no more than 100 gathered Tuesday in a curtained-off space in the lobby of NYC’s Gershwin Hotel to witness the North American premiere of Rodrigo by operamission.
Miss Firecracker
Just like the pyrotechnics the heroine of The Firework Maker’s Daughter longs to create, this new opera for children is a delightful, low-tech throwback to a time before CGI took over the world.
Headless nuns in starless cast
The most sensuous sounds at the Met this week come from an opera with nary a love duet.
Fox news
In Leos Janacek’s The Cunning Little Vixen, the heroine is shot and skinned for her fur.
He who gets kicked
A last minute scheduling conflict at the New York Post (curse you, Tony season!) meant that my planned review of Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny at Manhattan School of Music had to be 86ed.
Lots of Gluck
De Nederlandse Opera’s remarkable 2011 feat of premiering productions of Gluck’s Iphigénie en Aulide and Iphigénie en Tauride on the same day and virtually the same set has been issued on a 2-DVD set by Opus Arte
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When in Rome
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s only opera for Rome was written to an existing libretto by the great Pietro Metastasio, L’Olimpiade, which had already been set by Vivaldi the year previously.
Nel tuo seno, amico sassone
Bollywood dance numbers, kung fu fighting, simulated nudity — and rock-solid musical values — added up to a sterling Giulio Cesare at at the Met.
Wouldn’t it be funny if that was Vivaldi?
“I’ve lived with mendacity!—Why can’t you live with it? Hell, you got to live with it, there’s nothing else to live with except mendacity, is there?”
With a little bit of Gluck
The best joke in Offenbach’s delicious Orphée aux Enfers is the opening premise: Orphée and Eurydice are miserably married, due to her utter boredom with his old-fashioned music.
Faustian, but no bargain
“The spring season at the Met is as changeable as March weather in New York: crisp and brilliant for a day or two, and then suddenly as dismal as Thursday night’s Faust.”
Emperor of the perverse
Short as Roman emperor Eliogabalo’s reign was, the world sighed in relief when it was over.
The girl next door
On first hearing, Paul Dukas’ 1907 opera Ariane et Barbe-bleue (Ariane and Bluebeard) sounds like the love child of a three-way between Wagner, Strauss, and Debussy.
One from the vault
There has never been a successful vampire musical—so they say. But that’s just not true.
Bright young thing
Thursday’s Met performance of the Verdi tearjerker featured a major find: Diana Damrau, who, in her first outing as Violetta, mesmerized with her gleaming soprano and ferocious acting.