Crowning glory
To imagine that I have anything new to say about Maria Callas’ 1957 performance of Anna Bolena at La Scala is sheer pomposity.
Review
A boozy short leave
After 23 years, the Queen of Carthage has finally made it to Manhattan.
L’infelice Aragonese
Camille Saint-Saëns was such a brilliant, facile musician that pals like Wagner and Liszt felt a distinct schadenfreude when he suffered composer’s block.
Brit star! would I were steadfast as thou art!
Rule Britannia? Often during the Olympics that famous number from Thomas Arne’s 1740 Alfred echoed in my ears.
Sister sister
Like New Yorkers, opera tends to flee the city in summer.
Desert fox
Karol Szymanowski’s 1926 King Roger was the sleeper hit of SFO’s season, not so much for its weird, mystical theme and feeble libretto but because the music is powerfully effective.
The desert song
You Parterrestrials know all about Santa Fe Opera’s amazing mountain setting and open-sided theater affording breathtaking sunsets, weather-related drama and–when the back stage wall is opened–starry backdrops, but it was my first visit, so indulge me a little.
Tales of an evil queen
Beethoven expressed it best when he reportedly threw Rossini shade: “Any other other style than opera buffa would do violence to your nature.”
Rung number
Unlike Mozart, the young Gioacchino Rossini seldom let his ambitions strain relations with employers.
By Adriel
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Stairway to paradise
We approach, beloveds, as unto a shrine, for these are no ordinary performances.
Questions and antlers
Verdi’s only successful comic opera, Falstaff, is notably hard to produce.
Puccini three ways
Puccini’s evening of one-act operas Il Trittico seems to be riding a wave of popularity over the last few years, with a new production at the Met and several high-profile productions in America and Europe.
The king who would be man
Sometimes an obscure opera is revived, and everyone hails a lost masterpiece.
Smiles on a summer night
Apparently, we learn very little in life; the follies we pursue with haste in youth are answered by the follies we commit in age with great deliberation.
See the pretty diva in that mirror there
The diva must be a Diva in Adriana Lecouvreur. Fact.
Disoriented
The most wonderful thing about opera on video is the vicarious thrill of seeing performances of important works in the most glamorous foreign theaters in gala presentations with musicians of great renown for a piddling fraction of the cost.
Thirds and music
Richard Wagner told Cosima he first got the idea of composing an opera about Tristan and Isolde while he was conducting Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi starring his muse, Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient, in the trouser role of Romeo.
Joy cometh in the mourning
Is the threnody, the lament over a beloved corpse, the oldest form of song? Surely it is among the oldest; one of the most widespread and stylistically various, millennia before opera was devised.
Rodent show
This Hans Neuenfels staging for the Bayreuth Festival caused quite a stir at its 2010 premiere, but now, with time and distance, how radical is the production?
Roma holiday
Manuel de Falla’s La Vida Breve makes its video debut with this release from C-Major which means there’s still plenty of opportunities for improvement.
JJ au naturel
Our Own JJ has been spending a lot of time outdoors lately, which is such a novelty for him that he felt he really must write about it.
Summer knights
Richard Wagner believed the key to any legend was contrasting the supernatural with human nature, and showing how the combination had no chance of enduring. In Lohengrin, the title’s character’s insistence on unconditional love and trust collide with the conditional expectations of the real world. The challenge is capturing the tale’s somber majesty without losing […]
Revolutionary Rhodes
The cover picture on the Opera Australia’s DVD
of a 2011 production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni is rather startling.