Grand Tier Grab Bag looks forward to a big week for Umberto Giordano by sharing Sondra Radvanovsky and Gregory Kunde performing the final duet from Andrea Chénier.
Hie thee hither to the Lyric Opera House!
It was a meaty program. But both singers had the chops for it.
It was a gloomy, chilly, rainy day in Chicago on Sunday afternoon, a perfect reflection of the sad and gloomy fates of the title characters in Lyric Opera of Chicago’s presentation of The Three Queens.
Sondra Radvanovsky in a “Three Queens” concert and The Queen of Spades, plus three cycles of the Ring (senza Sondra) highlight Lyric Opera of Chicago’s 2019-2020 season.
Sondra Radvanovsky changed my opinion of her through a single performance—I’ll never think of her the same way again; the power of her singing overwhelmed my previous impressions.
Bellini’s Norma Monday evening didn’t at all improve on the production it was replacing.
“Due to Anna Netrebko’s recent decision not to add the title role in Bellini’s Norma to her repertory…”
This season’s Met Donizetti Tudor Trilogy concluded with Roberto Devereux, given its penultimate performance by HD transmission Saturday, April 16. It is good to see these works finally given here; they are too important, too crucial a part of the operatic repertory to have been ignored for as long as they have.
Friday’s season premiere at the Met of Donizetti’s opera about the doomed Scottish queen proved surprisingly satisfying and a genuine success for Sondra Radvanovsky.
“This throwback to the golden age of opera—superhuman singing greeted with frenzied ovations—was a function of a perfect storm of excitement.”
The Metropolitan Opera’s much vaunted so-called “Tudor Ring” of three royal operas by Donizetti got off to a bumpy start Saturday afternoon with a revival of Anna Bolena that stubbornly refused to cohere either musically or dramatically.
Having heard a bit of the opening night broadcast and read some decidedly mixed reviews, I was totally unprepared for the remarkable performance of Donizetti’s Anna Bolena that I attended on December 15 at Chicago Lyric Opera.
Far be it from me to join the Schadenfreudian chorus of “Bye, Bye, Berti!” you may have been hearing in certain quarters, but the first thing I am duty-bound to report about San Francisco Opera’s Norma (of which three performances remain) is that they’ve hit the jackpot, coverwise.
Sondra Radvanovsky lent her luminous voice to Chamberfest for what was an unexpectedly unique recital.
In Issue #40 of parterre box, the queer opera zine, Our Own JJ nabs lengthy interviews with critic John Ardoin and tenor Richard Leech.
Sondra Radvanovsky will make her Met role debut as the title character in Verdi’s Aida on February 28…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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