It’s nice to see Sony Classical backing a serious operatic soprano and not some crossover refugee from Britain’s Got Talent or another syrupy Christmas album from the world’s reigning Heldentenor.
Gabriela Benacková, one of Trove Thursday’s favorite sopranos, turns 75 tomorrow, so we celebrate with two rare complete Verdi portrayals.
Has there ever been a more perfect opera to watch after a breakup than Ariadne auf Naxos?
We have two reasons for celebrating Jessye Norman and the first is a release on the BBC / London Philharmonic Orchestra label of a Richard Strauss concert.
This sterling revival shows the Metropolitan to be surviving well and in good shape.
Minutes into “An die Nacht,” the first song Friday night, I realized how much I’d missed being enveloped in that seductive Straussian combination of a soprano (or two or three) rising higher and higher over a surging orchestra.
Today is Mozart’s 266th birthday and I had already planned a Trove Thursday celebration when I learned that Maria Ewing had died on January 9.
Teresa Zylis-Gara died in late August at 91 and Trove Thursday offers the Polish soprano in a wide-ranging collection of live material showcasing her great versatility.
I had no idea whatsoever of the reality of the life of this strong, vibrant woman I had gotten to know, the traumas she suffered; the extent and the horror of her experiences was all very surreal to me.
Trove Thursday remembers Edita Gruberová with live recordings of two of the three operas I heard her perform at the Met: a 1985 Munich La Traviata with Neil Shicoff and Wolfgang Brendel conducted by Carlos Kleiber and an I Puritani from Vienna 1994 featuring two other artists who recently left us too soon: Marcello Giordani and Dmitri Hvorostovsky.
The program was set around themes of loss, of unfulfilled wishes, the endurance of loss, triumphant or depressed.
Lately I’ve been loving listening to Régine Crespin, prompting Trove Thursday to celebrate the great French soprano with private in-house recordings of two of her important non-Met North American appearances.
American soprano Gianna Rolandi died Sunday morning, according to a number of her friends and colleagues. She was 68.
As New Yorkers swelter in the Fahrenheit 90s. Trove Thursday escapes to wintry Vienna 1920s for Richard Strauss’s Intermezzo (in English) sumptuously conducted by Julius Rudel and starring the incomparable Elisabeth Söderström as the delicious, exasperating wife of Alan Titus.
Teresa Stratas turned 83 yesterday and Trove Thursday features one of the recent past’s most interesting yet frustrating artists in two rare broadcasts.
Trove Thursday celebrates Christa Ludwig with live excerpts from 1955 through 1982.
For those pining for Puccini with the Met out of commission. Trove Thursday steps up with the composer’s brief first opera Le Villi with Krassimira Stoyanova, José Cura and Franz Grundheber, led by Simone Young.
A recent discussion here about Gianna Rolandi prompts Trove Thursday to present the American soprano in a rare trouser role in an even rarer opera, Cimarosa’s Gli Orazi e I Curiazi paired with Anna Caterina Antonacci.
It was hard for me not to get choked up, watching two of AVA’s most promising young graduates having to make this opportunity for themselves, and doing it with such palpable good humor.
Ordinarily we’d be listening to Bayreuth Festival broadcasts this week but instead Trove Thursday steps up with a true Wagner rarity: Die Feen from the Wiener Staatsoper starring as Ada, the fairy in love with a mortal, Gundula Janowitz, who turns 83 on Sunday.
Trove Thursday finally welcomes Wagner’s Lohengrin arriving in a concert performance conducted by Georg Solti with Siegfried Jerusalem, Julia Varady, Eva Randová, Hermann Becht, Hans Sotin and Wolfgang Schöne.
As the late Arlene Saunders had a very limited commercial discography and performed mostly in Europe, I thought some readers might be curious to hear more of her.
VIctor Herbert demonstrates in this slight, affectionate piece a talent for keeping his musico-dramatic balls in the air, as Madeleine’s spirits juggle, fall, rise again, and droop to elegant resignation at the last.
It is rare to be moved to tears by a lieder recital. It is rarer still to be moved to tears by the third song on a recital program.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
×
Sign up for Parterre’s free newsletter.
Exclusive opera reviews, commentary, and top reads
delivered to your email weekly…ish.