San Francisco goes baroque with performances of Handel‘s Alcina, Tolomeo, and Rinaldo.
Christopher Corwin picks the flowers of a baroque May in New York City with reviews of concerts starring Lauren Snouffer, Key’mon Murrah, and the Oratorio Society of New York.
Apologies in advance to Key’mon Murrah, whose rather extraordinary Marian Anderson award recital with pianist Brian Zeger at the Kennedy Center on December 17 demands some general musing.
Final opera of the season. Little-known opera. A revival. So, you can probably skip it, right?
Chris’s Cache celebrates Ewa Podles‘s long connection with Handel by featuring her in three complete, decidedly un-HIP operas spanning over twenty years
This showcase concert gave notice that countertenor Hugh Cutting is among the most promising artists of his generation.
No one who followed Trove Thursday will be surprised that Diva November on Chris’s Cache today features Ann Hallenberg and Sandrine Piau.
Surrounded by security and greeted by a bevy of cameras, Su Majestad la Reina Sofía brought a bit of excitement to an evening that didn’t end up being all that musically rewarding.
Trove Thursday previews next week’s BBC Proms presentation of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius with a 2008 broadcast conducted by Colin Davis with Sarah Connolly, Ben Heppner and Gerald Finley.
I wonder why many New Yorkers have been led to believe that the only Handel conductor in the world is Harry Bicket.
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.
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.
Saturday marks the centenary of Julius Rudel’s birth which Trove Thursday celebrates with Le Coq d’or, Faust and Ariodante, a triple-bill showcasing his impressive versatility, featuring Beverly Sills and Norman Treigle, two of the most important artists he nurtured during his leadership of the New York City Opera.
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.
Fueled by a fierce intelligence, deep earnestness, exceptional eloquence, and social media savvy, Joyce DiDonato is a presence and a power, as much when speaking and thinking as when singing. Who better to imagine a program that would suit this (we hope) unique moment?
As Phaedra’s tragic, all-consuming passion for her stepson Hippolytus has fascinated artists for centuries, Trove Thursday offers two of its lesser-known musical settings: Pizzetti’s opera Fedra with Régine Crespin and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson performing the cantata Phaedra, Britten’s final vocal work.
While isolated opera-lovers intently navigate the deluge of streaming videos being made available, I’ve been listening rather than viewing.
Although I usually pretend that I don’t have the diva-worship gene, sharp-eyed readers of parterre box will know that since I joined the site in 2011 as “DeCaffarrelli” I have often swooned as an Ann Hallenberg-fanboi.
Trove Thursday acknowledges the late Raymond Leppard‘s important influence with a live broadcast of his seminal “realisation” of Cavalli’s L’Ormindo plus some Cavalli and Monteverdi tidbits with Janet Baker.
Today the good guy finally gets his chance with San Giovanni Battista by Alessandro Stradella featuring Christophe Dumaux as John the Baptist.
Sunday’s “Rising Stars in Concert”, featuring the Ryan Opera Center ensemble and members of the Lyric Opera Orchestra, was a stirring and entertainingly musical afternoon.
It’s been a rough winter in Chicago, and an especially rough one for lead singers at Lyric Opera of Chicago
We close 2018 with Le Comte Ory with an enviable nearly all-Italian cast of prime-time Rossini specialists: Mariella Devia, Cecila Bartoli, Ewa Podles, William Matteuzzi, Claudio Desderi and Pietro Spagnoli.
Ars Minerva upped their game by mounting an 18th century baroque opera, Giovanni Porta’s 1738 Ifigenia in Aulide.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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