On this day in 1918 Pietro Mascagni and Giovacchino Forzano’s Lodoletta had its United States premiere at the Metropolitan.
Power struggles, prejudice, feuds and revenge abound in San Francisco at the moment.
On the train ride home I was thinking that I don’t want to see or hear Norma ever again.
On this day in 1970 the Metropolitan Opera presented new productions of Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci.
On this day in 1926 the Metropolitan Opera opened its season with La vestale with Rosa Ponselle in the title role.
Why did Ted Sperling and MasterVoices choose to perform an old warhorse like Carmen which has been produced almost continuously over decades just up the street at Lincoln Center?
The New York City Opera has become an elusive “now you see it, now you don’t” presence in the New York opera scene since the departure of main sponsor and chairman of the board Roy G. Niederhoffer in 2019.
When was the last time the Metropolitan Opera mounted a new production that was musically outstanding yet the direction and/or design mostly sucked?
Trove Thursday offers Shostakovich’s 1962 Katerina Izmailova with Australian soprano Marie Collier as its anti-heroine and Jon Vickers as her lover.
Trove Thursday adds two short works—Goyescas and L’enfant et les sortilèges—to Christian’s expansive recent survey of Bernard Haitink’s opera legacy.
Teatro Grattacielo presented two visions of love’s magic on November 13 and 14—one via Spain and Argentina (in collaboration with Opera Hispánica) and the other via Alsace by way of Italy.
New Camerata Opera is presenting its first staged and indoor program in some time, at “The Muse,” a lofty cabaret space up against a cemetery in Bushwick, and their singers sound like they’ve been champing at the bit for eighteen months and are bursting to vocalize!
Though the formal recorded aria recital is the ultimate calling card of an artist, the invitation to the spectator to receive, listen, and critically behold of the offerings (on fire or burnt), they are but a souvenir and there are a few drawbacks inherent with the presentation.
Giacomo Puccini’s La fanciulla del West may have its detractors (Stravinsky referred to it as a “horse-opera’) but you will not find me among them.
Whatever you think of Angela Gheorghiu, she epitomizes a star sound, the kind of voice that’s recognizable within three seconds, and she definitely knows her way around a performance.
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.
Today’s offering is an electric performance of Verdi’s early potboiler Attila conducted by Giuseppe Sinopoli with Nicolai Ghiaurov, Piero Cappuccilli and the weirdly exciting (or is it the other way around?) Mara Zampieri.
On Sunday afternoon, husband-and-wife duo Roberto Alagna and Aleksandra Kurzak presented a charming program of operatic favorites from the patio of the Château de la Chèvre d’Or in Èze, France.
Nathan Hull was an operatic Quixote who did not go it alone, but inspired bands of optimists, giving proper employment to the many worthy New Yorkers mad enough to study voice and pleasure rare elsewhere to those of us thrilled to take it in.
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.
Sonya Yoncheva’s first-ever Princess Romazov was one of this summer’s casualties but Trove Thursday steps up with a rare 1960 in-house pirate of Giordano’s Fedora starring Renata Tebaldi, Giuseppe di Stefano and Tito Gobbi along with a pair of Tebaldi-di Stefano Puccini highlights from the early 1950s.
Cavalleria Rusticana began Pietro Mascagni’s career with a bang, and despite a number of fine subsequent works the composer never again achieved the same lasting success that he had with his first.
Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana has always been a particular favorite, although I’ve only seen it staged once (and that by an amateur company the details of which I share spare you all, save to note that dinner was served during the performance.)
With most of us dug in for the duration, there’s no better time to tuck into a CD box set of neglected treasures. Not that I needed an excuse, mind you.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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