“Die Zauberflöte is an opera!” “No, it’s the first musical comedy!”
“Trove Thursday” presents a complete Prodanà Nevesta (aka Die Verkaufte Braut, of course) by Smetana plus extended excerpts from a broadcast of Spontini’s La Vestale in its rarely heard original French version.
Within minutes, something wonderful happened. None of my reservations mattered.
Why did I mostly want to close my eyes and just listen?
We are the elusive, the mysterious, the ever-courted Millennial Audience, Mr. Darcy to the marketing department’s Mrs. Bennet.
“Trove Thursday” offers Mozart’s late opera seria in a Paris “pirate” featuring the high-voltage diva-duo of Anna Caterina Antonacci and Elina Garanca.
On this day in 1977 Alban Berg’s Lulu premiered at the Metropolitan Opera.
Russell Thomas’s opening aria, “Del piu sublime soglio” displayed an intense attention to the text and some surprisingly beautiful piano phrasing that I’ve never heard risked before and it brought wonder and gooseflesh.
I was shocked to realize I hadn’t seen Don Giovanni at the Met since Michael Grandage’s stultifying production opened in 2011.
Although she didn’t sing that eponymous song by Reynaldo Hahn at Weill Recital Hall Thursday evening, Sabine Devieilhe did offer an “exquisite hour” of early 20th century French songs.
Heretofore I’d avoided the Met’s abridged, English-language holiday presentations.
At one point I spent a couple of months on the dole and dollar record shopping had a number of obvious virtues as a pastime.
Diana Damrau‘s performance as Violetta was the work of a very ordinary artist, one susceptible to vocal flubs, poor intonation, and an all too banal approach operatic performance.
Alexander Birch Elliott‘ s dynamic if gauche Zurga added some pizzazz to an otherwise bland evening.
Those readers who know my musical tastes will not be shocked to find that I have a somewhat conflicted view of Mozart’s operatic works.
As opera’s reigning tenor-superstar, Jonas Kaufmann can pretty much do whatever he wants and a sizable adoring public will lap it up.
Celebrating its third anniversary and next week’s Met opening, “Trove Thursday” offers a sumptuous banquet of the third and final chapter of divas in the “wrong language.”
Orfeo’s latest edition is a 1978 performance of Lucia di Lammermoor with a very estimable cast that on its surface may seem a tad mundane but the extensive liner notes (with performance photos) tell the story of why it held such magic.
This year’s Salzburg Festival opens Saturday with a new production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, an opera often performed elsewhere in translation, so “Trove Thursday” offers two for the price (!) of one.
This week’s star-spangled “Trove Thursday” offers the second crazy-quilt installment of divas in the wrong language.
A very particular tension—between angry political resistance and gloriously sex-positive, buoyantly confidant celebration of queerness—fuels the immense energy of Taylor Mac’s A 24-Hour Decade History of Popular Music.
In Bellini’s opera Norma, the “padre” role of Oroveso, it may be safely said, is “undistinguished”—dull and conventional. The bass entrusted with the role usually will engender two reactions: more frequently than not, “Cut this boring music,” and rather more rarely: “What a pity Oroveso doesn’t have more music.”
Mozart was barely sixteen when he wrote Lucio Silla to open the Carnival in Milan in 1772.
The new cast at the Met suggested an alliterative retitling of Lucia di Lammermoor was needed—perhaps Lost Loonies in Love or its Italian equivalent?
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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