With Christmas Eve 2016 falling on a Saturday, the Met offers contrasting orchestral splendors at noon and 6 p.m.
Thoughtless direction stifled the epic drama.
“The music’s fun, but doesn’t Rossini repeat himself?”
Imagine two tenors releasing French opera aria collections at the same time without duplicating a single track!
A Birnam Wood of Macbeths and Ladys has come traipsing through New York this year.
Whenever opera-lovers are canvassed about what neglected operas they hunger to see revived, the resulting lists inevitably feature a goodly number of grand operas, those once wildly popular monstrosities–particularly by Meyerbeer–written primarily for Paris in the mid-19th century.
Every year I say I’m not going to another La Bohème because I’ve seen this too many times.
Bel Canto at Caramoor is something that I’ve always wanted to attend but never have because … well because frankly I’m just too lazy during the summers, and I’m also a big baby about outdoor performances.
the strip on my first and, so far at least, only visit to Las Vegas a few years ago, I noticed what to me was a most unexpected sight and startled my companions by pointing out the window and shouting “Auber!”
Everything about Aleksandra Kurzak’s new disc
is a variation on the term “fioritura.”
For better or worse, Decca’s new Norma recording
will ultimately be embraced—or dismissed—by those reacting directly to Cecilia Bartoli’s controversial portrayal.
Beethoven expressed it best when he reportedly threw Rossini shade: “Any other other style than opera buffa would do violence to your nature.”
By the time Rossini was 20, he had produced six operas, most of them brief, comic and slight. He admitted to admiring Mozart (not then well known south of the Alps), but the melodies of his early works show more of the influence of Paisiello.
Oh, Rossini, Rossini! You mad, adorable fool! What power could you find in the theaters of Paris to keep you from Neapolitan arms? If you are fond of Rossini (or any other major composer), you will want to collect the whole set. Each piece of the jigsaw adds detail to the picture, but there are…
While major stars like René Pape and Piotr Beczala had to wait until they were over 40 to record a solo aria CD, Julia Lezhneva has just done her first—and she’s only twenty-one! After a drought, CD companies are issuing a surprising number of debut recitals; Nino Machaidze, Olga Peretyatko, Mojca Erdmann, and Aleksandra Kurzak…
Trying to suggest erstwhile world-renown of Guillaume Tell to a 23-year-old who had never heard of it, a friend of mine mentioned The Lone Ranger. “What’s The Lone Ranger?” replied the youth. And the sun rises and the sun sets and all things must pass. But surely he knew Bambi Meets Godzilla, which also uses…
Sir Arthur Sullivan, the son of an Irish father and an Italian mother, studied Mendelssohn’s composition style in Leipzig. He was therefore, inevitably, the supreme English theater composer of his day, and his often Mozartean style of melody is not out of place in a bel canto festival. After all, in the fourteen operettas he…
Ioan Holender was General Manager of the Wiener Staatsoper for nineteen years, the longest anyone has held this post, and the august institution honored him with the gala to end all galas in the final days of his administration. With the goal of commemorating each of the 40 new productions premiered at the Staatsoper during…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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