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.
In the month and a half leading to Bernard Haitink’s passing on October 21, my AirPods constantly channeled a musical festival of sorts centered on the Dutch giant’s expansive discography.
Lawrence Brownlee and Michael Spyres are two singers at the top of their game, as this concert showed, virtually peerless in music as punishing as it is pretty.
The crown jewel of this year’s Munich Festival is undoubtedly Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, which opened the Festival on June 29 and will close the Festival with an “Opera for All” screening on July 31.
Pauline Tinsley, who died May 11, made few commercial recordings; Trove Thursday offers the thrilling English soprano in excerpts over nearly two decades from nine works ranging from Handel to Richard Strauss.
Ombra Compagna, out today on Pentatone, spotlights Lisette Oropesa in 10 of Mozart’s most challenging concert arias accompanied by Il Pomo d’Oro conducted by Antonello Manacorda.
Dame Janet Baker turns 87 tomorrow and Trove Thursday celebrates with Handel’s rare Admeto conducted by the great Sir Anthony Lewis in which Baker’s bold Alceste vies with Sheila Armstrong’s sparkling Antigona for her deluded husband Admeto’s affections.
On the first viewing of this Idomeneo, with a cast clad mostly in military khaki green set against a green sky, the eye starts to tire from the dullness of the surroundings.
Trove Thursday goes mini-epic with Gustave Charpentier’s naturalistic slice-of-life of fin-de-siêcle Paris in a rare 1999 Renée Fleming performance of Louise co-starring Jerry Hadley, Samuel Ramey and Felicity Palmer.
Trove Thursday marks Mozart’s 264th birthday on Sunday with the 14-year-old’s remarkable opera seria Mitridate, Re di Ponto .
Rosa Feola immediately established with her first group that she’s a serious artist who brought to the concert format both a warmly appealing coppery soprano as well as detailed and savvy dramatic instincts.
Sunday’s Richard Tucker Gala at Carnegie Hall was unusually satisfying despite a less than usually superstarry line-up.
Why did I mostly want to close my eyes and just listen?
Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt in a 1967 Vienna broadcast appropriately featuring three American stars: John Alexander, Marilyn Zschau, and George London.
Legrenzi married the quirky libretto to a score of transcendental beauty.
“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.
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.
A double-barreled “Trove Thursday” birthday salute to Renée Fleming who turns 60 today.
Here’s a quick sprint through some recent (and a few maybe not-so-very-recent) Handel CDs that have been stacking up.
Niccolò Jommelli, forgotten now, was quite well known in Italy and southern Germany in his day.
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.
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.”
The Stars of Lyric Opera weren’t under the stars last night, prevented by a persistent cloud bank, but they nonetheless provided a stirring evening of music in Chicago’s Millennium Park.
As the first of the 2018 opera productions last Saturday, the Merola Opera Program chose Mozart’s rarely-performed early serenata, Il re pastore.
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.