Patrick Mack looks back on “a great, nay, historic evening,” Renata Scotto‘s 1981 performance of Il trittico, now newly available on Met Opera on Demand.
In 2011, Sondra Radvanovsky‘s Tosca proved promising; fourteen years later, it was absolutely magnificent, a completely satisfying musical and dramatic embodiment of a challenging role by an artist at the peak of her powers.
Il trovatore may be famous for its melodramatic plot and unlikely mistaken identities, but surely even Verdi and Cammarano couldn’t have imagined the chaos of a performance featuring two Manricos and two Leonoras.
The Richard Tucker Foundation Gala has always been a big annual celebration of the voice with an emphasis on big-voiced singers in big repertoire (not much Wagner usually, though…). Like so many reliable operatic institutions it has struggled for survival after the pandemic.
Happy was I to attend the Celebrity Opera Series presentation Saturday night at BroadStage, mere blocks from my humble abode in Santa Monica as Anglela Gheorghiu was making an eagerly awaited return for the first time since her debut here in 2013.
Rare is the revival of Il trovatore that boasts five first-rate singers, and such an occasion should be treasured. And so, at the Met last Saturday, it was.
As for complete recordings of Il trovatore, which was discussed at some length last week, there are at least 200 of them, both studio and live.
For the opening night of Il Trovatore, Houston Grand Opera’s new production aimed high, bringing together a star-studded cast and a fresh, contemporary take on Verdi’s intense drama.
When asked to express some “thoughts” here about Verdi’s Il trovatore, my immediate thought was “hmm… not a lot to think about there.”
Les Contes d’Hoffmann is something of a puzzle in which some of the pieces are missing and others been altered to fit since Offenbach died before he could complete and revise the work.
Michael Anthonio crunches the numbers on San Francisco Opera’s recent seasons and goes straight to the top to General Director Matthew Shilvock for a look at where SF Opera has been and where it’s headed
Folks who have never attended a full-length, uncut Giacomo Meyerbeer grand opera have been known to pout and ponder: Why did the most popular opera composer of the mid-nineteenth century all but vanish from the stages of the world after a hundred years?
Quite simply, the singers are not around today who are steeped in the tradition of verismo, or for that matter the later part of the 19th century.
There was much to love in Andrew Ousley’s Tiergarten: a three-night cabaret revue from Death of Classical and part of Carnegie Hall’s Weimar Festival, performed in the vaulted gothic hall of the Church of St. Mary.
Rachel Willis-Sørensen might be the greatest American soprano right now who doesn’t sing much in America.
Maria Callas’s official debut in opera was as La Gioconda in 1947 at the arena in Verona.
It’s time to discuss Zinka Milanov.
As said at the beginning, I implied I’d rather see Don Carlo(s) and listen to Forza.
It is a measure of Verdi’s genius that throughout the four rambling acts, his musical invention in the service of creating characters never failed him.
Following the composition of Un ballo in maschera, Verdi had gone into a self-imposed retirement, at least musically; he had not composed a note in four years.
I’ve argued with myself for many years as to which was my favorite opera by Giuseppe Verdi, La forza del destino or Don Carlos. The latter finally won out especially after studying it in depth, but in the long run, it is the music of Forza that I love the most.
This Sunday marked a muted return of the Richard Tucker Foundation Gala, which had the dubious distinction of the fourth edition not to feature a prizewinner and perhaps the first not to provide complete orchestral and choral accompaniment for its performers.
In sum: not a perfect Simon Boccanegra—is there such a thing?—but a grand and often great one.
Power struggles, prejudice, feuds and revenge abound in San Francisco at the moment.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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