Calling from 2066, Brendan Latimer argues that the best way to save opera might be to just blow up the standard repertoire altogether.
I think Patanè did far more than just hold it together: he did full honor to Verdi.
Verdi’s Stiffelio goes Amish in Vienna, featuring a stellar Luciano Ganci in the title role.
This is one of those rare performances that makes you believe that everything Verdi was greater Way Back When.
A well-known Met Aïda with a starry cast from 1967 is TildyDiva’s Favorite Verdi Performance
Grand Tier Grab Bag hearkens back to the days when Sondra Radvanovsky — who is singing no Verdi at all next season — seemed like the Verdi soprano of reference.
SoCal goes Scandi in two recent concerts, with one featuring an appearance by Lise Davidsen.
Ahead of their opening in Don Carlo in Dallas tonight, Christopher Corwin chats with Nicole Car and Étienne Dupuis — and offers a special edition of Chris’s Cache!
Franz Welser-Möst leads a rigorous, if emotionally staid, performance of Verdi‘s Requiem at Carnegie Hall.
Mexican soprano Gilda Cruz-Romo died on 28 June at the age of 85 and Chris’s Cache remembers her with live recordings of a frequent role and a rather rare one: a last-minute Met Tosca plus perhaps her only stab at the Cherubini Medea.
According to the memoirs of Alma Mahler, her third husband, Franz Werfel used to wander around the cafés of Paris with one of his chums, singing arias from obscure Verdi operas at the top of their lungs until the management would ask them to move on.
As a beginning freshman in college at CSU Long Beach, I was cast in my first opera – the chorus for L’Elisir d’amore ( performed in English as “The Elixir of Love”).
I had been hopeful that 2024 would end, if not on a high note, then one that was at least in tune.
Anticipating the first new local Aïda in thirty-six years, Chris’s Cache revisits Verdi’s popular opera in four unusually interesting in-house recordings from the Met 1961-1976.
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.
Inspired by Harry Rose’s recent fine polemic about verismo performance practice, Chris’s Cache offers one of Opera Orchestra of New York’s most exciting evenings: Zandonai’s Francesda da Rimini from 1973 with Raina Kabaivanska, Placido Domingo, and Matteo Manuguerra.
When asked to express some “thoughts” here about Verdi’s Il trovatore, my immediate thought was “hmm… not a lot to think about there.”
Rigoletto is the perfect opera. The story is straightforward and powerful; none of the action occurs backstage or between scenes or twenty-seven years before curtain rise; and the ethical anvil lands not once but twice, on the title character singing, “La maledizione!” The curse!
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.
In the lead up to LA Opera’s mounting of Turandot on May 18th (hooray!) I thought I’d touch on some of my favorite recordings and new re-masters I’ve discovered. I have them all.
Yes, there were other Giocondas if not of quite the same distinction. Chronologically…
La forza del destino concluded its run at the Metropolitan Opera with a significant cast change.
Maria Callas’s official debut in opera was as La Gioconda in 1947 at the arena in Verona.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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