A dark horse in every closet
Mozart and Donizetti could humanize characters in a farce—Mercadante in I due FIgaro cannot get a handle on them.
La mère coupable
6 pieces since 2010.
6
pieces
17
years
Guilt, edged
If Darius Milhaud took a risk in adapting La Mère Coupable as an opera, it wasn’t the quirky, atonal style he used for his score.
Home brew
An extraordinarily rich variety of opera happens locally, under the umbrella of New York Opera Fest.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one
Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, and a slew of their members of court are hanging out in the afterlife…
Al fresco
Poor Paisiello. Out of the nearly 100 operas written by this industrious composer just one was generally regarded as a masterpiece.
“Ghosts” of honor
John Corigliano‘s first and second symphonies won the Grawemeyer and the Pulitzer, respectively; the premiere of his Third Symphony wasn’t even reviewed by the Times. His score for The Red Violin won an Oscar™; his score for Edge of Darkness ended up on the cutting room floor. Is there an American composer at once more […]