Patrick Mack on the iconic Ethan Mordden‘s career and his first book on opera in 30 years – and it appears that time has mostly stopped in the Mordden manse.
“In over nine years you’ve never posted an opera by Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari,” no one has ever said.
As soon as James Clutton, the new Opera Holland Park director, stepped on stage to welcome the audience, we all knew that we were not at the typical English summer opera festival.
The American Opera Society introduced many important singers to New York City audiences, but few were as controversial as the Greek soprano Elena Souliotis; Trove Thursday offers her local debut (at age 23) in Anna Bolena with Marilyn Horne, Janet Baker, Plácido Domingo and Carlo Cava.
On the 21st of this month Romanian soprano Virginia Zeani will celebrate her 95th birthday and Trove Thursday salutes her versatility with two markedly different 20th century works: Menotti’s The Consul and Mascagni’s Il Piccolo Marat, one of many collaborations with her husband Nicola Rossi-Lemeni.
“Are we Team Guelf or Team Ghibelline?”
I clearly remember the day I first heard the voice of Cesare Siepi.
As far as prewar Italian verismo goes, L’amore dei tre re is a supernova.
Is this not Puccini’s greatest opera, his most human, least manipulative?
Just 85 years ago, four of Italy’s greatest opera stars gathered at Teatro all Scala for an historic event: the first-ever recording of Arrigo Boito’s sole complete opera, Mefistofele.
Teatro Grattacielo is New York’s homegrown organization to rescue Verismo operas from oblivion, one per annum, allowing for the occasional double bill.
Italo Montemezzi’s La Nave, premiered in 1918 and not performed anywhere since 1938, concerns itself with nautical power, male and female archetypes, love and hate conjoined, sex and death, the eastern and western halves of the Roman Empire — and the visionary future of Old Venice.
One week after my visit to Amore Opera, it was time to turn my attention to Bleecker Street Opera — another heir presumptive to the throne of the defunct Amato Opera.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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