Trove Thursday celebrates Christa Ludwig with live excerpts from 1955 through 1982.
Trove Thursday offers Offenbach’s delightful La Grande-duchesse de Gérolstein featuring Jennie Tourel, Laurel Hurley and Martial Singher, led by Arnold Gamson.
Off-and-on since last fall my PPP (Personal Pandemic Project) has been assembling a chronology of the American Opera Society. For 19 years beginning in 1951 it presented a remarkable series of concert performances of works unperformed by either the Met or New York City Opera.
Ninety-five years ago, Evelyn Lear was born on January 8 in Brooklyn, and Trove Thursday remembers the soprano with one of her earliest successes: Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten co-starring her husband Thomas Stewart, Helmut Krebs and Franz Crass.
While seasonally-awkward streams of Messiah abound, Trove Thursday turns instead to Berlioz’s exquisite L’Enfance du Christ from francophone forces including Stéphanie d’ Oustrac, Bernard Richter, Edwin Crossley-Mercer and Nicolas Testé (for once, sans sa femme).
Fueled by a fierce intelligence, deep earnestness, exceptional eloquence, and social media savvy, Joyce DiDonato is a presence and a power, as much when speaking and thinking as when singing. Who better to imagine a program that would suit this (we hope) unique moment?
Trove Thursday began on September 10, 2015, so today we celebrate the podcast’s fifth birthday with a diva-starry Aïda double-bill: Galina Vishnevskaya vies for her soldier-hero with Irina Arkhipova, then Jessye Norman wins the guy (but loses her life) in spite of Mignon Dunn.
As Phaedra’s tragic, all-consuming passion for her stepson Hippolytus has fascinated artists for centuries, Trove Thursday offers two of its lesser-known musical settings: Pizzetti’s opera Fedra with Régine Crespin and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson performing the cantata Phaedra, Britten’s final vocal work.
Robert Wilson is many things: a visionary (certainly); an iconoclast, artist, director, and designer of sets, lighting, costumes, movement (and furniture). Yet his work is never boring (well, at least not intentionally).
With most of us dug in for the duration, there’s no better time to tuck into a CD box set of neglected treasures. Not that I needed an excuse, mind you.
Trove Thursday couldn’t wait until Passover to offer Mendelssohn’s Elijah featuring two of my favorite singers, Gabriela Benacková and José van Dam, joined by Florence Quivar, Francisco Araiza and Thomas Moser.
Michael Spyres as Faust, despite a few flickers of indisposition, was nearly ideal.
Elina Garanca’s glorious Marguerite transformed La Damnation de Faust into the Met’s first essential must-see of the year.
A second Trove Thursday marking the recent passing of Jessye Norman focuses on the soprano’s catholic repertoire with three 20th century works: Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex; Berg’s Altenberg Lieder; and Franck’s Les Béatitudes.
They say you never forget your first.
The Paris Opera assembled an all-French cast to stage arguably the most well-known example of opéra-ballet, Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Les Indes Galantes.
“Trove Thursday” presents Purcell’s remarkably concise Dido and Aeneas in a pair of fascinatingly different interpretations.
Elina Garanca was radiantly present at Carnegie Hall Friday night performing a ravishingly somber Rückert-Lieder with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the MET Orchestra.
Once again we got a very frustrating performance of Orlando; this time a beautiful and completely coherent production marred by some sub-optimal singing.
“Trove Thursday” leaps to the end of the cycle with a slightly abridged Götterdämmerung featuring Amy Shuard as Brünnhilde.
The full title of the opera pretty much describes the plot: Il mondo alla roversa osia Le donne che comandano.
Considering the size and the logistics for staging Les Troyens, every new production of Berlioz’s epic masterpiece is a special event.
Certain critics need to get the fuck over themselves.
“Berlioz Takes a Trip” proclaimed the free psychedelic buttons available at Carnegie Hall Monday referring to Symphonie Fantastique,the evening’s surefire crowd-pleaser.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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