It is easy to become overly identified with opera—as a cleverer friend of mine once noted: being a sports fan is an interest, but if you like opera, everyone thinks of it as a crippling obsession.
Imagine two tenors releasing French opera aria collections at the same time without duplicating a single track!
Karita Mattila is a gift to this planet.
“There it is! The Castel Sant’ Angelo!”
When Norman Lebrecht is declaring on an almost daily basis that classical music is dead, it’s perhaps heartening that four of today’s prominent tenors have recently released what might be called fluff/vanity albums.
I suspect most New York City opera-lovers had long since given up hope that the fascinating soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci would ever return to their city.
Whenever I encounter Eric Owens, he’s plotting to conquer the universe.
American mezzo Jamie Barton, who has steadily been winning fans in the US over the past few years for her rich and nuanced singing, took the international opera world by storm last weekend by winning both the Song Prize as well as the overall prize in the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition.
For better or worse, Decca’s new Norma recording
will ultimately be embraced—or dismissed—by those reacting directly to Cecilia Bartoli’s controversial portrayal.
Love grand opera but wary of a six o’clock curtain with five hours of music behind it? (And nothing is grander than Berlioz’s Les Troyens, eh?) Your dilemma has been solved. Show up at the Met at 7:30 or 8:00, whenever they have the first intermission.
After 23 years, the Queen of Carthage has finally made it to Manhattan.
I have been a devotee of Berlioz’s Les Troyens since I first discovered the Covent Garden recording conducted by Colin Davis.
Being an opera lover in Los Angeles is a lot like being a Red Sox fan. As hard as they try we never make it to the World Series, let alone the playoffs.
Our Own Ercole Farnese discovered and translated this interview in La Stampa with Jonas Kaufmann, in which the tenor discusses his “his idolatrous success with ladies and gay men, four fifths of the opera-goers.”
When handing out the goodies, the gods weren’t stingy with Shirley Verrett. Few opera singers were as prodigiously gifted as Verrett: the perfect amalgam of Kunst and Stimm housed in a frame of voluptuous allure. In addition to an instrument of stunning natural beauty and easy range, Verrett displayed superior musicianship, dramatic intelligence and searing…
Les Troyens is one of those things, or often two of those things, that should be a big event or it practically needn’t happen at all.* The keynote is grandiosity in the best way, from the subject to the musical demands (let’s include the implicit challenge of one singer performing both Cassandre and Didon—not because…
A loyal member of the cher public noticed this howler by Need You Ask in the online NYT earlier today: Unfortunately for La Cieca (and, well, yes, for anyone else with journalistic standards — so sue me!) the Times has already managed to do one of their “Ministry of Truth” numbers on the offending paragraph…
The fascinating and unconventional artist Lorraine Hunt Lieberson died yesterday at her home in Santa Fe. We in New York heard her only infrequently in opera, most recently in Serse and La clemenza di Tito at the NYCO and Les Troyens at the Met. She was scheduled to sing Orfeo in a new production of…
The upscale art book for opera lovers this holiday season is George Tsypin Opera Factory: Building in the Black Void (Princeton University Press). Tsypin is designer of choice to directors Julie Taymor, Peter Sellars and Francesca Zambello; his most familiar work to New Yorkers is perhaps his Met Zauberfloete in collaboration with Ms. Taymor. The…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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