While it may not be top-tier Rossini, Teatro Nuovo’s mounting of Il turco in Italia is still good summer fun.
Daniela Barcellona leads a live broadcast from the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro
A brilliant L’italiana in Algeri in Rome has Larry Wolff once again thinking about “singing Turks”
Eastern Long Island remains surprisingly verdant even into the early fall.
The outdoor recitals that the Metropolitan Opera presents in New York City Parks every summer are a wonderful way to showcase rising young stars and promising beginners from the Met’s Lindemann Program.
Oh, La traviata, how do I love thee? Let me count the recordings.
On June 20, a rather breezy, pleasant cool summer evening, the soprano Gabriella Reyes, tenor René Barbera and baritone Will Liverman took over the Summerstage space with a wide-ranging, ambitious recital program with Dimitri Dover tickling the ivories.
This is likely the best Giargiari Bel Canto competition year in my experience, evidenced in several important ways.
The great Spanish mezzo soprano Teresa Berganza died on May 13 at the age of 89, so Trove Thursday salutes one of its favorites with a pair of dazzling rare live Mozart performances.
Live opera returns to Lincoln Center when Teatro Nuovo presents Il Barbiere di Siviglia on July 27 and 28.
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.
Many now have scads more time for listening so Trove Thursday will offer several epic operas during May beginning with Rossini’s Guillaume Tell (this week aka Guglielmo Tell) in a concert performance featuring Giuseppe Taddei in the title role and Teresa Zylis-Gara and Franco Bonisolli as the war-crossed lovers.
L’Italiana in Algeri‘s appearance at the Salzburg Festival should be no surprise since Ceciila Bartoli has been the intendant of the Whitsun Festival extension at Salzburg since 2012.
“Who are you? Who do you want to be?” The search for one’s identity is explored in American composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer’s brand new opera If I Were You.
The four leading roles in La Straniera were all attractively cast by Teatro Nuovo with fresh, promising young voices that did not seem quite ready for the big time.
Can a work with indisputably great music fail to add up to a successful opera? I puzzled over that Sunday during Teatro Nuovo’s essential concert staging of Rossini’s La Gazza Ladra at SUNY Purchase.
We close 2018 with Le Comte Ory with an enviable nearly all-Italian cast of prime-time Rossini specialists: Mariella Devia, Cecila Bartoli, Ewa Podles, William Matteuzzi, Claudio Desderi and Pietro Spagnoli.
Next, I asked Marko Mimica which basses he prefers to listen to on recordings.
“Trove Thursday” turns its Rossini-150 series to one of the composer’s least known but tastiest comic gems La Pietra del Paragone with Julia Hamari, Justino Diaz, Alessandro Corbelli, Claudio Desderi and Paolo Barbacini conducted by Roberto Abbado.
Semiramide produced at Carnegie Hall by Matthew Epstein in 1983 with June Anderson, Marilyn Horne, Samuel Ramey and Douglas Ahlstedt with Henry Lewis conducting.
From up close, the miked opera singer can be a bit tough to take.
Adriana Lecouvreur with the 1970s dream cast of Montserrat Caballé, José Carreras, and Fiorenza Cossotto.
Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s production of L’Italiana in Algeri for the Met remains steadfastly ignorant of postcolonial theory.
Falstaff, Verdi’s totally unexpected, final, great comedic roar.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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