At “Trove Thursday” it’s May Night, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s 1880 comic opera, in a recent broadcast from Moscow led by pianist-conductor Mikhail Pletnev.
Trove Thursday offers a pair of live broadcasts of Médée featuring two compelling mid-20th century divas—Inge Borkh in German and Eileen Farrell in Italian.
Anita Rachvelishvili and Quinn Kelsey towered over an otherwise pedestrian if still exciting Il Trovatore.
Scheming Anne-Sofie von Otter offs her brother and sons before the opera even begins? You bet!
Ali Baba ou Les Quarantes Voleurs continues straight-tone September with Teresa Stich-Randall as its heroine while Alfredo Kraus scales the heights with another Nadir.
All the daring and imagination of La Divina’s live work, particularly in the early years, is revealed in Warner Classics’ Maria Callas: The Live Recordings.
Due to bandwidth limits “Trove Thursday” must post some more modest offerings in months with five Thursdays.
Can a surfeit of pleasure become—in the end—unsatisfying?
I was puzzled by my initial exposure to the Medea of Aribert Reimann, a work of 2010.
“Trove Thursday” presents Altre Stelle, a fascinating performance piece which includes superb renditions of excerpts from operas by Berlioz, Cherubini, Gluck and Rameau.
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.
This Sunday marks the 10th anniversary of the death of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson from breast cancer.
In how many operas does the heroine drink poison and then go lengthily mad?
On her 90th birthday “Trove Thursday” presents the late great Belgian mezzo Rita Gorr parenting Régine Crespin in Massenet’s Hérodiade.
Several prima donnas have ought to resurrect La Vestale, including Renata Scotto, whose priestess highlights this week’s “Trove Thursday.”
Aribert Reimann’s 1978 opera Lear, based of course on Shakespeare’s titanic tragedy King Lear, is a major achievement in modern operatic scoring.
In his first appearance on the stage of Paris’ Palais Garnier, Roberto Alagna, as the newly knighted Rodrigue, was confronted with a profound dilemma.
Karita Mattila is a gift to this planet.
Perhaps there are not that many people in the world who would look at a CD cover and think “Oh, goody, goody! A libretto by Eugène Scribe I’ve never come across before!”
For one week every two years since 1981 the eyes—and ears—of those interested in period performance turn to the Boston Early Music Festival, particularly to its opera centerpiece, but that organization doesn’t rest on its laurels in between festivals.
Marc-Antoine Charpentier came along at the wrong time for a composer of French opera.
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.
Cecilia Bartoli and Joyce DiDonato are not the only ladies who have recorded recitals this year featuring music from the 17th and 18th centuries.
By the time Rossini was 20, he had produced six operas, most of them brief, comic and slight. He admitted to admiring Mozart (not then well known south of the Alps), but the melodies of his early works show more of the influence of Paisiello.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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