Now, through the auspices of the Metropolitan Opera, we have Sonya Yoncheva—and if anything, the diva-dom has been kicked up a notch!
Giacomo Puccini’s La fanciulla del West may have its detractors (Stravinsky referred to it as a “horse-opera’) but you will not find me among them.
For those pining for Puccini with the Met out of commission. Trove Thursday steps up with the composer’s brief first opera Le Villi with Krassimira Stoyanova, José Cura and Franz Grundheber, led by Simone Young.
Erato’s irresistible Rossini collection Amici e Rivali is hands down my favorite vocal CD of 2020, featuring the inspired bravura sparrings of Lawrence Brownlee and Michael Spyres.
A recent discussion here about Gianna Rolandi prompts Trove Thursday to present the American soprano in a rare trouser role in an even rarer opera, Cimarosa’s Gli Orazi e I Curiazi paired with Anna Caterina Antonacci.
Kennedy Center could not have predicted just how aptly Saturday evening’s rescheduled recital of 2020 Marian Anderson Award winner, baritone Will Liverman, would respond to the moment.
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.
Verdi’s Giovanna d’Arco in a rare NYC concert performance with Margaret Price, Carlo Bergonzi and Sherrill Milnes.
On Sunday afternoon, husband-and-wife duo Roberto Alagna and Aleksandra Kurzak presented a charming program of operatic favorites from the patio of the Château de la Chèvre d’Or in Èze, France.
Mr. Wilson’s production concept, according to his liner notes, has more to do with Paris at the time of the premiere and a “world of memory” than it does with the storytelling of civil war in medieval Spain.
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).
Two of the leading postwar Czech sopranos appear together in Janacek’s Kát’a Kabanová when Trove Thursday presents Gabriela Benacková‘s gleaming heroine in her US debut relentlessly persecuted by Nadjezhda Kniplová’s implacable mother-in-law.
Somewhere in all of this, I decided it was time to try Callas.
Today’s Trove Thursday was originally scheduled for February 27, which would have been Mirella Freni’s 85th birthday, but instead we remember today the beloved soprano who passed away this past weekend in Puccini.
A special program note for Saturday night’s performance of Matthew Aucoin’s new opera Eurydice pointed to a rare convergence of three MacArthur Grant fellows in its creation and staging.
On this day in 1912 Pietro Mascagni‘s Lodoletta had its United States premiere at the Metropolitan with Geraldine Farrar and Enrico Caruso in the leads.
While Russell Thomas admirably goes toe to toe with Otello (and Otello) in a thoughtful and self-aware way, the assumption feels like a work in progress if not an outright mismatch with his vocal gifts.
The musical director of the Opera Royal de Wallonie at Liege is currently experiencing the early phase of a promising international career in music.
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.
Riccardo Muti’s vision of Aida’s score largely emerged as one of subtlety, musicality, and restraint.
While Luciano Pavarotti may have brought opera to the people, once he realized how lucrative it could be, there was a string of promoters who helped him turn all that adoration into cold hard cash.
Verdi’s Giovanna d’Arco in a rare NYC concert performance with Margaret Price, Carlo Bergonzi and Sherrill Milnes.
The Canadian Opera Company’s new production of Otello is a collection of welcome returns.
Christian Thielemann is widely regarded as our time’s preeminent master of the Austro-German symphonic ensemble.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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