Tancredi, given on February 10th, was a credit to Opera Philadelphia, who offered a well-considered and compelling production.
For her third solo recording, Olga Peretyatko summons the two men who launched her career less than a decade ago
James Conlon, Music Director for the LA Opera, often does the pre-game lecture in the huge open space on the second floor lobby of the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion and it’s almost always a standing room only crowd.
The last day of December a parcel arrived in the mail containing an absolute delight: “Semiramide—La Signora Regale.” One of best vocal recordings of 2014, this sumptuous 2-CD set on Deutsche Harmonia Mundi features the marvelous Italian mezzo-soprano Anna Bonitatibus and includes 90 minutes of rarely-heard music written for the legendary Babylonian queen.
Fifteen years after his first parterre box interview, that criterion of countertenors David Daniels speaks of Oscar Wilde, Marilyn Horne, marriage and political art.
A production as delectable as the current one (through Sunday) at the Juilliard Opera will make you wonder why Il Turco is not as well known as L’Italiana, Il Barbiere, La Cenerentola, even the odd and occasional Il Viaggio a Rheims.
On February 29, 1812 (thanks to Pope Gregory’s calendrical reforms), Gioachino Rossini celebrated his fourth birthday.
Everything about Aleksandra Kurzak’s new disc
is a variation on the term “fioritura.”
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.
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s only opera for Rome was written to an existing libretto by the great Pietro Metastasio, L’Olimpiade, which had already been set by Vivaldi the year previously.
Beethoven expressed it best when he reportedly threw Rossini shade: “Any other other style than opera buffa would do violence to your nature.”
Unlike Mozart, the young Gioacchino Rossini seldom let his ambitions strain relations with employers.
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.
It’s Holy Week (as I write) and I just received this new CD from our Doyenne. Good timing. For the concert stage (and the opera house), I think of Pergolesi as essentially a one-hit wonder (each). I won’t pretend to know his opera buffa, La Serva Padrona, let alone hide the fact that I drove right…
Joyce Di Donato‘s latest release is a CD entirely devoted to music Rossini composed for his first wife, Isabella Colbran, one of the most celebrated divas of the early 19th century.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
×
Sign up for Parterre’s free newsletter.
Exclusive opera reviews, commentary, and top reads
delivered to your email weekly…ish.