An exciting cast digs their claws into a heady production of La Calisto at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées.
Ursula Sturgeon looks at the furry opera company HowlAria and discovers that maybe one man’s Callas recording collection is another man’s fursuit.
Dmitry Matvienko led a performance of Mussorgsky and Shostakovich at La Monnaie with meticulous rectitude.
The opera is life affirming, but also recognizes that life comes to an end.
A new recording by the London Symphony Orchestra is the latest landmark in a spring full of Janácek‘s Jenufa
No Leos Janácek operas have turned up this month among the works we’d like to see at the Met, so Chris’s Cache corrects that omission with live recordings of two of the composer’s most compelling operas (performed in English).
Though I’ve sometimes complained that the Paris Opera, while supposedly short of cash, changes its productions nearly as often as the rest of us change our socks, André Engel’s Cunning Little Vixen first appeared there 17 years ago. At the time it was billed as ‘new’, though it actually dates back further still, to 2000 at the Lyon Opera. I saw it when it arrived at the Bastille and wrote it up at the time.
“The distance between dreams and reality is called action.” – Brian Tracy
Leos Janácek’s rise to international prominence as a Titan of music was dovetailed by a cluster of profoundly original operas that were written during his extraordinary autumnal years.
American soprano Gianna Rolandi died Sunday morning, according to a number of her friends and colleagues. She was 68.
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.
Sunny, lakeside Cooperstown presents a peppy, exuberant, winning production of West Side Story, the musical.
Weekends at Aura Bar on 53rd and Ninth are typically big money makers for the morons who run the place. Jonjon and Yoni.
Bard College presented a semi-staged concert of Halka on Saturday evening as part of its impressively wide-ranging two-week “Chopin and his World” festival.
Leos Janacek composed Adventures of Vixen Sharp-Ears, with its singing forest creatures of many species, in 1922-23.
Joyce, Javier and now Julia—this week these three remarkable Js brought New York City memorable “Cinderella stories.”
I had every reason to think I’d love the New York Phil’s production of The Cunning Little Vixen as much as I did their staging of Le Grand Macabre with the same creative team.
Once again, La Cieca can do no better than to quote the ineffable BAB, who says, “The beauty of the Saturday afternoon Chats this summer has been that everyone picks what they want and then we compare notes with what’s happening elsewhere. Ordinarily I make no recommendations, but I have decided to do things differently…
Look, this is a very special piece of music for me. You were twenty once, right? You were self-righteous. You had your musical heroes, and your mind was being remolded every fifteen minutes or so by a rapid succession of new experiences that challenged your notions of what music could do.
When invited to participate in a discourse on artistic standards (hello, internet!), it’s easy — pleasurable, even — for an aesthete to bray about “the fall.” Where are the true heldentenors? Your kingdom for a Callas! (Or a Stratas, or a Rysanek!) And might the public, at long last, deserve a stable of directors who…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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