It is perhaps a misperception to suggest that Die Schweigsame Frau is stronger in the uncut version.
To conclude its triumphant season, last week the Met Orchestra performed its annual Carnegie Hall concerts under music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin and once again performed superbly.
Trove Thursday’s belated contribution to last weekend’s Platinum Jubilee is a broadcast from Aldeburgh of Benjamin Britten’s Gloriana with Christine Brewer and Tom Randle as Elizabeth and Essex, an opera which premiered 69 years ago yesterday.
We have two reasons for celebrating Jessye Norman and the first is a release on the BBC / London Philharmonic Orchestra label of a Richard Strauss concert.
Last night’s cast of Die Meistersinger at the Met, dominated by the irascible, unbeatable duo of Michael Volle and Johannes Martin Kränzle as Sachs and Beckmesser, did much to enliven Otto Schenk’s creaky, nearly 30-year-old production.
Remember that time you went to the opera and the whole evening was like magic? Saturday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion probably ranks among my greatest nights in the theater and I’m finding the superlatives in my thesaurus inadequate to the task.
Like many composers of his generation, Ernest Chausson was enthralled by Wagner and he too turned to legend for his only opera, one that would consume him for final decade of his brief life.
The crown jewel of this year’s Munich Festival is undoubtedly Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, which opened the Festival on June 29 and will close the Festival with an “Opera for All” screening on July 31.
Though the formal recorded aria recital is the ultimate calling card of an artist, the invitation to the spectator to receive, listen, and critically behold of the offerings (on fire or burnt), they are but a souvenir and there are a few drawbacks inherent with the presentation.
Trove Thursday celebrates Christa Ludwig with live excerpts from 1955 through 1982.
Imagine my surprise then when I discovered a new recording of Tristan und Isolde released by Navona Records, a small label based in New Hampshire that primarily focuses on recitals of chamber music, solo works, and smaller ensemble pieces.
I still remember, and some of it quite vividly, what it was like to experience Achim Freyer‘s intense and groundbreaking Ring production all these years later.
Wagner must intrude at some point because he invented film music.
Trove Thursday finally welcomes Wagner’s Lohengrin arriving in a concert performance conducted by Georg Solti with Siegfried Jerusalem, Julia Varady, Eva Randová, Hermann Becht, Hans Sotin and Wolfgang Schöne.
On this day in 1972, Stephen Sondheim‘s Company closed on Broadway, finishing a run of 705 performances.
Christine Goerke‘s distracted, tentative Isolde turned out to be the least potent feature of what was an otherwise exciting and effective second act of Tristan.
Lise Davidsen, who makes her role debut tonight as Leonore in Fidelio, is still very early in what appears to be a most promising career.
When I think of Nina Stemme’s voice, I think of gianduja, Armagnac soaked dark cherries, and chestnuts.
Rossini’s Semiramide is a highly original and imaginative work of theater that impresses for its creative and beautifully scored orchestration, incisive recitatives and ensembles, and theatrically intriguing characters.
When I first heard of this broadcast my thought was to save it to celebrate Jessye Norman‘s 75th birthday in 2020.
Following classic recordings documenting the work of Karl Böhm and Herbert von Karajan. Orfeo’s 150 Years Wiener Staatsoper box moves on to new releases that are seeing their first incarnation on an officially available disc.
David Alden’s acclaimed production of Leos Janácek’s Jenufa was mounted for its final performance of the season during the evening that I experienced my first opera at Santa Fe.
“Trove Thursday” turns to a quintet of baritone/bass voices: Matthias Goerne, Simon Keenlyside, Georg Nigl, Thomas Quasthoff and René Pape performing works by Pfitzner, Sibelius, Adams, Martin and Schubert.
The aphorisms projected before each act of Das Wunder der Heliane suggested the work concerns the transformative power of love—but does it really?
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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