• Alagna sings Nemorino - L'elisir d'amore at the Royal Opera House, London,

    Updated: 2013-01-31 10:53:13
    One of the main reasons for interest in the Royal Opera’s latest revival of Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore was that tenor Roberto Alagna had chosen to return to the role of Nemorino. Though he had sung Nemorino earlier in his career, he had never sung the role at Covent Garden. The other cast members were of a high order too, with Alexandra Kurzak as Adina, Ambrogio Maestri as Dulcamara and Fabio Capitanucci as Belcore. So plenty of reasons for seeing the revival, which I caught on opening night 13 November 2012.

  • Wozzeck at Los Angeles

    Updated: 2013-01-31 10:53:13
    Wozzeck Wozzeck, Wozzeck: The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Laureate Conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen, now Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor to the London’ Philharmonia Orchestra, is touring the United States with a program that includes three staged performances of Alban Berg’s opera, Wozzeck.

  • More Tosca in San Francisco

    Updated: 2013-01-31 10:53:13
    Who is Patricia Racette? Sexually ripe Nedda, maternal Cio-Cio-San, neurotic Sister Angelica? But now the jealous Tosca? And without question Mme. Racette has again proven herself the Puccini heroine par excellence of this moment.

  • Kathleen Ferrier: A Film by Diane Perelsztejn

    Updated: 2013-01-31 10:53:13
    Contraltos rarely achieve the acclaim and renown of sopranos. Assigned few leading roles in opera, they are condemned to playing the villain or the grandmother, or to stealing the castrati’s trousers in en travesti roles.

  • Subject: Aimez-vous Meyerbeer?

    Updated: 2013-01-31 10:53:13
    Well, so many don’t nowadays, it appears to me, judging by the critical reception of Robert le Diable at the ROH. Rum-ti-tum? We recall Macbeth, Rigoletto, Trov and even Trav being characterised thus, popular fare but risible or blush- making, yet those works now command the highest respect.

  • Wozzeck at UC Berkeley

    Updated: 2013-01-31 10:53:13
    At this famous bastion of intellect the biggest drama was the parking. Though the football stadium may have been stuffed, Zellerbach Hall was not.

  • Meyerbeer Robert le Diable, Royal Opera House

    Updated: 2013-01-31 10:53:13
    Why was Giacomo Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable an overwhelming success in its time ? The Royal Opera House production suggests why: it's a cracking good show! Extreme singing, testing the limits of vocal endurance, and extreme drama. Robert le Diable is Faust, after all, not history, and here its spirit is captured by audacious but well-informed staging. Listen with an open mind and heart and imagine how audiences in Meyerbeer's time might have imagined the madness and magic that is Robert le diable.

  • Nash Ensemble, Wigmore Hall - Warlock, Britten

    Updated: 2013-01-31 10:53:13
    Surveying British chamber and instrumental music written between the 1890s and WWII, the Nash Ensemble’s Wigmore Hall residency series, Dreamers of Dreams, has illuminated the creativity and originality of British musical life during this period, revealing the shared and the idiosyncratic preoccupations of composers; the intertwined biographies of musicians; the influence of key individual performers on repertoire, style and idiom; the dialogue between old and new; and the prevailing shadows of war and irreversible change.

  • A New Festival Hall for Erl

    Updated: 2013-01-31 10:53:13
    A new festival hall has been inaugurated in the small town of Erl in the Tyrolean mountains.

  • Ralph Vaughan Williams: The Pilgrim’s Progress

    Updated: 2013-01-31 10:53:13
    After a slow, long period of gestation, commencing with a short dramatization at Reigate Priory in 1906 and spanning more than 40 years, the first performance of Vaughan Williams’ The Pilgrim’s Progress took place at Covent Garden on 26 April 1951, as part of the Festival of Britain.

  • Rigoletto, Manitoba Opera

    Updated: 2013-01-31 10:53:13
    Manitoba Opera launched its celebratory, all-Verdi 40th anniversary season with the Italian master’ Rigoletto that still rattles the soul with its tale of revenge, murder, deceit and heart-wrenching pathos.

  • A New Hall for Tiroler Festspiele Erl

    Updated: 2013-01-31 10:53:13
    http://www.operatoday.com/content/2013/01/a_new_festival_.php

  • Baroque treasures at the Barbican, London

    Updated: 2013-01-31 10:53:13
    The Barbican is going have a bit of a baroque moment next month. Joyce DiDonato will be bringing her Drama Queens programme, then there will be complete performances of Handel's Radamisto and Lully's Phaeton.

  • Finzi Dies Natalis, Britten, Vaughan Williams, Wigmore Hall

    Updated: 2013-01-31 10:53:13
    The Nash Ensemble's series at the Wigmore Hall, "Dreamer of Dreams" continued its survey of British music in the first half of the 20th century with an intriguing programme. Many underlying themes, and thoughtful juxtapositions.

  • Mahler: Symphony No. 8

    Updated: 2013-01-31 10:53:13
    Among the recent recordings of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, Valery Gergiev’s release on the LSO Live label is an excellent addition to the discography of this work.

  • 1612 Italian Vespers

    Updated: 2013-01-31 10:53:13
    Following their 2011 Decca recording of Striggio’s Mass in 40 Parts (1566), I Fagiolini continue their quest to unearth lost treasures of the High Renaissance and early Baroque, with this collection of world-premiere recordings, ‘reconstructions’ and ‘reconstitutions’ of music by Giovanni and Andrea Gabrieli, Monteverdi, Palestrina, and their less well-known compatriots Viadana, Barbarino and Soriano.

  • Rome Opera Opens New Season

    Updated: 2013-01-31 10:53:13
    Yesterday, Conductor Riccardo Muti opened the Rome Opera, where he is “honorary conductor for life,” with a gala presentation of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra.

  • The Met’s La Clemenza di Tito blends inspired singing with dazzling wind obbligatos

    Updated: 2013-01-31 10:53:13
    The live HD simulcast of Mozart’s final operatic effort, set in ancient Rome, reached friends, Romans and countrymen the world over

  • Roméo et Juliette by Arizona Opera

    Updated: 2013-01-31 10:53:13
    French composer Charles Gounod wrote his five-act opera  Roméo et Juliette  to a libretto that Jules Barbier and Michel Carré based on William Shakespeare’s  Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet.

  • Simon Boccanegra at Lyric Opera, Chicago

    Updated: 2013-01-31 10:53:13
    In its current production of Simon Boccanegra Lyric Opera of Chicago draws on vocal strengths as well as musical and stage direction that do honor to Giuseppe Verdi’s masterpiece of political and emotional intrigue in fourteenth-century Genoa.

  • Haydn and Strauss, LPO

    Updated: 2013-01-31 10:53:13
    Haydn’s settings of the Mass ought to be heard incessantly, in churches and in the concert hall.

  • Oliver Knussen: Where the Wild Things Are and Higglety Pigglety Pop!

    Updated: 2013-01-31 10:53:13
    Marking Oliver Knussen’s sixtieth birthday came a BBC Total Immersion weekend at the Barbican: a double-bill of Knussen’s two operas written in collaboration with Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are and Higgledy Piggledy Pop! on Saturday, followed by a day of two chamber concerts, a film, and an orchestral concert conducted by the composer himself on Sunday.

  • Tosca (Postscript) in San Francisco

    Updated: 2013-01-31 10:53:13
    Extraordinary diva, Angela Gheorghiu pulled out of opening night after act one. It was news when she made it to the end of the second performance. Here is what happened at the third performance.

  • Songs by Zemlinsky

    Updated: 2013-01-31 10:53:13
    While not unknown, the songs of Alexander von Zemlinsky (1871-1942) deserve to be heard more frequently.

  • Sir Harrison Birtwistle The Minotaur ROH 2013

    Updated: 2013-01-31 10:53:13
    If, first time around, in 2008, The Minotaur offered the obvious excitement of the premiere, it was now noteworthy how quickly it had settled into repertory status. Not that it has yet been performed elsewhere than Covent Garden, though it should be as a matter of urgency, but that its 2013 outing proceeded with the apparent ease one might expect of, say, The Magic Flute or Carmen. That is surely testament both to the excellence of the performances we heard as well as to the stature of Birtwistle’s opera itself.

  • Seattle Opera 2013-2014 Season

    Updated: 2013-01-28 19:32:22

  • La fille du régiment at San Diego Opera

    Updated: 2013-01-27 17:19:29

  • Peer Gynt at SFS

    Updated: 2013-01-19 16:22:09
    : The Opera Tattler Subscribe to this blog's feed Notes On About SF Opera's Future Seasons How Standing Room Works Official Blogs of West Coast Opera Companies Los Angeles Opera Portland Opera San Diego Opera San Francisco Opera Seattle Opera Vancouver Opera Renée Fleming at SFS Main January 19, 2013 Peer Gynt at SFS Notes This week Michael Tilson Thomas conducts San Francisco Symphony in a multimedia production actor Ben Huber as Peer Gynt and dancer Janice Lancaster Larsen as Ingrid pictured left , photograph by Kristen Loken of Peer Gynt The score included music by Edvard Grieg , Alfred Schnittke , and Robin Holloway . Holloway's Ocean Voyage was used in Part II Scene 3, and had a Wagnerian feel to it . It did seem disproportionally long compared to the other . pieces The playing was

  • Met in HD: Maria Stuarda

    Updated: 2013-01-17 14:54:00
    Larry Stickler 2013-01-17 false Center false Sparks fly between Queen Elizabeth I of England and Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, in the Metropolitan Opera's first-ever production of Maria Stuarda by Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848), which opened on New Year's

  • Renée Fleming at SFS

    Updated: 2013-01-11 23:54:26

  • LA Opera's 2013-2014 Season

    Updated: 2013-01-09 04:20:01

  • Placido Domingo: CBS Profile

    Updated: 2013-01-08 14:54:00
    Jim Lange 2013-01-08 false Singer Placido Domingo. (CBS News) Center false CBS Sunday Morning did a profile on Placido Domingo . While everyone is on their best behavior to be charming and funny when the cameras are on, there is a natural warmth, humanity and humility to t

  • Greeks, Trojans, Carthginians!

    Updated: 2013-01-03 14:54:00
    Larry Stickler 2013-01-03 false Trojan Horse from the Met's production of Les Troyens Center false Greeks, Trojans, Carthaginians - what a cast! Beware of that giant wooden horse!   The vast epic masterwork Les Troyens (The Trojans) by French composer

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