Rarely has a single performance so cornered the discographic record of an opera as Claudio Abbado’s “Simon Boccanegra” from 1977. And my use of the possessive is, in this case, far from aleatory: Abbado lays claim to the score with an authority scarcely less than Verdi’s own—or would Hugo Shirley otherwise have spoken in superlatives so unsparingly when Gramophone revisited {…}
Historiography operates through superlatives. All too easily, it compresses organic development into the quasi-religious advent of the monstre sacré. This antiquarianism of sorts keeps a particularly tight grip on the development of Italian opera: There’s Monteverdi at one end, Puccini at the other—no ante, no post. But what about Ottorino Respighi, born some twenty years after the composer of {…}
Is it mere coincidence that Nadia Boulanger’s “La ville morte” and Korngold’s “Die tote Stadt” fixate so obsessively on the past? In both works, the “dead city” is less a place than a psychological condition. Yet whereas Korngold’s necrophilia is filtered through Freudian “psychologie pathologique,” Boulanger’s figures inhabit a Symbolist world of ancestral trauma and fatality. “La ville morte” reads {…}
Taken literally, a “Sonata for Broken Fingers” is—if anything—something of a paradox. On second thought, one might even find it cynical rather than merely facetious; yet on a political—or more broadly moral—level, the phrase suddenly acquires a dystopian quality: music, or art, under oppression. That is the starting point of Joe Cutler’s eponymous music theater piece, released on CD and {…}
If ever as crepuscular an author as Edgar Allan Poe were seasonally appropriate, November—or certainly around Halloween—would be the time. Shrouded in mystery, his life (and death) echoes the tragedy of “Ligeia” (1838), “The Black Cat” (1843), and “Annabel Lee” (1849). That is just to name a random few which, a literary legacy, have stood the test of time. Fittingly, {…}
Madame de Pompadour meets the brush of Joshua Reynolds: thus, or in a similar vein, one might describe the pastel-toned cover of Megan Kahts’ “Dopo notte.” In rococo drapery, the South African mezzo is bathed in a pervasive, yet sensuous, chiaroscuro. Famously, one should not judge a book by its cover; yet here, what you see is exactly what you {…}
This is an album of intimacy, an album that is very internal. It comes from the inside and is best listened to before dawn disturbs the unfolding of the intimate inner space with its noises, crowds, and obligations. The music of the encounter between the listener’s universe and the night that surrounds them. If there is one adjective that {…}
All “Normas” are a spectacle, but some are more spectacular than others—or so the Orwellian adage might go. Marina Rebeka, for instance, set the bar for dramatic intensity in her fiery CD release from last year. By contrast, Melody Moore’s portrayal on EuroArts—though dignified—leans toward restraint. That is not to slight Moore or—indeed—any of her colleagues. As Norma, she commands {…}
An obsession more than just a pet project, the decade-long history of “Nerone” is but an imperfect indicator of the gargantuan scale Arrigo Boito envisioned for his imperial tragedy. The opera is an unwieldy amalgamation of music that–like the scapigliatura movement itself–occupies a liminal space: neither conformist nor truly progressive, but somehow perpetually discontent. “Nerone” very much fits the {…}