Opus Arte, the label which records the performances of The Royal Opera House, has released the second recording of Sir David McVicar’s production of “Faust” (the first DVD was released in 2010 from the premiere of this production in 2004). The production, from 2018, features a luxury cast of singers in what is probably the best production of “Faust” in {…}
Four electro-acoustic compositions, united by the vocals and unique musical approach of Uruguayan-born American composer Sergio Cervetti, make up his ninth album “Mortal Dreams” with Navona Records. Born 80 years ago with a career spanning more than half a century and over 100 compositions made for the concert stage, dance, theater, and film, the composer is best known and most {…}
(Photo: Benoit Auguste) Marco Angioloni is a young Italian tenor currently living in Paris. After graduating as an oboist from the Conservatorio Di Musica ‘Luigi Cherubini’ Firenze in Florence, Angioloni switched to singing and joined the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles in France. Since then he has performed on stages across Europe, tending to specialise in the baroque repertoire. {…}
The joined forces by librettist Aiden K. Feltkamp and composer Rosśa Crean brings the incredible story of Gertrud Günther (also known as Marie Madeleine) on a stage for the first time in the monodrama, called the “The Priestess of Morphine: The Lost Writings of Marie-Madeleine.” Premiered on June 28, 2019, in the International Museum of Surgical Science, opera was soon {…}
An aesthetic outlier in the grand tradition of Italian opera, “La Fanciulla del West” occupies a singular position both historically and within the growing catalog of Pentatone’s multichannel audio recordings. The Dutch label proposes two contrasting takes on Puccini’s tale of the Wild West; a remastered version of the DG classic (with Carol Neblett’s magisterial Minnie) and its most recent {…}
Off the Beaten Track is an album review series that takes readers on a cross-disciplinary journey through recently released recordings, spotlighting the cool, the unusual, and the beautiful work created by artists who push boundaries and take the road less traveled. What was Zachary James thinking? Amid a raging pandemic, the star of stage and screen embarked on a wild, {…}
A cynical depiction of low-class misery and pessimistic determinism in the vein of Zola, “Il Tabarro” may read as a departure from the sympathetic backdrop of Imperial Japan, the mining camps of the western United States, or Bohemian Paris in the 1830s. Yet its musical ingredients leave plenty of room for the elatedness of Puccinian melodies and despite the unusually {…}
(Photo: Denis Rouvre) Naïve’s recent release, “Argippo,” is Volume 64 of its ongoing project to record the entire Vivaldi catalog held by the Italian National Library in Turin. However, unlike the other volumes, this work does not actually form part of the Turin collection. Initially written in 1730 to a libretto by Domenico Lalli for Vienna’s Theater am Kartner Tor {…}
The serenata was essentially a court entertainment written to celebrate special occasions, such as weddings and christenings of the high and mighty, or visits by important dignitaries, performed in front of an invited audience. With the decline of the European aristocracy, it lost its role, so that by the early 19th century it had become an obsolete form to the {…}