In 2023, Carlo Rizzi and the British label of Opera Rara resurrected Mercadante’s unjustly neglected “Il Proscritto” – the story of the exile Giorgio Argyll’s return to Scotland and the ensuing, tragic love triangle at the heart of Salvadore Cammarano’s rather unlikely libretto. In 2024, conductor Rizzi turns his attention to another exile: the former tribune Settimio who is the {…}
To coincide with the centenary of the death of the composer Charles Villiers Stanford, the Somm label has released a new disc entitled “Cushendall,” comprising his three Irish song cycles, “A Fire of Turf,” “A Sheaf of Songs from Leinster” and “Cushendall,” along with two arias from his opera, “Shamus O’Brien” and the “Blarney Ballads,” performed by mezzo-soprano Sharon Carty, {…}
The CD release of “Parsifal” under Philippe Jordan is not exactly news. The production dates from the 2021 season of the Vienna State Opera when the gritty, and no less controversial, staging of Kirill Serebrennikov received widespread attention. It was a secular “Parsifal,” highly politicized, and more akin to the oppressive climate of the Soviet Gulag than the Romantic exclusivity {…}
“Havel havalim, hakol hevel” from Kohelet 1:2 is commonly translated as “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,” or equally pessimistic, “All is futile.” Yet “hevel” can also mean “vapor” or “mist,” and by extension “breath.” It dons an existential facet which blends with the divine or, in other words, the life force which God instills in Creation. To Nicholas Weininger {…}
This is the second major opera based on the writings of British neurologist Oliver Sacks, whose case study “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” was adapted by Michael Nyman in 1986. “Awakenings,” by American composer Tobias Picker, is inspired by Sacks’ 1973 account of treating victims of encephalitis lethargica. Nicknamed the “sleeping sickness,” this coma-like condition is {…}
“Essence” is Marina Rebeka’s fifth solo recital on her very own label, “Prima Classic.” Although it was recorded all the way back in 2021, the album was released only last November; its program therefore does not reflect the soprano’s current engagements nor does it acknowledge her accomplishments in the French repertory. Instead, it presents like a best-of compilation, with arias {…}
American Randall Scotting has made a name for himself both as an authority on Italian Baroque music and as one of its most exquisitely timbered interpreters. The countertenor has in the past year alone released two albums, “The Crown” and “Lovesick,” a 17th century anthology about loss and heartbreak. With “Infinite Refrain: Music of Love’s Refuge” he joins forces with {…}
This 2018 “Buddha Passion” by Chinese-American composer Tan Dun, released by Decca, doesn’t feature much of the Buddha. He only appears as at the very beginning and at the end. Then again, Siddhartha Gautama doesn’t have the same centrality in Buddhism that Jesus does in Christianity. As the Buddha himself tells his disciples in Tan’s work, he is neither a {…}
“Oh my!” is how one would headline, exasperatingly, the sordid, crude, and entirely inappropriate production of “Tosca” at Vienna’s Theater an der Wien. Severed limbs, some sort of nuclear winter, and an orgy of on-stage violence and sex – the premises to Martin Kušej’s vision of the Puccini melodrama could not be more grotesque and, in essence, detrimental to the {…}