(Credit: Miguel Lorenzo/Mikel Ponce) Renowned opera star Plácido Domingo returned Valencia’s Palau de les Arts to great success with audiences jumping to their feet at the close of the night and raining down confetti on him. It hasn’t been an easy few months for the famed artist, but despite the controversy surrounding him, he looked as calm as ever onstage, {…}
This point was always going to be reached! The Naïve label’s ambitious and highly commendable mission to record the entire Vivaldi catalogue held by the Italian National Library in Turin at some point was going to come to an end, or, more accurately, a series of endings. With these two recordings “Arie e cantate per contralto,” and “Musica sacra per {…}
In line with its commitment to promote the sidelined repertoire of the 19th century, Opera Rara has released the world premiere recording of “Le Willis,” the one-act opera that Puccini submitted to the Concorso Sonzogno and later turned into the revised version of “Le Villi.” Not only does it testify to the musical panorama of the pre-Verismo decades, it also {…}
(Credits: W. Hoesl) “A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.” J.R.R. Tolkien We all dream. About a better world, a better life, pure happiness. But a man who has suffered the loss cannot be carefree anymore, even in the illusional life. Forced to live in a world where his sweetest dreams always turn into his worst nightmares, {…}
This review is for the performance on Nov. 15 and 21, 2019. A common complaint of the current age is that, despite our cell phones and social media profiles, humanity is lonelier and less connected than ever before. Newspapers warn of a “loneliness epidemic,” think pieces term it a “social cancer,” and streams of articles comment on topics such as {…}
(Credit: Catherine Ashmore) David McVicar’s new production of Britten’s late masterpiece “Death in Venice” is a brooding and elusive meditation on the tribulations of aging creativity and its relationship to death and desire. Peter Pears confided that “Ben is writing an evil opera, and it is killing him,” which no doubt prompts cured autobiographical readings of the work. But here {…}
(Photo Credit: Kevin Yatarola) On November 26, 2019, Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall was host to the latest iteration of its Great Performers series. This installment saw Czech mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená joined by a number of distinguished artists, including Simon Rattle, violinists Giovanni Guzzo and Rahel Maria Rilling, violist Amihai Grosz, cellist David Adorjan, flutist Kaspar Zehnder and clarinetist Andrew {…}
(Credit: Kate Glicksberg) The season’s final performance of the Verdi Requiem at the recently opened (and rather amazing) Hudson Yards Shed was something unexpectedly moving, with a very high emotional level. To be clear, this was not just some other Verdi Requiem. Let’s start with the venue itself. On this first visit, the Shed’s “McCourt” theater space appears grand, with {…}
Early music enthusiasts in Seattle showed up in full force for a single concert performance of a Baroque pastiche of the Orpheus story featuring world-class early music specialists. How could they resist the intriguing concept and such a stellar line up? Philippe Jaroussky is a major international star (a “rockstar countertenor” as the Seattle Symphony marketing department awkwardly posits) {…}
