This review is for the performance on Feb. 22, 2019. The month of February might be the Met’s best in 2018-19. Just a few weeks ago, the company revived Donizetti’s “La Fille du Régiment” and it proved to be one of its great successes of the season. Propped up by star performances and a brilliant production, it has kept audiences {…}
Romantic Nationalism was not so much an aggressive promotion of nationalism, but rather a rediscovery and assertion of a nation’s culture, more akin to a patriotic celebration, although it did not always deliberately eschew a more aggressive stance. It roots were interwoven within the wider Romantic movement, and its manifestations blossomed in many different countries at various times, but most {…}
Before experiencing Robert Ashley’s “Improvement (Don Leaves Linda)” live for the first time, one can imagine that Ashley wants listeners to be changed in some way by what he wrote in 1990. Whether one’s evolution involves the understanding of new perspectives of cultural awareness or the witnessing of new opera ideals in a live setting, Ashley intentionally leaves no stone {…}
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s “The Little Prince” was a twinkle of light in dark times. The author, a celebrated pilot and raconteur, wrote it while exiled from France in New York City during the Nazi occupation of his homeland. This helps explain the mood and tone of his book. Though delicate and charmingly illustrated, it is a melancholic meditation on loneliness {…}
On February 14, 2019, the Park Avenue Armory’s recital series saw the second performance of Austrian tenor Ilker Arcayurek, who made his U.S. recital debut with the performance just three days earlier. The recital featured a program comprised entirely of Franz Schubert songs and lieder, celebrating the composer’s vast body of poetry put to music. Spring & Storm His first {…}
Originally “Il Sogno di Scipione” was written as a celebratory work for the Archbishop Schrattenbach of Salzburg in 1771, who was unfortunate enough to die before its first performance. Mozart, therefore, took the opportunity to add a new extended final aria and rededicate the work to his successor, Hieronymus Colloredo, which was then performed at his investiture the following year. {…}
On February 12, 2019, the Metropolitan Opera opened this season’s run of Giuseppe Verdi’s “Rigoletto.” Michael Mayer’s production transports this tragedy to 1960s Las Vegas, a setting which merges together the glamor of high society with its seedy underbelly, just as many of the characters exhibit traits of both nobility as well as depravity. Despite the connections one can rightfully {…}
“Moby Dick” wasn’t a hit in Melville’s day. Instead, the author remained a customs officer until his death, his literary genius living mostly underground and his epic masterpiece under wraps until the 20thcentury, when it was “discovered.” Composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer’s opera “Moby Dick” has conversely sustained more success from the outset and this continued as their {…}
We all know that opera is a very complex art. The plot, music, libretto, directing, singing, acting, stage design — these are just basics. But there are even more layers, which make opera so impressive and breathtaking. With the help of your imagination, you can easily picture this in your mind: richly decorated stage, great singers, large orchestra under Maestro’s {…}