Teatro La Fenice certainly plays its part in making “La Traviata” the most oft-performed opera in the world. This season alone it will present 35 performances, with another 25 scheduled for next year. As in many houses, therefore, Verdi’s much loved opera forms part of the company’s staple repertoire. Obviously, an orchestra’s familiarity with a work may act as either {…}
Oklahoma City’s Painted Sky Opera opened its third season with a run of Verdi’s “Rigoletto” and if the matinee I saw is any indication, the company is undoubtedly a vital addition to the regional opera scene. A group of talented young singers did Verdi’s chestnut justice and brought an eager audience to its feet. This production takes place in an {…}
The news that the Metropolitan Opera would be starting to present operas on Sunday afternoons came as a massive surprise for a number of reasons. On the one hand, the Met has never done this and has retained a rather conservative approach to its scheduling throughout its history. This, of course, is the result of the company working with a {…}
San Francisco Opera’s double bill of “Cavalleria Rusticana” and “Pagliacci” is fully set in the same neighborhood of La Boca in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It opens with women shaking bedding from the windows, waiters straightening up the chairs from last night’s wine, lovers snatching their last kiss. The characters then emerged from it and sang the story; at the end, {…}
It is hard to imagine Russian music without Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Russian literature without poet Alexander Pushkin. Tchaikovsky’s opera “The Queen of Spades,” based on the eponymous novella by Pushkin, is one of the most important of the existing operas. Its beautiful and dark music leaves hardly any hope at the end, revealing a very fatalistic, and very Slavic, way {…}
Although very few people are now aware of the fact, Antonio Lotti, during his lifetime, was one of Venice’s most highly regarded opera composers. Today he has largely been forgotten, along with his operas and other compositions, and is now known only to the dedicated followers of the Venetian tradition. Born in 1667, Lotti established himself in both his home {…}
“I saw the Queen of England weep!” It is true, at least in the brilliant portrayal of Elizabeth I by soprano, Sondra Radvanovsky, in the San Francisco Opera’s production of “Roberto Devereaux.” In Donizetti’s third and most popular Tudor Queen opera (“Anna Bolena” and “Maria Stuarda” being the other two), Radvanovsky sings with moving beauty as she dramatized the role {…}
Many Music Festivals rely on remarkable locations to give performances their particular “festive” appeal. The awe-inspiring Arena di Verona, the ancient Aya Irini church in Istanbul, the umbrageous plane trees in Aix-en-Provence, the picnic-enticing gardens of Glyndebourne, the striking castle-fortress of Savonlinna, or the entire picture-postcard-perfect city of Salzburg immediately spring to mind. The medieval town of Girona in Catalonia {…}
The final opera of this year’s Innsbruck’s Festival for Early Music was “La Semele, o sia la richiesta fatale,” written in 1726 by the relatively unknown German composer, Johann Adolf Hasse, to a libretto by Francesco Ricciardi. Technically this is not an opera as such, but a serenata, although it could certainly fall within its ambit. Deriving from the Classical and {…}