Opera star Sondra Radvanovsky took the stage at the Teatro Real de Madrid to present a concert centering on the three final scenes of Donizetti’s Tudor trilogy. There’s a commercial recording on CD of a previous Chicago performance, as well as previous performances in Barcelona and Napoli. And as she did on those occasions, on this night Radvanovsky continued to {…}
(Photo: Keith Saunders) Sarah Giles’s production of “La traviata,” currently playing at Sydney Opera House, comes across as a very intelligent piece of theater. Already seen at Opera Queensland, State Opera of South Australia and West Australian Opera, this production opened Opera Australia’s 2024 summer season on January 2. Much of its effectiveness was achieved through devices that increased our {…}
“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 {…}
(Photo: Catherine Hancock) Brooklyn Art Song Society (BASS) presented “Circles IV: Les Six” on Friday, January 5th 2024, at First Unitarian Church of Brooklyn. The compositions chosen for the evening were delightful examples of what made Les Six exciting, however short-lived the group proved to be. Les Six was a peculiar group consisting of Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, {…}
(Credit: Javier del Real) The Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen gained international attention after winning the Operalia, Queen Sonja and Hans Gabor Belvedere competitions in 2015. Since then, she has sung at major opera houses around the world such as The Met, The Royal Opera, La Scala, Wien staatsoper and Bayreuth Festival. The young soprano has sung the title role of {…}
(Credit: Ken Howard / Metropolitan Opera) Act four of Bizet’s “Carmen.” The orchestra quiets down as hints of the most familiar theme of the opera, the first one audience hears, starts. It builds and builds and builds until it explodes with joy. With ferocity. With audacity. But on the Met stage, in Carrie Cracknell’s new production we get… a clown {…}
(Photo: Teatro Carlo Felice) The great French chanson singer Édith Piaf possessed one of the most naturally expressive and recognizable voices of the 20th century. It was a raw, untrained voice, shot through with emotional honesty, born from her own tough and painful experiences of an early life spent in poverty and exposure to the seedy underbelly of society. In {…}
(Photo: Steven Pisano) Death of Classical‘s 2023-24 season concluded The Crypt Sessions with David Lang‘s very timely “The Little Match Girl Passion” featuring the Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble at NYC’s Church of the Intercession on December 12, 2023. “The Little Match Girl Passion,” based on The Little Match Girl by the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen, originally debuted in 2007 at Zankel {…}
(Photo Brno: Marek Olbryzmek) Britten’s “Peter Grimes” is a director’s dream. Who is Grimes? It is certain he is a loner; an outsider and a social misfit open to fits of temper. Yet there is also a sensitive side to his nature that comes out intermittently throughout the opera, notably in his aria “Now the Great Bear and the Pleiades” {…}