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 {…}
Debussy’s “Pelléas et Mélisande” is one of opera’s greatest works and on Friday night, the Teatro Colón, in a production by Susanna Gómez (continuing the work of its original director, the late Gustavo Tambascio), reminded everyone why. The French work is often mentioned in the same breath as Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde,” undeniably because the composer was, at that time, {…}
I had never gone to the Berkshire Opera Festival. It had a strong reputation, built over a few seasons. And so, on my first visit to see its “Rigoletto,” I expected to enjoy it. Classics like “Rigoletto” — even when not every element is perfect, still, somehow are able to work. And what happened instead is that I was blown {…}
Looking like a doppelgänger of Sir Adrian Boult, Hercule Poirot or the Monopoly Man, André Charles Prosper Messager (1853-1929) was an extraordinary musician whose memory, at least in Anglophone countries, has sadly slipped into oblivion. It is hard to believe that this immensely accomplished pianist, organist, composer, director of both the Opéra de Paris and the Royal Opera House Covent Garden {…}