(Credit: Marty Sohl / Metropolitan Opera) The Met has a long, celebrated history with the works of Verdi, Puccini, and Mozart. But not so much with Baroque composers. In the Met’s 140-year history, the company has only presented four operas by Handel (four and a half, if you count the pastiche “The Enchanted Island”). But that’s all slowly changing. The {…}
This week, baroque dominates the forthcoming releases. One of the new albums showcases the latest solo effort by one of today’s leading countertenors, while the other showcases a recent production from an Italian festival. Cavalli: Ombra mai fù Countertenor Philippe Jaroussky releases a new album made up of vocal and instrumental highlights from more than a dozen of Francesco Cavalli’s {…}
Brescia shares its opera season with a number of other cities in Italy’s Lombardia region, courtesy of the touring company, Opera Lombardia, and if the quality of its recent production of Handel’s “Rinaldo” is representative, then it certainly does not suffer from the arrangement. Boasting a quality young cast, including the highly respected French contralto, Delphine Galou, and two singers {…}
OperaWire was lucky enough to catch up with the wonderfully talented soprano Carmela Remigio, during the Festival della Valle d’Itria in Martina Franca, where she sang Armida in Handel’s “Rinaldo.” Known as “Madame Mozart” in Italy, owing to her close association with Mozart’s operas, and especially “Don Giovanni,” her repertoire is, in fact, far wider. In 2019, she is scheduled {…}
In 2012, a version of Handel’s “Rinaldo,” written for Naples in 1718, was discovered in a castle in England. It is a reconstructed version, by a lesser-known baroque composer, Leonardo Leo, who had also included parts by Vivaldi and numerous other composers. This pastiche is the version that is being performed at the Festival della Valle d’Itria, 300 years after {…}
Concert performances of operas can be a rather mixed bag. The works themselves were concocted with the vision of being complete art forms and taking them out of this context can be difficult. Many operas can get away with it simply by the symphonic qualities of the music (see Wagner or Strauss). But this can take an even more complex {…}
Next Sunday, March 25, New York audiences will get to experience a once-in-a-lifetime event as Harry Bicket and The English Concert takes the stage of Carnegie Hall with a superstar cast. While the likes Luca Pisaroni, Jane Archibald, and Iestyn Davies are likely to have everyone’s attention before the showcase, it is another artist that could also steal some of {…}
As Professor Higgins insisted, diction is everything. If one mentions the word “Rinaldo” in Madrid without clearly articulating the letter “i” as an Italianate “ee,” locals invariably start talking about the football superstar from the Stadio Bernabeu rather than an obscure baroque opera in the National Auditorium. Obviously Handel’s “Rinaldo” is a different pitch altogether, although ambiguity is still inherent. {…}