Contemporary - my/maSCENA

Princess Turandot (soprano Christine Goerke) proclaims a man will never possess her. Photo: Kelly & Massa for Opera Philadelphia.

Opera Philadelphia’s Bloody King, Bloody Princess

By Charles Geyer on 30 September 2016 Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Opera, Romantic

OPERA REVIEWS: Puccini’s Turandot; Third World Bunfight’s Macbeth (after Verdi) at Opera Philadelphia Opera Philadelphia’s Fall 2016 season fully exemplifies the company’s hallmarks – a commitment to variety and innovation, plus an enduring grounding in the classics. Besides the world premiere of Breaking the Waves (reviewed here on October 29), the season boasts a provocative and brilliant new adaptation of Verdi’s Macbeth by controversial and virtuosic South African theater troupe Third World Bunfight, as well as a glorious, quintessentially grand-opera production of Puccini’s crowning masterwork, Turandot. Puccini’s Crown Princess With his typically magnificent melodies, piquant exoticism, big passions and (atypical)…

Bess (soprano Kiera Duffy) realizes she must “complete the task” in order to save Jan. Photo by Dominic M. Mercier for Opera Philadelphia.

With Breaking the Waves, Opera Philadelphia Breaks Toward the Future

By Charles Geyer on 29 September 2016 Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Interviews, Opera

OPERA REVIEW: Breaking the Waves at Opera Philadelphia Brotherly Love, Independence, the Phillie Phanatic – this city has always been a hotbed of innovative and big ideas. How apt, then, that Opera Philadelphia has taken on a big idea of its own, having committed to the future of indigenous American opera with a 2011 pledge to present, every season for ten years, a major new American operatic work. More than halfway through that initial pledge period, the company’s “American Repertoire Program” can claim impressive achievements, including Dark Sisters in 2012; A Coffin in Egypt in 2014; and Charlie Parker’s Yardbird…

Austin Opera Scores Big Time with Puts/Campbell “Manchurian Candidate”

By Paul E. Robinson on 28 September 2016 Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Opera

The Manchurian Candidate. Music by Kevin Puts. Libretto by Mark Campbell. David Adam Moore (Sergeant Raymond Shaw). John Lindsey (Captain Ben Marco). Donnie Ray Albert (Andrew Hanley). Brenda Harris (Eleanor Iselin). Daniel Sumegi (Senator Johnny Iselin). Mela Dailey (Jocelyn Jordan). David Small (Senator Thomas Jordan). Jamie Van Eyck (Rosie Chayney). Austin Opera Orchestra and Chorus/Richard Buckley. Stage Director: Alison Moritz. Projection Designer: Greg Emetaz. Lighting Designer: Kathryn Eader. Long Center, Austin, Texas. At the height of the Cold War (1947-1991), Richard Condon wrote a remarkable novel, The Manchurian Candidate. Both a political thriller and a frightening scenario for a major penetration of…

Lebrecht Weekly – Lang Lang: New York Rhapsody (Sony Classical)

By Norman Lebrecht on 23 September 2016 Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Piano

I am not the right person to be reviewing this album, but then I’m not sure the right person actually exists. This is a Sony crossover project that falls smack between the tracks. How does one rate it on a scale of one to five? Obviously five stars for production. This is a six-digit concept album involving dozens of round-table meetings, the top recording crew, best designer, photographer, makeup artist, go-fer. The cover shows Lang Lang sitting apparently exhausted on the steps of a nightclub. We’re not quite sure it is Lang Lang since there is no sight of the…

Bold Programming at the Inaugural Vancouver Opera Festival

By Newswire on 21 September 2016 Classical, Contemporary, Multimedia, Newswire, Opera, Romantic, Visual Arts

VO PRESENTS THREE NEW OPERA PRODUCTIONS AND BOLD PROGRAMMING AT THE INAUGURAL VANCOUVER OPERA FESTIVAL Otello, Dead Man Walking and The Marriage of Figaro feature superb singers, stunning designs Programming also includes a new commissioned video installation by award-winning artist Paul Wong, performances by vocal stylist Ute Lemper and Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq Many events and experiences for audiences of all ages Vancouver, BC ~ Three dazzling new opera productions are at the core of the inaugural Vancouver Opera Festival, April 28 to May 13, 2017. Full-scale productions of Giuseppe Verdi’s late-career masterpiece Otello, featuring powerful tenor Clifton Forbis in…

Inaugural concert for the Azrieli Music Project

By Newswire on 16 September 2016 Art Song, Contemporary, Newswire, Orchestral

Premiere of a large-scale work for orchestra, choir and tenor, in addition to compositions by Mahler, Bernstein and Wlad Marhulets Kent Nagano, 4 soloists and the OSM Chorus Montréal, September 16, 2016 – Maestro Kent Nagano is conducting the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal on Wednesday, October 19 at 8 p.m. atMaison symphonique de Montréal in a concert presenting a reflection on tradition, identity and on the universal character of music. Four wonderful soloists – tenor Frédéric Antoun, pianist Serhiy Salov, clarinetist André Moisan and soprano Sharon Azrieli Perez – and the OSM Chorus will join forces with the Orchestra on…

Lebrecht Weekly – Prokofiev: Violin concertos (BIS)

By Norman Lebrecht on 16 September 2016 Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Violin

Two albums of Prokofiev concertos arrive in the same delivery, one piano, the other violin. Both are from pedigree artists, pedigree labels. Which one do I review? Here’s where you run into the problem of having too much music in your head. I cannot listen to the 4th and 5th Prokofiev concertos, or the 7th and 8th sonatas, without hearing Sviatoslav Richter as a parallel soundtrack, allowing others little room for manoeuvre. Likewise the 3rd concerto which I heard Martha Argerich play with Riccardo Muti one Sunday afternoon more than 40 years ago with such effervescence that all else pales…

Cerise Lim Jacobs, Photo: James Daniel

White Snake Walking – Don’t Tread on Her!

By Charles Geyer on 14 September 2016 Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Opera

OPERA REVIEW: The Ouroboros Trilogy (Naga; Madame White Snake; Gilgamesh) INTERVIEW: Cerise Lim Jacobs Caution: There are snakes on this immortal plane! The universe according to librettist/mythmaker Cerise Lim Jacobs is a treacherous, beautiful reptilian playground where serpent-demons shapeshift, meddle with humanity, instigate epic battles and hanker after love. It’s a coil of a cosmos, and we get to tour its every whiplash curve in Jacobs’ magnificent and extravagant new operatic magnum opus, The Ouroboros Trilogy, which debuted in a day-long performance marathon at Boston’s Emerson/Cutler Majestic Theater on Saturday, September 10, 2016 (co-produced by the dauntless and cutting-edge Beth…

Lebrecht Weekly – Michael Nyman: The Man who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (Naxos)

By Norman Lebrecht on 9 September 2016 Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Opera

In the spring of 1985 I saw three opera world premieres in London in as many weeks. There was Busoni’s Doctor Faust in the restored original ending, Birtwistle’s breakthough opera The Mask of Orpheus and last, and smallest, Michael Nyman’s chamber opera on a troubling case history by the neurologist Oliver Sacks. I felt confident at the time that Nyman’s opera would be revived soon and often, but that’s not how it goes. Chamber operas are notoriously hard to get staged, falling as they do between too many institutional stools. All the more reason, then, to welcome a new recording…

The NAC Orchestra and The Glenn Gould Foundation celebrate The Genius of Philip Glass

By Newswire on 6 September 2016 Contemporary, Newswire

Innovative. Influential. Legendary. Philip Glass will be presented with the 11th Glenn Gould Prize on November 26 in Ottawa OTTAWA, Sept. 6, 2016 /CNW/ – On Saturday, November 26, iconic American composer Philip Glass will be awarded The Eleventh Glenn Gould Prize at an exclusive concert in his honour presented by The Glenn Gould Foundation and the National Arts Centre. Conductor Dennis Russell Davies, a life-long proponent of the music of Philip Glass and collaborator on numerous commissions, will lead the NAC Orchestra. The Genius of Philip Glass will include performances by the NAC Orchestra of his symphonic works, including the…

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