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Festival of Renaissance Music – Conspirare’s Contemporary Twist

By Paul E. Robinson on 31 January 2011 Concert Reviews, Opera

by Paul E. RobinsonCraig Hella Johnson never ceases to amaze us. Just when you think his exceptional musical imagination has surely outdone itself, he comes up with something even more remarkable. His latest achievement was a festival given at St. Martin’s Lutheran Church in Austin and called Renaissance & Response: Polyphony Then and Now. Sound like an article in an academic journal? Perhaps, but that didn’t stop his many followers from selling out four concerts in one weekend and to judge by the concert I attended, enjoying every moment of it.The basic concept of the festival was to combine music…

This Week in Montreal / Cette semaine à Montréal – Jan. 31 – Feb. 6

By La Scena Musicale Team on 27 January 2011 Opera, This Week in Montreal, Violin

Werther @ The Montreal Opera: two shows left on Jan. 31 and Feb. 3It’s your last chance to catch the beloved Massenet adaptation of Goethe’s Sturm und Drang masterpiece. A success since its 1892 premiere, Werther is one of the staples of the operatic repertoire. The Montreal Opera’s production is a rare treat to sample the rare baritone scoring for the lead role, which Massenet wrote himself for Mattia Battistini in 1902. It transfers the action from late 18th-century Germany to 1920s America, in a move which the Gazette’s Arthur Kapatainis suggests alludes to a Gatsby-Daisy relationship between the troubled…

Lepage’s Nightingale Free on the Web

By La Scena Musicale Team on 16 July 2010 Multimedia, Opera

By Frank CadenheadNo serious opera fan should miss the astounding Robert Lepage production of Stravinsky’s “Rossignol et autres fables,” which is available for a limited time for free streaming on Arte Live Web. It is the same production that received rave reviews in October of last year at the COC. Seen as the triumph ofthe Aix-en-Provence Festival and hailed in the European press as a highlight of the operatic year, the American press and public seem unconcerned and unaware of this even though the same director is to stage the new Wagner Ring Cycle at the Metropolitan Opera.Recorded from the July 7 performance at the Grand Théâtre de Provence, it has the…

Wagner at the Welsh National Opera

By La Scena Musicale Team on 7 July 2010 Concert Reviews, Opera, Romantic

By Frank Cadenhead Wagner as compelling dramatist? Who knew? The wordy, inflated and repetitive tales we are so accustomed to were nowhere to be seen in the new and revelatory production by Richard Jones of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürenburg with Cardiff’s Welsh National Opera. This Meistersinger boasted an enjoyable cast that would be envied in Vienna, New York, Berlin, London or Paris, led by the grand Welsh baritone Bryn Terfel as Hans Sachs. Terfel only seems to grow as an artist. After his definitive Don Giovanni at the Verbier Festival last July, his Hans Sachs could be a model…

Two Different Productions of Elektra Enthuse Italian Provincial Opera Houses

By La Scena Musicale Team on 8 March 2010 Concert Reviews, Opera, Orchestral

by Giuseppe PennisiGenerally, Strauss-Hofmannsthal’s “tragedy for music” Elektra is normally performed in comparatively small opera houses in Germany and in a few Central European countries. Most administrators and musical directors are scared by the thought of assembling a 115-piece orchestra, five Wagnerian singers, a large number of soloists in smaller roles and keeping the audience enthralled in their seats for nearly two hours of extreme tension and emotion.Well, this season two different productions of Elektra can be seen in Italian Provincial theatres. They are quite successful and surprisingly attract also a new and younger audience, and they are likely to be revived next season.Italy…

Donizetti’s Don Pasquale Delicious in Dallas’ New Winspear Opera House

By Paul E. Robinson on 5 March 2010 Concert Reviews, Opera

by Paul E. Robinson The Dallas Opera has a long and illustrious history. It was founded in 1957 and its first presentations featured the legendary Maria Callas in a Zeffirelli production of La Traviata, as well as in Medea, and Lucia di Lammermoor. Other big stars followed, including Montserrat Caballé, Placido Domingo, Joan Sutherland and Jon Vickers.Those were Dallas Opera’s Golden Years; unfortunately, the money just wasn’t there to sustain the company at this level, especially when performances had to be given in the enormous and inhospitable Music Hall at Fair Park. Today, over 50 years after its inception, with…

Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu – The Singing World’s Golden Couple?

By Norman Lebrecht on 16 February 2000 Lebrecht Weekly, Opera

The Singing World’s Golden Couple# ##by Norman Lebrecht / February 16, 2000 THE Alagnas are splitting up, one hears. Word of their separation has been spreading like greenfly on the musical grapevine. My date to see the celebrated lovebirds gets changed at the last minute to separate interviews, two months apart. Angela Gheorghiu sits alone before Christmas on a sofa in Chelsea, Roberto Alagna confronts me in February across a Mayfair coffee table. A less prudent ornithologist might be tempted to give credence to the rumours of a rift. Totally false, of course. For the record, Angela Gheorghiu, 34, and…

Why artists have a duty not to ostracise Austria

By Norman Lebrecht on 10 February 2000 Lebrecht Weekly, Opera, Orchestral

Why artists have a duty not to ostracise Austria by Norman Lebrecht / February 10, 2000 TO boycott or not to boycott? That is the burning question. Whether to ostracise Jörg Haider’s Austria until it returns a government we can approve of is one of those conflicts of conscience and self-interest that bring out the best and worst in cultural leadership. Gérard Mortier has led the exodus, resigning this week a year early as artistic director of the Salzburg Festival and precipitating instant withdrawals from a leading sponsor and conductor. More painful is the loss of Betty Freeman, who helped…

Domingo goes solo

By Norman Lebrecht on 2 February 2000 Art Song, Lebrecht Weekly, Opera

This post is originally from the source

Domingo goes solo There could be a new lease of life for the aging tenor, says Norman Lebrecht ON Sunday afternoon, Placido Domingo did something different. In front of a packed Carnegie Hall, with Daniel Barenboim at the piano, Domingo sang a solo recital for only the third time in his life. The first was last spring in Berlin, the second last week in Chicago. Is this a trend, or just making amends? When Domingo started singing 40 years ago in Mexico City there were two-and-a-half career options for a good-looking tenor. He could sing opera; he could do recital…

Can he see off the gremlins?

By Norman Lebrecht on 26 January 2000 Lebrecht Weekly, Opera

This post is originally from the source

Can he see off the gremlins? Disaster has dogged the new Royal Opera House. But closure is not an option, says boss Michael Kaiser. Norman Lebrecht reports LET’S face it: nothing works. The London Eye is glazed over, the Jubilee Line to the Dome keeps stalling and the Royal Opera House can hardly raise a curtain without having to make an apology. So far, the great British public have displayed high forbearance and the spirit of the Blitz. Many are aware that any new theatre crawls with ghosts and gremlins. It took a dozen years to get all systems working…

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