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The 2017 Glimmerglass Festival production of The Gershwins' "Porgy and Bess." Photo: Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass Festival

Glimmerglass 2017 – The Afterglow

By Charles Geyer on 21 September 2017 Classical Music, Concert Reviews, Opera

Retrospective of the Glimmerglass Festival mainstage season of Summer 2017: Xerxes, by G.F. Handel (libretto by Minato and Stampiglia); The Siege of Calais by Gaetano Donizetti (libretto by Salvatore Cammarano); Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin, Dubose and Dorothy Heyward, and Ira Gershwin; and Oklahoma! by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. Who says you can’t go home again? The theme of this past summer’s Glimmerglass Festival 2017 was “home and homeland,” and it proved a fertile organizing notion, with love of home, defense of home, loss of and longing for home all woven richly into the fabric of the…

Scarpia (Gregory Dahl) menaces Tosca (Melody Moore-Wagner) © Yves Renaud

She Falls from a Tower Shaped Like a Dagger

By Robert Kilborn on 17 September 2017 Classical Music, Concert Reviews, Newswire, Opera

A splendid new co-production of Puccini’s Tosca by Opéra de Montréal and the Cincinatti Opera broods on the terrible power of art, eros, and the state. Compassion is the yin to power’s yang. Compassion cannot enact the relative freedom and justice of the “good” state without sword, cannon, or intercontinental ballistic missiles. The paradox of civilization is that the power required to achieve, maintain, and protect it requires physical coercion, inculcated virtue, and the fictions of law, money, state, religion, and human rights. Compassion is the yin to power’s yang. Compassion cannot enact the relative freedom and justice of the…

Figaro Getting Hitched on the Big Screen at Opera Philadelphia’s “Festival O 17”

By Charles Geyer on 16 September 2017 Classical Music, Newswire, Opera

Opera Philadelphia’s “Festival O 17” (September 14 to 25) – including a free reprise of the company’s recent production of The Marriage of Figaro, to be shown in HD on Freedom Mall Jumbo Screens, September 23, 2017. Opera Philadelphia is going out on the town this month. This year’s highly anticipated Festival O 17 is underway. Twelve days of opera, now through September 25, in at least six different venues around Philadelphia, make all the city a stage. The production roster includes three world premieres, plus other important recent American works and some fun and novel takes on classics. Here,…

Opéra de Montréal’s Tosca Emphasizes Realism and the Score

By Adrian Rodriguez on 13 September 2017 Interviews, Opera

The Opéra of Montréal will open its 2017-18 season with an all-time classic: Tosca by Giacomo Puccini, a drama in three acts revolving around a love triangle. A painter (Mario Cavaradossi) and a singing diva (Tosca) are in love, but Scarpia, the chief of Roma’s Police is looking for a political dissident who is hiding at Cavaradossi’s work place. Scarpia is so enraptured by Tosca’s beauty that he will do anything in his power to have sex with her… At a sneak peek of the production at the rehearsal studios of Opéra de Montréal we sat down with conductor Giuseppe…

Alain Lefèvre © Caroline Bergeron

Alain Lefèvre: Honorary Patron of the CMIM

By Newswire on 12 September 2017 Arts Industry, Classical, Classical Music, Newswire, Piano, Violin, Vocal

Montréal, Tuesday, September 12, 2017 – The CMIM (Concours musical international de Montréal) is extremely pleased to announce that pianist and composer Alain Lefèvre will act as honorary patron of its annual event. Attracting some of the world’s most promising young singers, pianists and violinists, the CMIM’s next edition will be held from May 27 to June 7 and is dedicated to Voice. A world-renowned virtuoso pianist, Alain Lefèvre has performed in over forty countries in prestigious venues and with the world’s leading conductors and symphony orchestras. He has won numerous prizes, amongst them a Juno, an Opus and ten…

Set designs by Mimi Lien

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream: Composer Moto Osada’s New Opera at the Japan Society

By Charles Geyer on 12 September 2017 Classical Music, Contemporary, Interviews, Newswire, Opera

It is such stuff as dreams are made on. This week, the Japan Society in New York City plays host to the North American premiere of eminent Japanese composer Moto Osada’s opera Four Nights of Dream. Ironically, given the title, the run is for only three nights – Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, September 13, 15 and 16, all at 7:30 p.m., but it bids fair to be a memorable Western prelude the opera’s premiere in Tokyo later this year. The inspiration for the opera is a literary work entitled Yume Jū-ya by classic Japanese novelist and fabulist Natsume Soseki, active…

Clay Hilley (Dimitrij), Nora Sourouzian (Marfa), Photo: Cory Weaver

Moscow on the Hudson – Antonín Dvorák’s Dimitrij at Bard SummerScape 2017

By Charles Geyer on 4 September 2017 Concert Reviews, Opera, Romantic

RETROSPECTIVE: of the Bard SummerScape 2017 production of Antonín Dvořák’s 1882 opera Dimitrij (July 28 and 30 and August 2, 4 and 6) at the Sosnoff Theater of Bard College’s Fisher Center for the Arts, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. The Tsar is dead! Long live … who? That is the question. Doubts about just who it is who’s marched his army through the gates of Moscow and assumed the imperial Russian throne throng thick in Antonín Dvořák’s grandest of grand operas, Dimitrij – a work that was given handsome and full-throated new life by the recent Bard College SummerScape production in Annandale-on-Hudson,…

Magda Olivero: Legendary Soprano

By Denis Robert on 1 September 2017 Art Song, La Scena Spotlight, Opera

Part I Although no longer at their apogee, in the 1960s the two great sopranos of the time, Maria Callas and Renata Tebaldi, were still burning up the stage, and I had the great good fortune to see them. Thanks to their recordings, I had heard them when they were at the height of their careers. These memorable records, beloved by fans, divided the latter into two rival camps. At the time, I counted among my friends Georges Nicholson (for Callas) and Michel Beaulac (for Tebaldi). Each stoutly defended his idol’s merits, Nicholson being proud of Callas’ strong sense of…

Alma Oppressa: Arias by Vivaldi and Handel

By Paul E. Robinson on 1 September 2017 Baroque and Early, CD and Book Reviews, Opera

Julie Boulianne, mezzo-soprano; Clavecin en Concert; Luc Beauséjour Analekta AN2 8780, 59 min. Canadian singer Julie Boulianne has quickly become an international star. She performs regularly at the Met, at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and throughout Europe. She has an extraordinarily wide repertoire from Bach to Adès. In her latest recording she shows us what she can do in Vivaldi and Handel. For this CD she is joined by long-time collaborators, harpsichordist Luc Beauséjour and his small period instrument group, Ensemble Clavecin en Concert. Much of the music is pretty obscure but it is performed with enthusiasm and…

Opera Creations in Canada

By Patricia Weber on 1 September 2017 150/375, Contemporary, La Scena Spotlight, Opera

This year, the Montreal landscape will be particularly animated by the creations of operas, thanks to the dedication of the ECM + and Chants Libres. The Opéra de Montréal’s programming will take part in this celebration with two Montreal creations, which will give the young artists of its Atelier Lyrique the chance to take part. In the rest of Canada, Edmonton will receive Lilies, historical events in Toronto will inspire the creation of a new work and Vancouver will give a new life to a classic. Bandits in the Valley Tapestry Opera, one of Canada’s leading contemporary opera companies, will…

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