Opera
The Promised Land
Composer Yoav Gal’s entrancing chamber opera Mosheh is familiar to anyone who follows the city’s contemporary opera scene since it has been presented in any number of in-progress productions over the past five years. The opera received a semi-staged concert performance at Merkin Hall in 2006, has had excerpts performed by several new New York...
Touching All Bases
By Joel Lobenthal Gerald Finley’s Golaud in the Metropolitan Opera just-completed run of Pelléas et Mélisande wound up a year of outstanding Manhattan appearances by the Canadian baritone. Finley knows his place in the musical and theatrical framework—he knows when in a performance to recede, when to assert.
Terfel Hearts Piano and Text
By Joel Lobenthal “You audiences love the misfits, the malcontents,” Bryn Terfel told us at his Carnegie Hall main stage recital last month. “Iago, Scarpia,” he rolled the names of these villains off his tongue with a kind of lasciviously lip-curling sneer, as he announced his last encore of the evening: “Son lo spirito che...
Women on the Loose
By Joel Lobenthal The whip was cracking and the pace was crackling as William Christie conducted Mozart’s overture to Così fan tutte last week at the Metropolitan Opera. Then in the opera’s first scene – in which cynically wise older man Don Alfonso (William Shimell) dares young braves Ferrando (Pavol Breslik) and Guglielmo (Nathan Gunn)...
From Voluminous to Verismo
Christine Brewer wows at NYCO gala; Opera Orchestra of New York celebrates its 40th By Joel Lobenthal Yes, to get the full operatic experience you need the synthesis of all its allied components. But recent performances made clear that production values don’t necessarily have to be there for the dramatic potential of operatic literature to...
French as a Second Language
By Joel Lobenthal There were moments in Les Contes d’Hoffman at the Metropolitan Opera when I was waiting for the Hoffman, Italian tenor Giuseppe Filianoti, to launch instead into “Nessun dorma.” Filianoti was one of the less believably French interpreters in an international cast peopling Offenbach’s imagined recounting of the fabulist’s romantic obsessions. But overall...
An Uneasy Crown
There is beautiful singing and playing by what would seem to be a dream cast in the Metropolitan Opera’s new Boris Gudonov. But missing is the last degree of profundity that can make Mussorgsky’s opera an overpowering experience. by Joel Lobenthal I saw the first two performances last week of the Metropolitan Opera’s new Boris...
The First Semester
Our critic makes some recommendations: from a ‘Ring’ to a clarinet recital By Jay Nordlinger The music season is a little like the school year: It goes from September to June. And just as there is summer school, there are summer festivals. Let’s talk about the first “semester” of the 2010-11 season. This is a...
Summer Folly
Bard SummerScape presents ‘The Chocolate Soldier,’ an operetta based on George Bernard Shaw’s ‘Arms and the Man’ By Jonathan Leaf Here’s something to celebrate: In early August, Bard College is putting up a production of Oscar Straus’ lovely early-20th-century operetta The Chocolate Soldier. This is the kind of work that ought to be done all...
Portrait of a Lady
By Jonathan Leaf Though Jean-Phillipe Rameau didn’t start writing operas until he was 50, the rest of us shouldn’t wait so long to begin listening to them. Those curious to know why Rameau is considered the most important French opera composer prior to Gluck can get a chance to find out May 13, when Underworld...
Youngins Doing Young Love at Manhattan School of Music
By Jonathan Leaf In opera, there’s A.G. and B.G. That’s After Gluck and Before Gluck. The big opera houses with the huge gold curtains and massive columns out front focus nearly exclusively on the operas written after Gluck’s “reform” period of the second half of the 18th century, ignoring most of what went before. Largely...
Brainy Fiddler Botches Tchaik
Plus, a French operetta and a Carnegie Hall gala By Jay Nordlinger Christian Tetzlaff, the German violinist, is a thoughtful guy, even a cerebral one. He is a leading exponent of Bartok. He is not especially known for Romantic showpieces, but, of course, he plays them, because all musicians want to be complete. (Or rather,...
Sexy Charm
BAM’s inaugural Opera Festival begins with a spirit of fun By Eli Jacobson Founded in 1979, Les Arts Florissants has become famous for rediscovering the French baroque repertoire, particularly the operas of Lully and Marc-Antoine Charpentier. In its frequent visits to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, however, it has explored Monteverdi and Handel operas as...
Now is Not Enough
Novelty is well and good, but we deserve the best experience By Joel Lobenthal I’m looking forward to the New York City Opera’s revival of Emmanuel Chabrier’s L’étoile, which opened Mar. 18 and features choreography by Sean Curran. Chabrier’s operas of the late 19th century feature some of the most delightful dance music ever composed....
Tough It Out for Opera
By Kurt Gottschalk Having a reputation as the “highest form of art” might not do opera any favors, at least not if it makes the apex seem unattainable. And it’s not that reputation that the Metropolitan Opera Guild tries to dismantle with its ongoing Opera Boot Camp. According to Guild spokesman Jesse Cohen, they’re just...
Two Orchestras, One Opera and a Hearing Aid
Levine’s long concerts and an unexpected Carmen at a recent performance By Jay Nordlinger James Levine spends a fair amount of time on Carnegie Hall’s stage. He brings his Metropolitan Opera Orchestra out of the pit, to demonstrate some concert fare; and he brings his Boston Symphony Orchestra down, to show New Yorkers what the...
Awake & Sing
A Janacek Bruiser and Puccini’s Triple Bill: ‘From the House of the Dead’ and ‘Il Trittico’ at the Metropolitan Opera By Jay Nordlinger Of the current offerings at the Metropolitan Opera, spend a second on two—the first being From the House of the Dead, by Leos Janacek. Not so long ago, Janacek was an obscure...
The Diva’s Back
By Eli Jacobson 1984 was a memborable year for more than just George Orwell fans. That was also the year a major new soprano also emerged in the world of opera: Aprile Millo. Millo had just joined the Young Artist’s Program at the Metropolitan Opera and had sung Verdi’s “Ernani” in the parks. Major stage...
Puccini’s ‘Edgar’ Re-Imagined
By Jonathan Leaf Frank Capra once observed that he had begun by thinking that drama took place when the actor cried but it was really when the audience cried. This confusion may explain what’s behind the consistent failure of Giacomo Puccini’s tuneful early opera Edgar. Unlike La Boheme, Tosca and Madame Butterfly, it does not...
