Requiring trained opera singers to focus primarily on acting and asking actors to sing in a renowned opera house puts everyone out of their comfort zone, which is not necessarily a bad thing.
From its stunningly filmic opening to its faux-Golgotha finale, the Royal Opera House’s new production of Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny demands our attention.
Late in the opera, in the calm that settles after a vaudeville of ballet dancers and Italian singers, Fleming’s poise pervades the Countess’s closing rumination over love and the nature of art. It’s a concert piece nestled in Capriccio’s narrative bustle, and to hear Fleming sing it is to be reminded of her talents as a communicator in music within and beyond the opera stage.
With this mesmerising version of Les contes d'Hoffmann, Marthaler has proved (as Offenbach did more than one century ago) that it is possible to love Romanticism through its satire.
It is hard to believe that Anne Sofie von Otter has been on the international scene for over 25 years, and after all this time, her voice is in remarkable shape. Coupled here with the equally esteemed Emanuel Ax, this intimate recital communicated a great depth of understanding in the music.
My mother always told me not to sit too close in the theatre, and after seeing this revival of Martin Kusej’s modern realization of Stravinksy’s The Rake’s Progress at the Theater an der Wien, I think I know what she was talking about.Act I begins innocuously enough in a sparse apartment, unfurnished apart from a mattress and a television.
The repertoire in Anne Sofie von Otter’s recital in Bodø Cathedral this Saturday was truly a mixed bag. Ranging 350-odd years, from the 1650s all the way up until the very present day, spanning four countries and as many languages, and joined by two accompanists – Mats Bergström and Svante Henryson – there was really no unifying theme to the recital.
Under conductor Alan Gilbert, the New York Philharmonic and the New York Choral Artists gave an inspired but slightly uneven performance of J.S. Bach’s Mass in B minor on Wednesday night. Playing with great panache as well as a mindful sense of the historical weight of the piece, the vocalists and musicians gave bristling and glistening life to a timeless work.
Giulio Cesare, an opera populated with manipulative characters that only interact with each other when shared interests are at stake, is a receptive vessel for a scornful indictment of imperialism and the dubious alliances it forges.
The holiday season in New York can be a bit maddening, an unrelenting assault to the senses amid the crush of humanity present throughout the city. Luckily, then, the Philharmonic provided an evening’s respite with powerful and largely understated works by Haydn, Schubert, and Ravel. After Haydn’s Symphony no.
Petibon, Devieilhe, Gens, Koch,... le nec plus ultra de l'art lyrique français était réuni sur la scène du TCE pour la reprise de la production unanimement saluée d'Olivier Py des Dialogues des Carmélite.
