Ralph P. Locke

April Short Fuses — Materia Critica

April 1, 2024
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Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, television, film, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.

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August Short Fuses — Materia Critica

August 2, 2023
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Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, television, film, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.

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June Short Fuses — Materia Critica

June 1, 2023
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Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, television, film, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.

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Opera Album Review: The Love of a Fish-Man for a Terrestrial Woman, French-Baroque Style

April 12, 2023
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A masterful composer of French Baroque violin sonatas displays another side of his immense talent in this first-rate new recording of his Scylla et Glaucus.

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Opera Album Review: A Groundbreaking French Grand Opera Receives Its First Major Commercial Recording

March 25, 2023
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Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable paved the way for major works by Meyerbeer himself, Halévy, Verdi, Wagner (in German), Saint-Saëns, Massenet, and others — and this splendid performance shows why.

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Opera Album Review: A Major Baroque Opera in English Receives a Stylish Recording

March 15, 2023
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Aside from English pronunciation issues, the singers put over this remarkably polished and attractive opera by one of England’s great seventeenth-century composers with great panache, matching the superb instrumentalists.

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Opera Album Review: A Marvelous New Recording of Rossini’s “The Silken Ladder”– at a Bargain Price

February 22, 2023
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Rossini’s one-act opera from 1812 rings fresh changes on a host of comic-opera clichés.

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Opera Album Review: Can Conductors Compose Well? Consider Mahler, Bernstein, and Now Antal Doráti

December 26, 2022
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This world-premiere recording of a powerfully compelling opera, based on a play by Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, is revelatory.

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Opera Album Review: Meyerbeer’s Comic Opera about Peter the Great, A Welcome Return

December 13, 2022
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This re-release of a superb recording of a major Meyerbeer opera reminds us what treasures are available to opera companies (and college opera programs) willing to step beyond the well-trodden path.

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Classical Music Feature: “Best of 2022” — Unusual Operas Plus Some Songs, Choral, and Instrumental CDs

December 8, 2022
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Here’s my list of two dozen superlative operatic offerings of wildly differing kinds, plus some notable non-operatic offerings.

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