Opera
Philip Glass’s librettist Arthur Yorinks offers his thoughts on whether and how to update an opera as the Boston Lyric Opera releases its revamped and filmed version of The Fall of the House of Usher.
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I may be in quarantine, but music can transport me back to the Middle Ages, or to the court of Catherine the Great of Russia, or, via Donizetti, to an imagined India.
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How do you make filmed opera relevant in the Age of COVID? The BLO isolated the performers from one another and made E.A. Poe’s story the dream of an immigrant child in detention on the US/Mexico border.
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The long-forgotten Il paria (1829), a work that Donizetti himself prized more highly than many of his other works, has now been reconstructed by a scholarly team and given a splendid recording.
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Lovers of Baroque opera will want to scoop this one up quickly. I certainly have more respect and affection for Leonardo Vinci, now that I’ve come to know several of his operas.
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The second recording of William Alwyn’s searing opera confirms the work’s vitality and importance. It is one of the best and most accessible operas to have been written in the past few decades.
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This strange year became, for this opera lover, a chance to explore new—or even world-premiere—recordings of little-known repertory. When musical life returns to semi-normal, perhaps we can be treated to live performances of some of these amazing works.
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A delightful and compact opera — from a generation before Mozart — that cuts various social types down to size.
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Metropolitan Opera stars Ildebrando d’Arcangelo and Liudmyla Monastyrska headline a new recording that reveals Verdi operatic mastery five years before Rigoletto.
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Coming soon to your computer or cellphone: The Boston Camerata launches a bold staged performance of Purcell’s pathbreaking opera, but in a way that keeps its cast and audience safe.
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Arts Commentary: Rich in Creativity — But Nothing Else