Opera
A world-star soprano, in her magnificent prime at age 36, offers her first recital CD, and you can participate in its online “launch.”
Lovers of Baroque opera will welcome this release: the first recording — and a very accomplished and communicative one —of an important opera by a pioneer and master.
Antônio Carlos Gomes’s Lo Schiavo (The Slave) receives its first major recording — and stakes its claim in the repertory.
Author Ethan Mordden serves up plenty of entertaining yarns, sometimes as exaggerated as the genre to which they pay homage.
Grétry’s Raoul Barbe-Bleue — the story of the original lady-killer, Bluebeard — receives its world premiere recording and it’s splendid.
Is it any wonder? An opera that angered Louis XIV in 1677 brings enormous pleasure in 2020.
Metamorfosi is a marvelously effective and amusing one-act opera that would suit college opera workshops splendidly.
Immortal Beloved is a CD that will appeal to lovers of fine singing and to people curious about some hidden corners of Beethoven’s output.
Prince of Players is based on a play that also yielded the movie Stage Beauty, and it’s one of the best new operas to come along in years.
Arts Commentary: Reviewing Music, Re-viewed
Our opera-loving reviewer contrasts his own pieces, written 48 years apart, on the same Offenbach operetta.
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