Opera
The perversity of The Handmaid’s Tale oppressive allegory lends itself well to opera, and Boston Lyric Opera makes the most of the material’s emotional heights and depths.
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Once much-performed, then banished from the stage by the Nazis, The Miracle of Heliane, now available in a fine new recording, is perhaps the best opera by the man who would become one of Hollywood’s leading composers.
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MassOpera’s updated version of Die Fledermaus pulls off a major feat.
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Handel and Haydn Society assembled both a must-hear program and an extraordinary cast of singers.
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The Boston Lyric Opera is mounting a fabulous staging of Benjamin Britten’s visceral opera.
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A 1962 concert performance from Radio Italiana, now on CD, shows how delightful Wagner can sound without barking and slow wobbles.
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Beethoven reportedly told Rossini to stick to writing comic operas. But new recordings of two of Rossini’s major serious operas bring great pleasure to the listener—and let us hear some splendid young singers.
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A list of the most memorable opera and vocal recital recordings of the year.
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None of the opera recordings I have reviewed this past year beats this Cradle for dramatic vitality, musical imagination, and ongoing political relevance.
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Classical Music Commentary: Poetic Narratives in the Concert Hall, and a New Recording of Dvořák’s “The Spectre’s Bride”
A reflection on the whole tradition of combining longish narrative poems to music, especially for performance in a concert hall by large forces (e.g., singers and orchestra).
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