Opera

Opera Album Reviews: A Major Classical Label Arises — Four More Fine Baroque Operas

October 12, 2024
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Each of these four works has its own flavor, and lovers of Baroque and Classic-era music will happily scoop up one or more of the recordings.

Opera Review: White Snake Projects’s “Is This America?” — A Moral Parable for Our Times

September 29, 2024
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By Aaron Keebaugh The opera’s libretto moves back and forth fluently between Fannie Lou Hamer’s childhood years to her later struggles serving the cause of racial justice. On June 1, 1865, in front of a large crowd gathered at New York’s Cooper Union, Frederick Douglass gave a eulogy for Abraham Lincoln. The president had been…

Opera Album Review: Baroque Music Enlivens the Boston Music Scene and Two New French Recordings

September 17, 2024
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The Boston Early Music Festival announces its 2024-25 season, and our critic welcomes world-premiere recordings of operas by Mondonville and Destouches, splendidly sung and glitteringly played.

Opera Album Review: The Music of Georg Philipp Telemann — Finally Getting Its Proper Recognition

September 8, 2024
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You want Baroque energy and Early Classic poise? Here’s a first-rate recording of a one-act, one-singer opera by Telemann along with some of his imaginative orchestral works.

Opera Album Review: First-Ever Recording of “Shamus O’Brien” — A Long-Forgotten Delight by One of Britain’s Savviest Composers

September 2, 2024
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A success in 1890s London and New York, the engaging Irish comic opera “Shamus O’Brien” finally gets Its world-premiere recording

Opera Album Review: One of Saint-Saëns’s Best Operas — Finally on Disc!

August 15, 2024
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We have a recording of “Déjanire,” its first ever. And it’s splendid, with a superb cast, an insightful conductor, and the orchestra and chorus of the very city in which it was first performed a century earlier!

Opera Album Review: The Met’s Biggest New-Opera Hit — Kevin Puts’s “The Hours”

August 8, 2024
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When the front page of the newspaper is getting me down, I can feel at least somewhat buoyed by remembering that we live in a world that can produce such profoundly touching and empathetic works of art as Kevin Puts’s “The Hours”.

Opera Album Review: Meyerbeer’s Disturbing Look at a Demagogue, “Le Prophète” (1849) — at Bard Summer Festival and on a New Recording

July 19, 2024
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Long one of the most-performed French operas, “Le Prophète,” thanks to some splendid performances, feels as vivid and relevant as ever.

Opera Album Review: A Devilishly Good First Recording for Louise Bertin’s “Fausto”

June 26, 2024
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Much praised by Berlioz and others, this Italian opera (composed for the great mezzo María Malibran) brings a notable female composer out of the shadows.

Opera Album Review: A Major New Opera that the Met Has Ignored — Tobias Picker’s “Awakenings”

June 22, 2024
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This world-premiere recording lets us hear one of the most effective recent operas, based on the famous book by Dr. Oliver Sacks.

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