Classical Music

Opera Album Review: A Sprightly First Recording of Auber’s Love-Potion Opera

September 23, 2023
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Auber’s 1831 “Le Philtre” (“The Love Potion”) is an engaging romp that helped give birth to Donizetti’s “L’elisir d’amore.” Immensely popular in his own day, why isn’t it revived more often?

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Opera Review: Boston Lyric Opera’s “Madama Butterfly” — A Problematic Update

September 18, 2023
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The Boston Lyric Opera’s production was a reminder that Puccini’s score is sure to stand the test of time, even when valiant attempts to make the opera’s storyline more palatable fall short.

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Classical Album Review: Telegraph Quartet’s “Divergent Paths”

September 17, 2023
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A charming rendition of Ravel serves as a perfect foil to the rigors of the Schoenberg, which, tough nut though it remains, here gets just the sort of devoted advocacy it requires.

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Classical Album Review: Manfred Honeck Conducts Tchaikovsky and Schulhoff — It’s a Doozy!

September 16, 2023
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This is a Tchaikovsky Fifth that’s thoroughly lived in.

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Opera Album Review: A Splendiferous First Recording of an Opera by the Near-Legendary Composer Marin Marais

September 14, 2023
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Marin Marais, memorably enacted by Gérard Depardieu (and his son Guillaume) in the film “Tous les matins du monde,” proves a master of Baroque opera in this splendid recording.

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Opera Review: Tod Machover’s VALIS — Futuristic Sturm und Drang

September 12, 2023
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Let’s hope composer Tod Machover, Opera of The Future, and the Media Lab have more up their space-age sleeves.

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Opera Album Review: An Engaging Opera by an 18th-Century Black Composer

September 10, 2023
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Joseph Bologne, whose mother was a slave in Guadeloupe, proves to be as skillful in vocal-dramatic music as we have long known he was in instrumental works.

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Opera Preview: Expanding “Butterfly”‘s Habitat — A Chat with Phil Chan

September 6, 2023
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We’re not saying get rid of “Madama Butterfly” We’re saying do a better Butterfly.

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Jazz Album Review: A Creative “Synergy—Bobby Kapp Plays the Music of Richard Sussman”

September 1, 2023
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The arrangements seem to emerge organically from the structure and feel of the compositions and harmonies, like leaves unfolding from the stem of an exotic plant.

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Commentary: Brandeis University Axes the Arts

August 30, 2023
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Gutting a venerable department – particularly a world-renowned one that, by all accounts, delivers – in the name of belt-tightening is shortsighted and foolish.

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