Search Results: ralph locke

Opera Review: “Iris,” A Powerful Vision of an Imaginary Japan — Six Years Before “Madama Butterfly”

February 14, 2022
Posted in , , ,

The composer of Cavalleria rusticana brought his sense for characterization and drama to the all-too-plausible tale of a woman victimized by a cad.

Read More

Opera Album Review: Offenbach in a Spanish Mood, in a Top-notch First Recording

October 1, 2020
Posted in , , ,

Bravo to the Bru Zane folks for this latest triumph! I encourage opera lovers to get to know this treasurable Spanish (or faux-Spanish) work by the pioneering master of nineteenth-century operetta.

Read More

Opera Album Review: Now Hear What Berlioz and Wagner Admired — Gaspare Spontini’s “Olimpie” in a Stupendous New Recording

July 12, 2019
Posted in , , , ,

This world-premiere recording of the 1826 Paris version of Gaspare Spontini’s Olimpie makes a powerful case for a composer much admired in his own day.

Read More

Opera Album Review: A Groundbreaking French Grand Opera Receives Its First Major Commercial Recording

March 25, 2023
Posted in , , ,

Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable paved the way for major works by Meyerbeer himself, Halévy, Verdi, Wagner (in German), Saint-Saëns, Massenet, and others — and this splendid performance shows why.

Read More

Opera Album Review: Can Conductors Compose Well? Consider Mahler, Bernstein, and Now Antal Doráti

December 26, 2022
Posted in , , , ,

This world-premiere recording of a powerfully compelling opera, based on a play by Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, is revelatory.

Read More

Opera Album Review: Saint-Saëns’s Delightful Skewering of the West’s Fantasies of Japan

March 27, 2022
Posted in , , ,

A major contribution to the recorded repertory, making clear just how effective Saint-Saëns’s The Yellow Princess could be on stage, its nowadays objectionable title repudiated by its varied and nuanced approach to the evocation of the exotic.

Read More

Opera Album: A Deliciously Grisly “Comic Opera” from 1789 — the Year the French Revolution Began

August 4, 2020
Posted in , , ,

Grétry’s Raoul Barbe-Bleue — the story of the original lady-killer, Bluebeard — receives its world premiere recording and it’s splendid.

Read More

Opera Album Review: Saint-Saëns’s Opera about a Little Silver Bell Works Its Magic

March 7, 2021
Posted in , , ,

The world-premiere recording of a first rate production of a brilliant, fantastical opera, unstaged and unheard since 1914.

Read More

Opera Album Review: A Renaissance-Toned Opera by Saint-Saëns, Finally (and Finely) Recorded

September 17, 2019
Posted in , , ,

One of Saint-Saëns’s most important operas, Proserpine, has recently been given its world-premiere recording, and the result is a revelation.

Read More

Classical CD Reviews: Listening During COVID, Part 3 –From Boston with Love (Performances of Haydn, Dello Joio, and Virgil Thomson).

December 22, 2020
Posted in , , ,

Two new recordings and one much-welcome re-release contain first-rate performances of Haydn’s 1798 “Lord Nelson” Mass, Dello Joio’s opera about Joan of Arc, and Virgil Thomson’s astonishing musical portraits of Alice B. Toklas, Picasso, and others.

Read More

Recent Posts