Ralph P. Locke
Philip Glass’s librettist Arthur Yorinks offers his thoughts on whether and how to update an opera as the Boston Lyric Opera releases its revamped and filmed version of The Fall of the House of Usher.
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I may be in quarantine, but music can transport me back to the Middle Ages, or to the court of Catherine the Great of Russia, or, via Donizetti, to an imagined India.
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Lovers of Baroque opera will want to scoop this one up quickly. I certainly have more respect and affection for Leonardo Vinci, now that I’ve come to know several of his operas.
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The second recording of William Alwyn’s searing opera confirms the work’s vitality and importance. It is one of the best and most accessible operas to have been written in the past few decades.
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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.
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This strange year became, for this opera lover, a chance to explore new—or even world-premiere—recordings of little-known repertory. When musical life returns to semi-normal, perhaps we can be treated to live performances of some of these amazing works.
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Dohnányi and Schnitzler’s “pantomime” The Veil of Pierrette receives its first, and resplendent, recording.
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A delightful and compact opera — from a generation before Mozart — that cuts various social types down to size.
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A trio of recordings help us rethink and rehear composers as varied as Barbara Strozzi (from the seventeenth century), Chopin, and Mahler.
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Metropolitan Opera stars Ildebrando d’Arcangelo and Liudmyla Monastyrska headline a new recording that reveals Verdi operatic mastery five years before Rigoletto.
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