Your guide to classical music online

Teatro Morlacchi, Perugia, Italy; April 17, 2013—A vacation trip to Italy’s Umbrian hills took a Renaissance/Baroque turn at Perugia’s Teatro Morlacchi, a jewel of a venue from 1781 that seats about 1,000. The Bolognese chamber string ensemble, the Accademia degli Astrusi (15 strong) under Federico Ferri, along with soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci offered a program [...]

Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, N.Y.; April 9, 2013—Director David McVicar’s production of Handel’s greatest opera, Giulio Cesare, originally mounted for England’s Glyndebourne Festival (and released and widely appreciated on DVD), has arrived at the Met, replacing the ho-hum, 1988 show by John Copley.  McVicar gets everything there is to get out of the opera—love, [...]

The Box, 189 Chrystie Street, New York; March 19, 2013—Francesco Cavalli (1602-76) was the 17th century’s most popular composer. His Giasone of 1649, a humorous take on the Jason/Medea story (yes, the same Medea who murdered her husband) was played more than a thousand times before the end of the century. Seeing as how he [...]

Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, N.Y.; March 11, 2013—Elijah Moshinsky’s production of Otello on Michael Yeargan’s gigantic sets has returned to the Met for a handful of performances after its initial run last fall, with an entirely different cast and conductor. And a strange lot they are. It is difficult to assess the work of [...]

Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, N.Y.; February 26, 2013—Benjamin Britten’s 1954 The Turn of the Screw is a masterpiece on the level of Henry James’ 1898 novella of the same name. A “ghost story” of an odd sort—James preferred, as he put it, “the strange and sinister embroidered on the very type of the normal [...]

Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, NY; February 18, 2013—What is Wagner’s Parsifal about? Ritual? Prayer? Salvation/redemption? Nature depicting inner life? The Metropolitan’s new production, by François Girard, certainly avoids the latter. This landscape (sets by Michael Levy) consists of arid land and small mounds of earth, with a fissure of running water that runs from [...]

Carnegie Hall, NY; February 14, 2013—Mariss Jansons and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam came to Carnegie Hall with a “heavy” German program consisting of Richard Strauss’ tone poem Death and Transfiguration, and Anton Bruckner’s glowing and gorgeous Seventh Symphony. With no concerto to lighten up the proceedings, the focus was squarely on the orchestra [...]

Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, NY; January 29, 2013—Bartlett Sher’s 2011 production of Rossini’s last comic opera, Le Comte Ory, is back at the Met. The slight plot concerns a randy young Count who, upon hearing that all of the men at a castle have gone off to fight in the crusades, arrives with his [...]

Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, NY; January 14, 2013—The Met’s production of La Rondine, Puccini’s least successful mature opera, has returned. The 2008 production starred The Couple: Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna. The singing was delicious, but somehow the balance was off-kilter with the plot and feel of the work, and in retrospect it was [...]

Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, NY; January 8, 2013—Donizetti’s 1834 opera Maria Stuarda, based on a play by Friedrich Schiller, contains a confrontation between Queen Elizabeth I and Mary Stuart, a/k/a Mary, Queen of Scots, that is brilliantly dramatic. The rival queens—the former Protestant, the latter Catholic—meet in Fotheringhay Park at the suggestion of the [...]