Archive | Concerts

Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, NY; April 27, 2022—One of the Met’s productions that is always worth re-visiting is Anthony Minghella’s sensitive handling of Puccini’s saddest opera, Madama Butterfly, which was new in the 2007-2008 season. It has lost none of its luster. Michael Levine’s use of the entire Met stage, with a mirrored ceiling […]

Vienna, Konzerthaus; February 25, 2022—The Bachstiftung has been churning out highly satisfying Bach cantata recordings one after another for a decade, but it has taken me until now to hear them in action. Finally, Rudolf Lutz’s profoundly informed, theologically earnest, and musically liberal-lively, take-no-prisoners approach surely would be something to behold. Especially in the convivial […]

The Metropolitan Opera returned to performances after a month-long hiatus on February 28th with three firsts: Managing Director Peter Gelb’s call for a moment of silence in honor of the war-victimized Ukrainians; the singing of the Ukrainian National Anthem by the Met Chorus; and the first-ever performance of Verdi’s Don Carlos, the original, five-act, French […]

Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, New York October 1, 2021—The big, operatic news in New York has been that the Met is presenting the first opera by a Black composer in its 138-year history. The real news is how potent, persuasive, chilling, and stunning Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut up in My Bones actually is. Debuted in […]

Vienna, Thursday, October 22, 2020—In dutiful adherence to the programmatic formula: Russian Conductor => Russian Composers, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra performed a Russian triptych consisting of Mussorgsky, Shostakovich, and Tchaikovsky. In the theatrical business, that sort of thing is called “type-casting”. In the music world it’s simply a tired cliché that raises the question: Do […]

Vienna, Konzerthaus; March 2, 2020—Martha Argerich is one of the very few classical music superstars that please both the hard-nosed aficionados and the broader public. She’s a Grigory Sokolov and Lang Lang rolled into one. If you don’t like Argerich, you also subscribe to “Curmudgeon Monthly”. Five decades into her career she increasingly resembles Mim […]

The Metropolitan Museum of Art – American Wing; New York, February 14, 2020—The famous quilt collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s American Wing is an apt metaphor for Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein’s 1947 opera The Mother of Us All. The quilts are the handiwork of women, often collectively stitched-together patchworks, made up of […]

Munich, Herkulessaal; January 13, 2020—Regime change is coming to the Bavarian State Opera and its orchestra when artistic director (GMD) Kirill Petrenko and intendant Nikolaus Bachler will leave at the end of the season, to be replaced by the duo of Vladimir Jurowski (for the pit) and Serge Dorny (for the corner office overlooking Munich’s […]

Munich, Gasteig; January 9, 10, & 12, 2020—The Piano Concerto of Swiss composer Dieter Ammann was supposed to have been premiered at Vienna’s Konzerthaus with the Vienna Symphony. It wasn’t ready, however, and the concert last April (reviewed for ClassicsToday) featured Bartók’s Third, instead. The actual premiere had to wait for the BBC Proms, which, […]