The New York Festival of Song is one of those distinctively urban pleasures: Its season is a series of hand-crafted programs often mixing European art song with great American popular music, drawing from New York's world-class pool of singers, pairing the right singer with the right music in exactly the right sequence. But I had to re-acquaint myself with NYFOS in the … [Read more...] about New York Festival of Song on a day of wine and roses
Bard SummerScape’s latest operatic resurrection: Dvorak takes Boris Godunov many steps further
Dmitrij is an opera that keeps growing before your very ears. And growing. And growing, until you have some of the most dramatically apt music Dvorak ever wrote for the stage. But about the time the plot strands need to be tied up - as they are in a matter of minutes of Verdi's Otello - Dvorak hits a stride that won't stop: The final act is around 90 minutes long. Walking … [Read more...] about Bard SummerScape’s latest operatic resurrection: Dvorak takes Boris Godunov many steps further
Janacek’s Vixen is re-thought and hunted down in the backstreets of London
The title, simply, is Vixen. It's not The Cunning Little Vixen or Russ Meyer's Vixen, though it was closer to the former than the latter. And true to the foxiness of the title, you had to hunt it down. Ostensibly an adaptation of the Janacek opera, Vixen was presented by a company called Silent Opera in conjunction with the English National Opera, and in a site nowhere near … [Read more...] about Janacek’s Vixen is re-thought and hunted down in the backstreets of London
The Met’s new Rosenkavalier: Hello Robert Carsen, goodbye (maybe) to Renee Fleming
Operavore, WQXR www.wqxr.org/#!/story/review-richard-strauss-der-rosenkavalier-met-opera/ Review: Richard Strauss' 'Der Rosenkavalier' at The Met Opera Friday, April 14, 2017 - 03:00 PM By David Patrick Stearns So personal is the relationship between Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier and its admirers that the arrival of a new production at the Metropolitan Opera is … [Read more...] about The Met’s new Rosenkavalier: Hello Robert Carsen, goodbye (maybe) to Renee Fleming
Days of tension, anger and (thank God) New York Polyphony
Post-inauguration Saturday wasn't the easiest time to be in New York City. Whatever side you were on politically, the streets in much of mid-town were closed off. Police were everywhere. Cars seemed not to know where to go or what to do. I even saw a cab driving with its passenger door yawning open. The one way across 42nd Street was the Park Avenue overpass; looking down … [Read more...] about Days of tension, anger and (thank God) New York Polyphony