When the much-missed soprano Barbara Bonney was singing lots of new music in the '90s, she stated, with equal parts rashness and shyness, that she was considering writing music herself - for herself. Not a bad idea, since nobody knew her voice better than she did. She seems never to have gone through with it. And the idea seemed just as radical on Jan. 18 until Kate Soper … [Read more...] about Composer Kate Soper: She is her own Eurydice (and Orpheus)
Wozzeck on Ice!: It was a hoax.
Damn, damn, damn! I was all set to go on Travelocity to book a flight to Freiburg, Germany when this poster for Wozzeck on Ice! arrived in my inbox this morning. Imagine: A genre normally associated with the lightest of light children's entertainment applied to a thoroughly adult, furrow-browed opera. Imagine the most graceful and circular of the athletic arts being the … [Read more...] about Wozzeck on Ice!: It was a hoax.
Ailyn and Steve: The new operatic power couple?
When Audra McDonald called them an opera power couple on the recent PBS broadcast of the Richard Tucker Music Foundation Gala, I broke out laughing. Not at McDonald, and not because she was inaccurate: Soprano Ailyn Perez and tenor Stephen Costello fit the definition – both are headed toward the top of the opera profession if they aren't there already – but they don't fit the … [Read more...] about Ailyn and Steve: The new operatic power couple?
Galina Vishnevskaya (1926-2012): The Russian Callas
Though I never encountered Maria Callas in person, I heard Galina Vishnevskaya in recital shortly after her 1974 emigration from the Soviet Union - and I came to understand how music, words and character can wholly inhabit a human being and come out as a single expressive entity of overwhelming power and bottomless humanity. The city was Indianapolis, not a hotbed of … [Read more...] about Galina Vishnevskaya (1926-2012): The Russian Callas
David Lang: Living in pain with great beauty
"There's enough beauty in the world," declared David Lang in a recklessly unguarded moment prior to the New York premiere of his new, hour-long work love fail, written for the vocal quartet Anonymous 4. But what does the world need if not beauty? What this singular composer is ready to supply, though, seems to be something for which the right words haven't been invented. … [Read more...] about David Lang: Living in pain with great beauty