James King
Posted by John Schultz on 05 Sep 2008 | Tagged as: Uncategorized
What a voice!
Young Pavarotti at his best
Posted by John Schultz on 12 Aug 2008 | Tagged as: Great Recordings, Pavarotti
Trouble at Bayreuth
Posted by John Schultz on 31 Jul 2008 | Tagged as: Uncategorized
Katharina’s [the great grand-daughter of Richard Wagner] idea of turning the Mastersingers into Masterpainters initially seems rather arbitrary and sits awkwardly with the libretto. After all, Stolzing wants to become a Mastersinger so as to win Eva’s hand in a singing competition.
All I can say is, it takes real Chutzpah, even on the part of a distant relative of Richard Wagner, to stage Die Meistersingers as Die Meisterpainters. How do you turn an opera about singing into an opera about painting? I guess that’s the part that “sits awkwardly.”
All the taste of fat-free butter
Posted by John Schultz on 16 Jul 2008 | Tagged as: News
All the passion of completing your tax returns.
More fun than you can shake a stick at, plus the stick.
It’s blog opera. Because there’s not enough great opera out there to enjoy just the way it is.
Is there anything super about supertitles?
Posted by John Schultz on 16 Jul 2008 | Tagged as: News, Performance Practice
A thoughtful article about the genesis, highlights and lowlights of reading English while hearing something else.
Now, in the 25th anniversary year of supertitles, such systems have been embraced by companies and audiences. The benefits are obvious. Opera is a form of drama, and that basic element of the genre becomes immediately apparent, even to neophytes, when titling is used. In the early 1980s productions of Wagner’s complete “Ring” cycle were undertaken by relatively few companies. Now a “Ring” production has become a calling card for any house that wants to be taken seriously. Titles have made the difference.
With audiences able to follow Wagner’s librettos, this complex mythological tale of sacred treaties made and broken and the catastrophic mingling of gods and mortals, of curses, hatreds and impossible hopes passed down through generations, emerges as an engrossing, humane and tragic operatic epic. …
Robert Jacobson, then the editor of Opera News, published by the Metropolitan Opera Guild, deplored supertitles as a “pathetic marketing grab for the fringe public,” adding that opera “is not a reading experience.” Then, speaking of the Met, there was James Levine. As supertitles were catching on everywhere, Anthony Bliss, the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, said that even that august company was considering a tryout. But in a 1985 article for The New York Times Magazine the music critic Will Crutchfield quoted Levine as saying, “Over my dead body will they show those things at this house.”
He is still living down that statement. In 1995 the Met introduced Met Titles, a system of individual screens mounted on seatbacks. Levine has said that he dropped his objections when the Met devised a system that allowed patrons the option to turn the things off.
Yet the record reveals widespread support from the start, most critics included. Reviewing the City Opera’s “Cendrillon” production in The Times, Donal Henahan described supertitles as “a dangerous experiment in audience education that on the whole worked astonishingly well.” …more
My advice: Sit in the cheap seats if you don’t want to strain your neck reading them.
Redefining “break a leg”
Posted by John Schultz on 08 Jul 2008 | Tagged as: Great Recordings, News
Break a leg. No - two legs!
Soprano Joan Sutherland was picking flowers at her home in Switzerland, fell down and broke both her legs. Please send prayers and happy thoughts for a quick recovery. She’s 81 years old, God bless her.
Dame Sutherland made countless recordings, among them is Les Huguenots with my voice teacher, Anastasios “Taso” Vrenios.
Here’s Taso in the final scene from La Rondine with Teresa Stratas.
Bayreuth festival to be screened online
Posted by John Schultz on 03 Jul 2008 | Tagged as: Uncategorized
For a mere 49 euros, you will be able to watch and download this year’s Bayreuth performance of “Die Meistersinger von Nuernberg.” But there’s only 10,000 “tickets” available.
Someone please tell them you don’t need a “ticket” to watch on the Internet…
Your dream job
Posted by John Schultz on 03 Jul 2008 | Tagged as: News
Would you rather run the Metropolitan Opera, or be the Master Carpenter?
It turns out both are making some crazy cash.
The Met’s General Manager pulled down $1,000,000 last year.
The Met’s Master Carpenter pulled down $533,450.
That’s alot of wood.
Opera singing dentist gets record contract with Purple Rain cover
Posted by John Schultz on 03 Jul 2008 | Tagged as: News
This doen’t sound like a crossover artist. It sounds like a drive-by shooting.
An NHS dentist has just been signed up in a £1m record deal by SonyBMG, it was announced today. Andrew Bain, 34, who had worked in a North London dental practice for ten years, was noticed by Sony executives after he send in a demo tape containing his operatic interpretation of Prince’s pop classic, ‘Purple Rain’. …the whole thing
Roberto Alagna and his fans at La Scala
Posted by John Schultz on 02 Jul 2008 | Tagged as: Great Recordings, News
That headline sounds like a bad children’s book. And Alagna’s tantrum after getting booed in the opening minutes of Aida at La Scala is the kind of thing that you’d see in one.
Listen for yourself - it’s not a great ending to “Celeste Aida,” and it certainly doesn’t sound like the rest of the performance is going to be good. Alagna has supertenor status in Europe, but that can’t shield him from a mediocre live performance in the land where opera was born. And it looks like he won’t be going back to La Scala any time soon.
Alagna at his best are recordings like these:
Sacred Songs with a wonderful O Holy Night track (in french of course) and the obscure “La Procession” by Cesar Franck - a piece that is beautiful and quintessentially Catholic.
His opera arias CD is excellent too.