Strictly speaking, the classical-music season began Sept. 13 at the New York City Opera with Handel’s delicious Semele, with a superlative young cast led by the soprano Elizabeth Futral and the mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux. On Sept. 20, the city’s newest concert hall—the Renzo Piano–designed jewel box of an auditorium at the Morgan Library—opened with “Baroque Read More
Strictly speaking, the classical-music season began Sept. 13 at the New York City Opera with Handel’s delicious Semele, with a superlative young cast led by the soprano Elizabeth Futral and the mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux. On Sept. 20, the city’s newest concert hall—the Renzo Piano–designed jewel box of an auditorium at the Morgan Library—opened with “Baroque Read More
The heat of summer seems to bring out obscure oddities plucked from the overstocked greenhouse of Western classical music. For some time, no festival has been more avid in pursuit of the unfamiliar than Bard SummerScape, whose guiding spirit is Bard College president Leon Botstein, a conductor and scholar who loves footnotes as much as Read More
The heat of summer seems to bring out obscure oddities plucked from the overstocked greenhouse of Western classical music. For some time, no festival has been more avid in pursuit of the unfamiliar than Bard SummerScape, whose guiding spirit is Bard College president Leon Botstein, a conductor and scholar who loves footnotes as much as Read More
When the great German bass Kurt Moll came out for his curtain call after the second act of Die Meistersinger at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich a few evenings ago, the audience gave him a hero’s ovation. Mr. Moll had appeared only fleetingly as the tipsy Night Watchman in old Nürnberg, but this was Read More
When the great German bass Kurt Moll came out for his curtain call after the second act of Die Meistersinger at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich a few evenings ago, the audience gave him a hero’s ovation. Mr. Moll had appeared only fleetingly as the tipsy Night Watchman in old Nürnberg, but this was Read More
I once asked the late, esteemed voice teacher Beverley Johnson what distinguished a truly great singer. “An inner light,” she said. “Whether you’re talking about Piaf or Pavarotti, the great voices have a way of illuminating their soul.” On Monday, July 3, the most luminous voice I’ve ever heard was extinguished when the American mezzo Read More
I once asked the late, esteemed voice teacher Beverley Johnson what distinguished a truly great singer. “An inner light,” she said. “Whether you’re talking about Piaf or Pavarotti, the great voices have a way of illuminating their soul.” On Monday, July 3, the most luminous voice I’ve ever heard was extinguished when the American mezzo Read More
Wagner conceived Lohengrin in a bath—while he was taking the waters at Marienbad in 1845. He was immersed, too, in the murky historical and mythological texts that never failed to fire his imagination. He envisioned the opera’s hero, a chivalrous Knight of the Holy Grail, appearing out of nowhere on a boat drawn by a Read More
Wagner conceived Lohengrin in a bath—while he was taking the waters at Marienbad in 1845. He was immersed, too, in the murky historical and mythological texts that never failed to fire his imagination. He envisioned the opera’s hero, a chivalrous Knight of the Holy Grail, appearing out of nowhere on a boat drawn by a Read More
