As a journalist who covered everything from race riots to Supreme Court nominations before turning to cultural subjects, I sometimes wonder whether writing about the glories of classical music isn’t a bit off the mark when the world is marching to the different drumbeats of natural disaster, terror and political chicanery. But when I attend Read More
In opera, the passing of the torch from one great singer to another is rarely as clear-cut as we like to think. At what point in the 1920’s, exactly, did Giovanni Martinelli inherit the dramatic tenor’s throne from Enrico Caruso? Or Birgit Nilsson the Wagnerian soprano’s crown from Kirsten Flagstad three decades later? Unusually, the Read More
For Susan Graham, today’s leading American mezzo-soprano, and Ben Heppner, the reigning lyric heldentenor, the usual performance stops include Vienna, Salzburg, Berlin, Paris, London, New York, Chicago, San Francisco and the few other international cities prestigious enough to warrant their lighting down for a day or two. Within the past couple of weeks, however, I Read More
Met’s Brilliant Young Singers Offer Pleasure-and Hope
In all the talk about how to rebuild in the rubble of the World Trade Center, how to restore Wall Street’s confidence in the economy and how, in general, to revive our faith in a brighter tomorrow, I have a suggestion: Pay heed to what’s happening in Read More
Charles Michener At the Metropolitan Opera’s enjoyably tacky production of Mefistofele a few weeks ago, most of the intermission chatter seemed to be about the overexposed chest hair of Samuel Ramey in the title role, never mind the irresistible, if imperfect, score by Arrigo Boito. At the New York City Opera’s first performance of Central Read More
A Verklarung , or transfiguration, was what Richard Wagner called Isolde’s final bliss-in-death monologue, the “Liebestod” in Tristan und Isolde -the achievement of which might be said to be the fundamental aim of all opera, from its beginnings in Renaissance Italy to the present day. For, after all, what is the appeal of this wonderful, Read More
