The Metropolitan Opera commissioned and premiered an ambitious new opera, An American Tragedy, by composer Tobias Picker with a libretto…
Music
The community at Catfish Row, including the cripple Porgy, sexpot Bess, thug Crown, and drug-dealer Sportin’ Life, spring to life…
Norma, the eighth of Bellini’s slim output of ten operas (compare to Rossini’s 38, Donizetti’s 65), is widely acknowledged as…
John Donne: Holy Sonnet XIV Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek…
The music of Verdi’s I Vespri Siciliani opens majestically and alternates in turn with playful and emotionally dark interludes. Coming…
In the nineteen years from 1810 to 1829, Rossini composed an astounding thirty-eight operas. The Italian Girl in Algiers, which…
Buy the HMS Pinafore poster at barewalls.com In 1871, playwright William S. Gilbert (1836-1911) began writing satiric musicals with composer…
The Pearl Fishers, Bizet’s first opera, written when he was only 24, is loved for a few of its lustrous…
A CD of arias sung by tenor William Matteuzzi includes an aria from Le Pont des Soupirs Offenbach"s Songs from…
Joan of Arc at the Coronation of Charles VII in Reims Cathedral Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres barewalls.com Online references on Joan of…
Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) composed Acis et Galatee to honor the Grand Dauphin, the son of Louis XIV. In the literary…
Scott Wheeler with Placido Domingo in rehearsal for Democracy: An American Comedy the Henry Adams novels on which the opera…
The mythic story of Orfeo ed Euridice has been one of the standards since the beginning of opera. It concerns…
In 1851, Rigoletto was a challenge in all sorts of ways. For a start, it was based on Victor Hugos…