Arthur Lazere
Ariadne auf Naxos is an underappreciated delight of an opera. While audiences understandably flock to Strauss' earlier Der Rosenkavalier, they appear not to have taken Ariadne to their hearts, though it is shorter and pithier than the former and ...
Harvey O'Brien
See Harvey O'Brien's background of the opera and review of Opera Ireland's production (with performance schedules and CD and video recommendations) For nearly two decades Nicholas McGegan has conducted San Francisco's Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra ...
Arthur Lazere
The Flying Dutchman, which had its premiere in Dresden in 1843, initiated Wagner's move away from the then standard opera forms into his own style of music-drama. Smaller in scale than his later works, running around two and a ...
Arthur Lazere
Our earlier review from Berlin with current performance schedules La Scala holds a place close to the heart of all opera lovers, whether or not they have ever been there to hear a performance. Dating ...
Arthur Lazere
Online references on Janacek Leoš Janacek lived over about the same span of years as did Puccini and his first successful opera, Jenufa, premiered in the same year (1904) as did Puccini's Madame Butterfly. ...
Harvey O'Brien
The libretto for Handel’s Julius Caesar by Nicola Francesco Haym was adapted from renditions of the story popular in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Far from the dark tale of shadowy morality and political intrigue concocted by ...
Harvey O'Brien
Schiller: Don Carlos and Mary Stuart Verdi With a Vengeance : An Energetic Guide to the Life and Complete Works of the King of Opera (2000),William Berger Online references on Spanish history ...
Arthur Lazere
Sir John Falstaff is the most famous comic character in the Shakespeare canon, appearing in no less than three of the plays. With roots in the commedia dell'arte, Falstaff is a braggart, a lecher, a con man, and a ...
Arthur Lazere
Samson et Dalila, Saint-Sa�ns' only opera to remain in the active repertory, doesn't get a lot of respect. When it was revived at the Metropolitan Opera a few years back, New York Times critic Bernard Holland called it a ...
Arthur Lazere
The Capulets and the Montagues are families well known from Shakespeare, and their clan-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet, are the iconic embodiments of young love--love that resists family prohibitions even if the results are tragic. Bellini's 1830 opera is ...
