More to the point, it seems like an inspired fit. Vanya is a good man with a deep, compassionate heart. He’s also irascible, sarcastic, indolent: his own worst enemy. This odd bundle of traits is very much in sync with Carell’s comic persona. At the same time, the idea is an intriguing stretch. Vanya is one of the great theatrical roles—and a challenge for any actor. For Carell—still known primarily from TV and films—to take it on at the prestigious Lincoln Center venue is at once humble and ballsy. It implies a desire to expand audiences’ sense of him. Anyway, that’s what I hoped for. In pra ..read more

It’s an exaggeration, of course, but since winning Operalia a decade ago, her appearances the Met so far have been restricted to Contessa and Donna Anna. San Francisco opera goers have been luckier – she’s appeared there as Eva and Rusalka, and Chicago got her first Don Carlos (in French!) this season. Meanwhile, her repertoire in Europe is far more varied: a much-discussed Vêpres Siciliennes in Munich in 2018 revealed surprisingly fluid coloratura and an excellent trill from such a rich voice, and she’s been cast in everything from Alcina to Leonore to Ellen Orford to Rosalinde. But the Amer ..read more

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dprmPPVfas Happy 54th birthday soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek //www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-ORjaxWYkE On this day in 1970 Stephen Sondheim‘s musical Company opened on Broadway //www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrRDrz53Q1E Birthday anniversary of playwright and poet William Shakespeare (baptismal day in 1564), soprano Florence Austral (1894), contralto Marga Höffgen (1921), soprano Wilma Lipp (1925), and composer Conrad Susa (1935) The post In comes company appeared first on parterre box ..read more

Roth Costanzo intends to maintain his performing career alongside his new administrative responsibilities. Philadelphia correspondent David Fox: What strikes me most here is that I imagined Opera Philadelphia – grappling as so many cultural institutions are with financial uncertainty – might look to an experienced, “safe” leader. Instead, with ARC they’ve made an audacious, glamorous, wild-card choice. It affirms the company’s confidence in David Devan’s vision for Festival O’s admixture of traditional opera placed alongside contemporary genre-defying work (and also, refreshingly, the compan ..read more

John Adams’s 2000 opera-oratorio El Niño does just that, connecting the ancient past to the equally troubled present, a mosaic of spiritual poetry from the English- and Spanish-speaking worlds over ten centuries and medieval and baroque music with 20th century minimalism. To quote the program notes of the Metropolitan Opera’s premiere production: Described by John Adams as his way of understanding what is meant by a miracle, El Niño is an opera-oratorio that brings the tradition of sacred works by composers like Bach and Handel into the modern era. El Niño opened on Tuesday night in ..read more

Russian soprano Tamara Milashkina died in January at 89 years old, and Chris’s Cache remembers her with the performance I most identify with her—a 1977 Salzburg Iolanta with her husband Vladimir Atlantov as Robert—along with a much more recent performance of my favorite Tchaikovsky opera with last week’s podcast headliner Asmik Grigorian conducted by Kirill Petrenko. I posted another Iolanta on Trove Thursday five years ago and rhapsodized then about my experiences with this opera. I’ll simply add that Asmik’s father Gegam can be heard in the complete performance included in that earlier post ..read more

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxakU0ZwNWE Birthday anniversary of composer Giovanni Battista Martini (1706) and Broadway performer Ruth Kobart (1924) Happy 80th birthday soprano Norma Burrowes //www.youtube.com/watch?v=afBrivvgBlE The post The greatest star appeared first on parterre box ..read more

Streaming and discussion begin at 7:55 PM EDT. The post El Niño appeared first on parterre box ..read more

In it I recognized the larger construction of musical scenes (and even the wholesale recycling of tunes from within the same work). It implanted in me the understanding of accompanied recitative (and there’s a lot of it in Evita). Juan Perón’s introduction of his wife on the balcony at the top of Act Two could have been written by Stravinsky (and probably was, knowing Mr. Lloyd Webber’s fondness for cribbing plus he had the formidable Hershy Kay as his orchestrator). Although its musical language isn’t necessarily sophisticated, it planted the germs that later brought me to love masterworks l ..read more

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=31endWVIG3U Born on this day in 1857 composer Ruggero Leoncavallo //www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbdT6SbPY5s Born on this day in 1928 performer and diplomat Shirley Temple //www.youtube.com/watch?v=1L8aRx5oa1c On this day in 1963 the Jerry Bock-Sheldon Harnick musical She Loves Me opened on Broadway (302 performances) //www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjRhvf-w8TE The post Put to pasture appeared first on parterre box ..read more