More 20th Century Conductors [More Twentieth Century Conductors]: 7 Discographies Eugen Jochum, Ferenc Fricsay, Carl Schuricht, Felix Weingartner, Josef Krips, Otto Klemperer, Erich Kleiber. [1993].
[ Black Composers Series ; Detroit Symphony Orchestra; Paul Freeman, conductor; Natalie Hinderas, piano; Sanford Allen, violin; Sony Music Custom Marketing Group DSO-1111 (2002). Prof. Dominique-René de Lerma worked closely with Maestro Paul Freeman on the CBS Black Composers Series on LP in the 1970s; parts of those recordings has been made available on this CD.] On November 3, 2009 AfriClassical...
The cunning little vixen. Paris Bastille Opera 2008. Production: André Engel. Cast includes: Jukka Rasilainen (Forester), Elena Tsallagova (Vixen), Hannah Esther Minutillo (Fox). Conductor: Dennis Russell Davies. Further information here.André Engel and his team has simply created a great, straight-forward production of Janacek´s opera The cunning little vixen. A couple of seasons...
An active tenor with Vancouver Opera Chorus, John Arsenault has appeared in minor roles in Salome and Fidelio . John recently turned heads as Pinkerton in Vancouver Island Opera's production of Madame Butterfly . JOhn will help kick off the season with his role of Flavio, a centurian, in Vancouver Opera's Norma . Guilty musical pleasure? I love lots of different music, and I don’t believe in...
Here is my Saturday October 31 Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com review of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Thursday night October 29, 2009, performance with Sir Andrew Davis conducting and baritone Brian Mulligan. Repeats Saturday October 31 at 8 p.m. Lyric Opera's...
The best art lingers like an aftertaste in your mouth, sometimes an unpleasant one. San Francisco Opera's current production of Richard Strauss' Salome is art on that level. It left me with a visceral feeling of having witnessed the perverse melt-down of a sexually abused and confused young girl. I can't say it was fun to watch, but it was thrilling in a weird, icky way. What this production does,...
The critic/theorist/philosopher/musician Heinz-Klaus Metzger has died at the age of 77. Metzger trained to be a private piano teacher, then studied composition in Paris with Max Deutsch, a student of Schoenberg. Metzger's earliest allegiances were to the Schoenberg school and his theoretical bent brought him into early contact with Adorno. The relationship to Adorno's work — more as sparring...
The Washington Post's On Leadership blog yesterday featured the conductor Roger Nierenberg, who, with his program The Music Paradigm, is making a specialty of pointing out the ways in which principles of conducting can be applied to business success. Nierenberg isn't the first person to make these observations; several other conductors have made forays into seminar rooms and management conferences....
It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that majority of the world's affairs are taken care by a clique of some kind. Even heads of state surround themselves with loyalists and cronies. Just think of the people in George W 's inner circle, most of who eventually became disgraced for a reason. Decisions by boards have been decided in advance by a small group of insiders; voting is but a rubber stamp. If...
The basic premise in Rossini's opera "Tancredi"? Why use 50 beautiful notes, when 50,000 sound better. Fortunately, conductor Gil Rose found a host of...
By The Weekend Vote: This fall marks the beginning of a new era for both the Los Angeles Philharmonic, with its new Music director, Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel , 28, and the New York Philharmonic, with new Music Director Alan Gilbert , 42. When I think about both these new conductors, certainly I am thinking about change and new energy. But I'm not focused completely on youth, like, say, this...
Reporting from San Francisco By all accounts, San Francisco is in love with Nicola Luisotti -- a 47-year-old conductor from Viareggio, Italy, and very Italian – as is he with his new city. Last month he became music director of...
For those of you who have had your fill of writing and videos and all that about Glass and Orphée here's your weekly assortment from Operaman's grab bag of opera ephemera. Happy Birthday! Ursula K. Le Guin is 80 years young today! Avid readers among you will know Ms Le Guin as one of the world's foremost writers of fantasy and science fiction novels. She has almost innumerable awards to her...
The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra's music director Manfred Honeck is about to embark on one of the most difficult tasks as a conductor: leading Richard Strauss' "Der Rosenkavalier." It will be the first time Honeck has ever conducted the sophisticated comic opera and it will be in a new production at the Stuttgart Opera, for which he also is music director. The performances open Nov. 1 and...
By the time Jenůfa was first performed in Brno in 1904, Leoš Janáček was already 50. He was little known for his slim operatic output (Jenůfa was his third opera), but the composer was highly regarded in his adopted hometown as a talented conductor, critic, teacher and ethnomusicologist, and these other facets of his life were essential in the apprenticeship that led him...
Inside the front cover of my Falstaff score is a little sticker that states that the score was a gift from the University of Michigan Friends of Opera, an organization that sponsored voice scholarships and opera productions at the University. In the fall semester of my senior year at the University, I learned the very first role I ever performed in Italian out of that Falstaff score - Fenton. The year...
Videos
