Posts Tagged ‘Rossini’

Chung to Conduct for Trump

Wednesday, May 17th, 2017

By ANDREW POWELL Published: May 17, 2017 MUNICH — President Trump will next Friday (May 26) attend his first orchestra concert since taking office. Scheduled for 7 p.m. al fresco at the Teatro Antico in Taormina, Sicily, the program consists of Italian opera overtures and intermezzos: Puccini – Madama Butterfly: Act III Sunrise Rossini – […]

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Guillaume Tells

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2015

By ANDREW POWELL Published: September 23, 2015 MUNICH — Post is under revision. Still image from video © Bayerische Staatsoper Related posts: Nitrates In the Canapés Muti the Publisher Honeck Honors Strauss Kušej Saps Verdi’s Forza Time for Schwetzingen

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Mariotti North of the Alps

Sunday, April 26th, 2015

By ANDREW POWELL Published: April 26, 2015 MUNICH — He will always be attached to Rossini, but Michele Mariotti, 36, can probe and illuminate a vast repertory besides. This much was evident March 23 in a refreshing return engagement with the Münchner Symphoniker. The Pesaro-born maestro’s podium technique and constructive manner recall another Rossinian, the […]

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Winter Discs

Tuesday, March 31st, 2015

By ANDREW POWELL Published: March 31, 2015 MUNICH — Arts projects in Europe with any visual aspect to them nowadays migrate to DVD whether or not there is a need, partly to justify public subsidy through distribution. Many are operas filmed too often, like Nationaltheater Mannheim’s just-released Der Ring des Nibelungen, which joins DVD tetralogies […]

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Salzburg Coda

Friday, October 31st, 2014

By ANDREW POWELL Published: October 31, 2014 SALZBURG — Alexander Pereira is now gone from the main festival here, and two tenuous summers are in the offing before Markus Hinterhäuser replaces him as Intendant in 2017. His exit, under a cloud, ends a budget tempest but threatens reversals of worthy initiatives he took: lengthening the […]

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Festive Sides

Friday, August 29th, 2014

By ANDREW POWELL Published: August 29, 2014 MUNICH — Staged works and the legendary Lied evenings hold the limelight here at the annual Opernfestspiele, begun 139 years ago. But veins of chamber music and, since 2008, choral programming run through the five-week schedule, lending scope and affirming organizer Bayerische Staatsoper’s depth of musicianship. The chamber […]

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BR Chor’s Humorless Rossini

Saturday, November 2nd, 2013

By ANDREW POWELL Published: November 2, 2013 MUNICH — Can music be sincere and ironic at the same time? Ask Peter Dijkstra, the artistic leader of the BR Chor who last weekend (Oct. 26) led Rossini’s Petite messe solennelle as billed. Solemnly. The result sounded not much like Rossini. Nobody smiled, and the musicians looked […]

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A Rosina Is Born

Wednesday, February 20th, 2013

By ANDREW POWELL Published: February 20, 2013 MUNICH — Bavarian State Opera this month dusted off (sort of) Ferruccio Soleri’s drab staging of Il barbiere di Siviglia. The Italian actor’s action scheme has devolved in his absence into an unfocused free-for-all, permissive, at its saddest, of impromptu bopping and weaving to Rossini’s tunes by principal […]

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Dresdener Musikfestspiele pay Tribute to Eastern Europe

Tuesday, May 29th, 2012

By Rebecca Schmid The theme of this year’s Dresdener Musikfestspiele, “Herz Europas” (the Heart of Europe), inventively returns the East German city to its roots as a thriving cultural hub. While today’s united Germany is roiled by the end of the ‘Merkozy’ era and Eurobond controversy, the emphasis of the festival (May 15-June 3) on […]

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