Posts Tagged ‘verdi’
Tuesday, January 21st, 2014
By: James Jorden Our old friend Heather Mac Donald is back, ostensibly to mourn the loss of “Petrarchan intimacy with the past“ in the study of the humanities, but, reliably enough, she can’t help taking a swipe at Regietheater while she’s at it. Now, my contact with academia has been scarce and spotty since I […]
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Tags: Big Macs, cell phones, heather mac donald, kinky sex, mozart, nudity, psychopaths, rough and regie, slobs, sluts, snide put-downs of American capitalism, Tchaikovsky, verdi, wagner
Posted in Rough and Regie | Comments Off on Want not
Friday, December 6th, 2013
By Rebecca Schmid While Il Trovatore counts as one of Verdi’s most gripping scores, the libretto’s sprawling tale of love and vengeance is not without dramaturgical challenges. A staging by Philip Stötzl which opened at the Staatsoper Berlin on Nov.29 featured several first encounters with the opera. Anna Netrebko, who attended the premiere of the […]
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Tags: Adrian Sâmpetrean, Anna Lapovskaja, anna netrebko, Conrad Moritz Reinhardt, Daniel Barenboim, fettFilm, Gaston Rivera, il trovatore, Mara Kurotschka, Marina Prundenskaja, MusicalAmerica.com, Olaf Freese, Philip Stötzl, Plácido Domingo, Rebecca Schmid, Salvatore Cammarano, Staatsoper Berlin, Ursula Kurdna, verdi
Posted in Berlin Times | Comments Off on ‘Il Trovatore’ at the Staatsoper Berlin
Friday, September 20th, 2013
By Rebecca Schmid The Musikfest, Berlin’s 20th-century music festival, took a welcome occasion to revisit the opus of Lutosławski upon his centenary this year. Following the appearances of guest ensembles such as the Royal Concertgebouw, Philharmonia Orchestra and Bavarian Radio Symphony, the Staatskapelle Berlin performed his Mi-Parti (1976) under Music Director Daniel Barenboim alongside works […]
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Tags: Bavarian Radio Symphony, Beethoven, Daniel Barenboim, Lutoslawski, Martha Argerich, Musikfest, Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw, Staatskapelle Berlin, verdi
Posted in Berlin Times | Comments Off on Martha Argerich at the Musikfest
Thursday, April 4th, 2013
By Rebecca Schmid The Festtage of the Staatsoper Berlin, founded by Daniel Barenboim in 1996, is not officially an Easter Festival. But while the Berlin Philharmonic left the Philharmonie for some mountain air (taking up residence for the first time this year in Baden-Baden), the maestro— between conducting the first full cycle of the Cassiers/Bagnoli […]
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Tags: Alessandro Manzoni, Berlin Times, Bernarda Fink, Daniel Barenboim, Daniela Barcellona, Fabio Sartori, Fesstage, Frank Xaver Süßmayer, La Scala, Maria Bengtsson, Maria Segreta, mozart, René Pape, Rollando Villazòn, Staatskapelle Berlin, verdi
Posted in Berlin Times | Comments Off on Requiem aeternam
Friday, May 11th, 2012
By Rebecca Schmid The Deutsche Oper maintains a dedicated West Berlin following not only for its provocative stagings but sober concert operas showcasing star singers. Of nine “premieres” this season, four are in concert, and in the best scenario feature works known for their dramaturgical weaknesses. The house claimed in a press conference last season […]
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Tags: Armin Gramer, Daniel Cramer, Deutsche Oper, Ensemble Kaleidoskop, Guillermo Garcia Calvo, HAU1, I Due Foscari, james jorden, Leo Nucci, Mascha Mazur, Monteverdi, Olof Borman, Orfeo, Peaches, Ramon Vargas, Roberto Rizzi Brignoli, Sabine Neumann, Tagesspiegel, Timo Kreuser, Ulrike Schwab, verdi
Posted in Berlin Times | Comments Off on Angela Meade makes Berlin Debut; Peaches takes Opera Underground
Wednesday, March 14th, 2012
by Sedgwick Clark Shaham’s 1939 Dark Horse Gil Shaham had an epiphany. After years of recognition as one of the brightest young lights of the concert circuit, the Israeli-American violinist conjured one of the most imaginative programming concepts in years. He had been struck by how many violin concertos written in the 1930s had entered […]
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Tags: alex ross, alice tully hall, avery fisher hall, BBC, Beethoven, Berg, carnegie hall, chamber music, Clark, Leinsdorf, leon botstein, metropolitan opera, musical america, New York Philharmonic, Sedgwick, sedgwick clark, Stravinsky, verdi
Posted in Why I Left Muncie | Comments Off on Finding the Right Gimmick
Friday, November 4th, 2011
by James Jorden “I’ve almost come to the conclusion that this Mr. Hitler isn’t a Christian,” muses merry murderess Abby Brewster early in the first act of Arsenic and Old Lace, and to tell the truth I’m beginning to think I’m almost as far behind the curve as she was. Recent new productions at the […]
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Tags: anna netrebko, james jorden, leonard bernstein, Mahler, music director, musicalamerica, new york times, period costume, peter gelb, pr, richard wagner, robert lepage, Street Car Named Desire, the met, verdi, willy decker, Zurich
Posted in Rough and Regie | Comments Off on Peter’s Principles
Friday, December 31st, 2010
By James Jorden The opening of a new production of La Traviata at the Met tonight offers an ideal opportunity to address a fact of modern operatic life, the booing, apparently reflexive, of the director and production team at the first night’s curtain call. Now, booing and other expressions of disapproval have a long history […]
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Tags: la traviata, regie, the met, verdi
Posted in Rough and Regie | Comments Off on To boo?
Friday, November 12th, 2010
By James Jorden When stage directors decide to intervene (as opposed to merely curating) there are a number of approaches they can take: deconstruction, gloss on the text, invention of an entirely new narrative. Or they can take the somewhat safer route of changing the epoch of the action, setting La bohème during World War […]
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Tags: bizet, carmen, david mcvicar, elina garanca, goya, il trovatore, lincoln center, metropolitan opera, richard eyre, verdi
Posted in Rough and Regie | Comments Off on Time Bandits