Baritone Eric Owens is busy this fall – his Met debut as General Leslie Groves in John Adams’ Dr. Atomic is just a start to his performances this season in New York, Atlanta, London and Los Angeles. Today is the release of A Flowering Tree on Nonesuch Records with Owens as the storyteller, another role he created. I spoke with Eric Owens about this new recording, his Met debut and about working with composers. MP3 file
Read moreBen Rosen, former Board Member of the Met, has a fascinating post at his blog about the Met’s turnaround under the leadership of Peter Gelb. (Thanks to Alex Ross for pointing it out.) The whole essay is worth reading if you have any interest in the future of the classical music business or in the fortunes of the Met, but I want to highlight one passage in particular, concerning the marketing of Philip Glass’s opera “Satyagraha.” Apparently, prior to Gelb’s arrival the Met had no marketing team–marketing wasn’t seen as necessary with the number of sold-out performances they were playing.
Read moreCharles Wuorinen, who turns seventy today, has been commissioned by New York City Opera to compose an opera based on Annie Proulx’s short story Brokeback Mountain. It is scheduled to be produced in 2013. Happy Birthday CW! http://pressroom.nycopera.com/pr/nycopera/news/_prv-BrokebackMountain.aspx
Read more[youtube]6J14flyMOQo[/youtube] Human behavior’s funny. The more we try to change the more we don’t seem able to. Are we cursed to repeat the same mistakes in our private lives — with lovers, friends — as well as in our public ones? Are we genetically condemned to disjunction, discord, and war, like Sisyphus trying to keep that enormous rock from crushing him each day? Philip Glass’ SF Opera commission, APPOMATTOX, which world premiered 5 October, and which I caught 16 October, seems to accept these things as givens. Its ostensible subject is Robert E. Lee’s surrender to U.S. Grant at Appomattox
Read moreOkay, he stayed too long at the fair. The idea of a 60-year-old, 400-pound man playing a starving artist failed to suspend disbelief. The three tenors crap was execrable. He probably inspired Andrea Bocelli. But, once upon a time, there was this voice: [youtube]_CC9U43BFio[/youtube] Alex Ross, Steve Smith, Marcus Maroney, Charles T. Downey, Tim Mangan, Marc Geelhoed, Opera Chic
Read moreFrom today’s Deutsche Welle: Germany’s annual Bayreuth Festival of Wagner operas began on Wednesday with a highly anticipated, make-or-break production by the 29-year-old great-granddaughter of the composer Richard Wagner. And while the applause after the first two acts of Wagner’s only “comic” opera was friendly, the audience — which included a smorgasbord of German political and social elite — was less amused by the third and final act, which featured a few minutes of full frontal nudity, a bizarre sight of Richard Wagner dancing in his underwear and a bunch of master singers horsing around the stage with oversized penises.
Read moreBeverly Sills, the All-American diva from Brooklyn, has died of cancer. Bubbles, as she was known to all, was a big lady with a big heart whose down-to-earth personality, talent and lifelong dedication to Lincoln Center made her a treasure for the city’s arts establishment. I never heard her sing live in her prime but there are those who swear her Lucia and Rosina were among the best. She was a hometown heroine who will be missed. UPDATE Steve Smith, Tim Page, Anthony Tommasini
Read moreSo, the wonderful Serbian film director Emir Kusterica’s new opera Time of the Gypsies (based on his zany film of the same name) opened last night in Paris. Woody Allen is directing Puccini and David Cronenberg is prepping The Fly for L.A. Anthony Minghella, Michael Haneke, Zhang Yimou. What is happening here? Have we run out of opera directors? Have film directors done operas in the past? Are opera companies just hoping that a high profile director can pack the seats?
Read moreAny musical work which has a long. complex, and– dare I say it? –troubled history — can’t help but raise a red flag. Is the artist wrestling with something alive and kicking, or is he or she merely tinkering? Lou Harrsion’s “gay opera” Young Caesar, which began as a 1969 commission from the group Encounters, was first staged as a puppet opera for vocalists and 5 instrumentalists. A subsequent version, for 11 instrumentalists, onstage singers, and full chorus, followed, and this one, performed by the Portland Gay Men’s Chorus in 1988, was roundly criticized, though the performers, some of whom
Read moreGérard Mortier, who is famous for painting lipstick on corpses and taking them to the ball, will become general manager and artistic director of the New York City Opera after he retires from the Paris Opera at the end of the 2008-2009 season. Mortier ran the Salzburg Festival in the 1990s where he mounted such customer-unfriendly provocations as Hans Neuenfels staging of Die Fledermaus, in which Orlofsky was a drug dealer who sold cocaine, Nazi thugs appeared on stage and Eisenstein had incestuous children who commit suicide. Can’t wait to see what he does with Lulu. Reminds of one of my favorite lines,
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