Michael Tippett New Year Rhian Lois soprano Ross Ramgobin baritone Susan Bickley mezzo-soprano Roland Wood baritone Robert Murray tenor Rachel Nicholls soprano Alan Oke tenor BBC Singers BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Martyn Brabbins, conductor NMC Recordings Michael Tippett’s final opera, New Year (1988) has finally been recorded. The work was produced in Houston in 1989 and Glyndebourne in 1990 and then fell out of the repertoire. The Birmingham Opera performed it last year, and the NMC double-CD recording is of a 2024 live semi-staged production by the BBC Scottish Symphony, conducted by Martyn Brabbins. New Year’s reemergence is
Read morePROTOTYPE – OPERA | THEATRE | NOW defines itself as a “festival of visionary opera-theatre and music-theatre works”. Its presentation of In a Grove (January 16 – 19, 2025) was as close as Prototype comes to conventional opera in the context of eschewing tradition. It was also one of the most compelling productions I’ve seen in a long time. The intimate setting at La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theater augmented the visceral impact. The story unfolded in four sections, each expressing a different character’s point of view of a murder in the woods. If that description sounds like the Kurosawa film Rashomon,
Read moreBrett Dean Rooms of Elsinore BIS CD Jennifer France, soprano; Lotte Betts-Dean, mezzo-soprano Volker Hemken, bass clarinet James Crabb, accordion Juho Pohjonen, piano Andrey Lebedev, classical guitar Swedish Chamber Orchestra Brett Dean, violist and conductor Composer and violist Brett Dean has spent a number of years engaging with Hamlet, creating a controversial, successful, and musically compelling eponymous opera premiered in the UK in 2017 and subsequently produced at the Metropolitan Opera. Rooms of Elsinore (BIS, 2024) collects pieces serving as character sketches written in advance of the opera, those recasting material from the opera that premiered concurrently or subsequent
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BAM, Bang on a Can, Brooklyn, Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Events, Experimental Music, Minimalism, New York, Opera, Percussion
Long Play …. Not long enough! This year’s Long Play schedule is particularly dizzying. The annual festival presented by Bang on a Can in Brooklyn, now in its third year, seems to have crammed more events than ever into its three day festival, running May 3, 4 and 5. For instance, on Saturday, May 4 at 2 pm, you’ll have to choose between a new opera by the Pulitzer Prize finalist Alex Weiser with libretto by Ben Kaplan, called The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language (at American Opera Projects) AND Ensemble Klang imported from the Netherlands playing works by the
Read moreRhiannon Giddens, along with guitarist Bill Frisell and percussionist Francesco Turrisi, perform “Julie’s Aria” from Giddens’ first opera, Omar. Premiering at Spoleto, the opera is receiving productions at a number of prominent houses. Here is an audio stream via YouTube. Giddens is busy with myriad projects, but her singing is so compelling here: dare Spoleto offices hope for a cameo?
Read moreIl Tamerlano Antonio Vivaldi Bruno Taddia, Bajazet; Filippo Mineccia, Tamerlano; Delphine Galou, Asteria; Sophia Rennert, Irene; Marina De Liso, Andronico; Arianna Vendittelli, Idaspe; Accademia Bizantina, Ottavio Dantone, director Naïve Vivaldi Edition Vol. 65 In recent years, there has been a reconsideration of Antonio Vivaldi’s stage works. A Vivaldi Edition is appearing on the Naïve label, its latest offering the pasticcio opera Il Tamerlano. Premiered in 1735 in Verona, the work contains arias by Vivaldi’s contemporaries Hasse, Giacamelli, and Broschi. Vivaldi composed recitatives and interludes and contributed several arias of his own. The various trunk arias may be from disparate sources,
Read moreBest of 2018: Holiday CD, Opera Recording Best Holiday CD Nine Lessons and Carols: 100 Years King’s College Choir, Stephen Cleobury, Director Choir of King’s College label 2018 is the hundredth anniversary of Lessons and Carols at King’s College (and ninetieth year of radio broadcasts of the event). In order to celebrate, the Choir of King’s College has released a two-CD set of some of their most famous offerings from broadcasts over the years, as well as new music commissioned for the occasion. The release also celebrates Director Stephen Cleobury, who will be stepping down after an illustrious tenure
Read moreLouis Andriessen Theatre of the World Leigh Melrose, Lindsey Kesselman, Marcel Beekman, Steven van Watermeulen, Mattijs van de Woerd, Cristina Zavalloni, vocal soloists Los Angeles Philharmonic, Reinbert de Leeuw, conductor Nonesuch 2xCD Dutch composer Louis Andriessen’s 2016 opera, Theatre of the World, subtitled “A Grotesque in Nine Scenes,” is a fantastical portrait of Seventeenth century polymath Athanasius Kircher. Commissioned and premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, a recording of the live performance of this production was released in 2017 on Nonesuch. In a nonlinear narrative propelled by effusively polystylistic music, played with assuredness and flexibility by LA
Read moreTo open with a broad stroke, opera is generally seen as a medium that embraces tradition. For example, while the repertoire certainly has a myriad more terrifying works to offer, the Royal Opera House offers Don Giovanni and Macbeth as selections from their Top 5 Scariest Operas article. Bearing this in mind, I couldn’t help but appreciate the particularly rich novelty of fitting my smartphone into a specialized cardboard case to watch the first ten-minute episode of The Parkside Murders, the virtual reality horror opera. The first episode of The Parkside Murders fully embraces its medium as a VR experience,
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Brooklyn, Composers, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Interviews, Microtonalism, New York, Opera
At National Sawdust on Friday April 7th at 7 PM, Opera Cabal presents the premiere of Ken Ueno’s new opera Aeolus. Joined by vocalist Majel Connery and Flux Quartet, Ueno performs throughout the opera. His fascinating blend of vocal techniques includes microtonal inflections, megaphone-amplified directives, and throat-singing. Electronics, video projections, and an architecturally conceived set design converge to make Aeolus a potent multimedia concoction. I recently caught up with Ken as he was in the thick of preparations for the opera. Hi Ken. Thanks for taking the time to talk with Sequenza 21. Why are you calling this an opera instead of some other genre? As you well know, multimedia theater pieces
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