• 1062
• Articles
• 13 Ago 2012

Great rendition by Jessica Pratt in Pesaro, “Rossini Opera Festival” August 10 2012. “Ciro in Babilonia” – G. Rossini – “Vorrei veder lo sposo”. About “Ciro in Babilonia” at Carmoor, with Jessica Pratt: I was introduced to Rossini at a very early age—I can’t remember when—through some Met performance of the Barbiere, well before the […]

• 1189
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• 11 Ago 2012

“Ciro in Babilonia, ossia La caduta di Baldassare” (“Cyrus in Babylon, or The Downfall of Belshazzar”) is an “azione sacra” in two acts by Gioacchino Rossini with a libretto by Francesco Aventi. It was first performed at the Teatro Comunale, Ferrara during Lent, 1812. The exact date of the premiere is unknown but is believed […]

• 982
• Articles
• 11 Ago 2012

Tonight in Pesaro (“Rossini Opera Festival”) première of “Ciro in Babilonia”, 1812, by G. Rossini, when he was 20 years old. A really difficult melodram for the voices. Great, great cast. All the singers are vocally superb. Especially Jessica Pratt in the role of Amira. Divine! Last year Miss Pratt, this great australian young soprano, […]

• 1131
• Articles
• 11 Ago 2012

Miguel Burró Fleta (1 December or 28 December 1897, Albalate de Cinca, Huesca Province, Spain – 28 May or 30 May 1938, A Coruña) was a Spanish operatic tenor. Despite his short stage career, lasting from 1919 to 1935, Fleta has been described as one of the most significant Iberian opera singers of the 20th […]

• 1351
• Articles
• 09 Ago 2012

“THE SOLITARY VOICE” – Giacomo Lauri-Volpi was born at Lanuvio near Rome on December 11, 1892, within a large family but remained orphan from a tender age. In 1914, he studied law at La Sapienza university of Rome and vocality at the Santa Cecilia conservatory under a famous teacher, baritone Antonio Cotogni. In 1915 he […]

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• 08 Ago 2012

Alfredo Kraus and Montserrat Caballé in “A te oh cara” (“I Puritani”). 1979. The both are maybe the latest really good performers of Arthur and Elvira roles.

• 1268
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• 07 Ago 2012

Although Maria Callas has made two fine studio recordings of “Norma” for EMI, this live recording of a performance at La Scala in 1955 provides a much more thrilling experience for the listener. Norma was one of Callas’s greatest roles but the extra dose of adrenalin in this live performance may have made it probably […]

• 2445
• Articles
• 07 Ago 2012

The most perfect of all 9 Bellini opera (and arguably any opera, for that matter), Norma is blessed with some of the most beautifully composed vocal music in all of opera. Bellini wasn’t a master of the orchestra like Mozart, Verdi, or Strauss was, but he was a melodic genius at making what little orchestral […]

• 1260
• Articles
• 07 Ago 2012

Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a play about hallucinations, and there is a certain ghostly quality about this edition of the opera as well: the text, though stated with triumphant clarity, is surrounded by a penumbra of variants: first thoughts, second thoughts, restored erasures and cross-outs, smudges unsmudged where possible, alternative versions proposed by censors, stage directors, […]

• 1120
• Articles
• 07 Ago 2012

This performance of “Der hölle Rache” – Die Königin der Nacht – from “Die Zauberflöte”, sung in year 1962 by Dame Joan Sutherland, is still today very discussed. Many people say that she’s technically perfect but not “mozartian” (?!?), others that she could sing this aria only transposed down, “frequently flat and off pitch and […]