This week on Rhode Island Public television,
WSBE: (Comcast 294, Cox 808, Full Channel 109, and Verizon 478)
*all links are live
*all links are live
Saturday, April 23, 2016, 8:00pm
Sunday, April 24, 2016 3:00am
Monday, April 25 2016, 12:00am
Great Performances at the Met
Le Nozze di Figaro
Le Nozze di Figaro
The Season 9 premiere features "Le Nozze di
Figaro," Mozart's 1786 comic masterpiece, which has been updated to take
place in 1930s-era Spain. It brings to life the upstairs-downstairs romantic
complexities at an 18th-century manor house.
Duration: 210 min.
News from Around the World of Music
Oh sad day--
James Levine retires from Met due to advancing Parkinson's
Metropolitan Opera music director James Levine Set to Retire from the Met
Thursday, April 14, 2016
WQXR
By Amanda Angel
After a 45-year career at the Metropolitan Opera, the legendary maestro will become the organization's music director emeritus.
♫♫♫
Opera heart-throb Kaufmann stood up by Gheorgiu
mid-show
by Angus McPherson on April 19, 2016
Montreal orchestra gives violin to homeless musician
by Megan Steller on April 15, 2016
Javier Camarena: the tenor whose talent justifies a
towering reputation
In Memoriam:
Brian Asawa, 1966-2016
BY JANOS GEREBEN ,
April 19, 2016
♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫
♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫
WQXR
'Les Fêtes Vénitiennes,' a Vaudevillian
Spectacle from the Baroque
Monday, April 18, 2016
WQXR
By David Patrick Stearns
William Christie's Les Arts Florissants and
director Robert Carson revive Campra's 18th-century opera-ballet at the
Brooklyn Academy of Music. David Patrick Stearns reviews it.
Swedish soprano Nina Stemme stars in the
title role of 'Elektra.'
Salonen Reveals the Dramatic Core of Strauss's
'Elektra'
Friday, April 15, 2016
By David Patrick Stearns
The Met stages Patrice Chereau's acclaimed
production of 'Elektra,' starring Nina Stemme in the title role. David Patrick
Stearns reviews the opera.
♫♫♫♫♫
 |
| Fred Plotkin |
From Fred Plotkin_4/17/2016 “Live in HD Fans” (Facebook):
Many of you have asked me to post my
observations following the season's final "Simon Boccanegra" at the
Met this evening. Anyone who was there will not forget it. Ever. As you know, I
do not write reviews. So my words are those of an experienced (to put it
mildly) operagoer who happens to count this Verdi masterpiece among his
favorite operas. It was an extraordinary night in the opera world (not just at
the Met) in that it inevitably combined the timeless and the temporal. It was
the first performance James Levine conducted since it was announced that he
would relinquish the title of Music Director at the end of the season and move
to Emeritus status. He and the orchestra were accorded huge ovations from start
to finish, but what was most discernible tonight was the great wash of emotion
surrounding him from the audience, the orchestra pit and the stage. Consummate
genius-artist that he is, he held everyone and everything together, guiding a
last-minute substitution in one role with his customary attentive warmth. While
the ovations and curtain calls could and should have been much longer, they
were longer than most these days at the Met and deeply heartfelt. Every member
of the cast was in top form, though there were moments when emotion crept in
that went beyond the powerful feelings that this opera already contains. At
moments, it was hard for the performer and audience members who knew what was
underpinning this evening to not be overwhelmed. Lianna Haroutounian was a warm
and sympathetic Amelia, the one soaring female voice among five men. Joseph
Calleja was white-hot vocally and dramatically, lifting the performance with
his voice when things got too sad. Stephen Gaertner (Paolo) and the
ever-reliable Richard Bernstein provided vocal and theatrical ballast as the
conspirators. Ferruccio Furlanetto is a singer and actor of such extraordinary
complexity and power. He simply has no equal. When other basses play Jacopo
Fiesco, the character is often depicted as angry and bitter. Those attributes
are only one element of Furlanetto's portrayal, which turns Fiesco into a huge
moral force, a reservoir of memory with a sense of justice (more than revenge)
who is the ultimate truth teller. Remarkable. And that is the adjective I would
apply to Plácido Domingo in the title role. I have tired of hearing people
complain that he is not a natural-born baritone. and that at 75 he is too old
and self-indulgent. The performance he gave tonight would be unforgettable for
someone seeing him for the first time or the 500th. His voice is wonderfully
expressive in this towering dramatic part. To me it equals his Otello but is in
a range that is more congenial (not ideal, but I really don't care) now and the
acting and musicianship were fantastic. The cast took several group curtain
calls in front of the Met's beautiful gold curtain (which we see too rarely
nowadays) so that they could gesture to and applaud James Levine. Most audience
members could not see the Maestro in his motorized chair in the orchestra pit,
but seeing the faces of the six singers said everything. Domingo, at a certain
point, made a sign of the cross and shed a tear. A reader just sent in this
video of some of the curtain calls. Although sound and picture are a bit out of
sync, you get the idea of how the artists communicated with Maestro Levine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i6tKwLBqYo&feature=youtu.be
♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫
♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫
OPERA ON THE INTERNET
WITH
DAVE D' AGUANNO
The LIVE opera from the Met this coming Saturday
(April 23) is none other than the one that launched this season's series of
HD-transmissions: Verdi's "Otello." The same two leading men who
appeared in the HD-transmission will be singing their roles again this
Saturday, namely Aleksandrs Antonenko as Otello & Zeljko Lucic as Iago.
More Verdi is on tap for us this Saturday as another
one of his Shakespearean adaptations can be heard, with a performance from
Naples of his final opera "Falstaff." This is a broadcast of the
performance of March 20, 2016.
Yet another Verdi opera turns up on this Saturday's
ORF schedule, with a LIVE performance from the Vienna State Opera of "Un
Ballo in Maschera" featuring tenor Piotr Beczala and baritone Dmitri
Hvorostovsky in leading roles.
In addition, there are 2 FREE live audio-streams that
the Met is offering within the next few days. First, on Friday evening, it's
Mozart's "The Abduction from the Seraglio" followed on Monday evening
by Puccini's "La Boheme."
Enjoy!
DAVE
♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫
The Met Saturday afternoon
radio broadcast
radio broadcast
Saturday, April 23, 2016, 1:00 pm.
Otello
VERDI
Fischer; Gerzmava, Antonenko, Dolgov, Lučić, Morris
♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫
No opera on
WGBH this week!
 |
| Aleksandrs Antonenko as Otello |
No comments:
Post a Comment