J.S. BACH: St. Matthew Passion
Like dozens of the most searching and accomplished musicians of our day, Simon Rattle has found collaborating with Peter Sellars a peak experience, if not the peak experience, of his career. Rattle's...
View ArticleStars offer familiarity in new isle home
Two winters ago, after 27 years on one island, my wife, Susan, and I moved to another. The first was Manhattan, where the stars that light up the sky are of the showbiz variety. As a freelance culture...
View ArticleFrom the Archives: Declassified Samizdat
Not long ago, James R. Oestreich, classical-music editor of the New York Times,filed a "Critic's Notebook" essay on a new quest for spirituality at the Salzburg Festival and Lincoln Center, two...
View ArticleSCIARRINO: Luci Mie Traditrici
The Renaissance princeling Carlo Gesualdo, prized in our time for the daring chromatics of his blazing madrigals, was notorious in his own time for the slaughter of his wife and her lover in flagrante....
View ArticleCAVALLI: Giasone
The career of Francesco Cavalli (1602–76) falls squarely between those of Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643), the founding giant of opera, and George Frideric Handel (1685–1759), the second giant. Yet in...
View ArticleWotan's Revenge
A wild and crazy Ring at the Metropolitan Opera, where the shelf life of such blockbusters is measured in decades—who in his right mind could have dreamt of such a thing? Nothing wears off faster than...
View ArticleReview of Tosca (Giacomo Puccini)
Angela Gheorghiu; Jonas Kaufmann, Bryn Terfel; Royal Opera Chorus, Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Antonio Pappano. Production: Jonathan Kent. EMI Classics 4 04063 9, 120 mins. (opera), 8 mins....
View ArticleEsprit de l'escalier (Tosca)
"Happy are they that hear their detractions and can put them to mending," says Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. Yes, but sometimes we must do our own detracting. Yesterday, with some misgivings, I...
View ArticleLes Miz in Reel Time
So the cast of Les Misérables sang live, to the accompaniment of an off-camera piano piped into their ears? You could have fooled me. The memo arrived only after I saw the movie. As I watched, it had...
View ArticleThe Performance I Can't Forget
In conversation, performing artists of every stripe keep telling us how vital a role we play as spectators. But how rarely they let us know whether we have played our roles well or badly? When they do,...
View ArticleBritten's Turn of the Screw from Glyndebourne
Miah Persson, Susan Bickley, Giselle Allen; Toby Spence; London Philharmonic Orchestra, Jakub Hrůša. Production: Jonathan Kent. FRA Musica FRA 507 (Blu-ray) or FRA 007 (DVD), 111 mins. (opera), 22...
View ArticleTenor from the Dark Side of the Moon (Saimir Pirgu)
"This is the house of God. You can't turn me away." Admittedly, the language is reconstructed and from a foreign tongue, but the facts are the facts. In September 2000, in Bolzano, at the southern foot...
View ArticleCulture shock: Cue kudos for Qurrat Ann Kadwani
A Muslim couple from India pulls up stakes and moves to New York in search of opportunity for the next generation. But do they settle among compatriots in Queens? No. They land in the Bronx, where...
View ArticleGone Today, Here Tomorrow? Pirgu's Romeo
The manuscript of my recent profile of the Albanian tenor Saimir Pirgu in the New York Times carried a San Francisco dateline, which one of my editors very sensibly suggested we remove. True, my...
View ArticleReview of On DVD - Daniel Catán's Il Postino
What is the sound of two hands clapping? Bad news, as Plácido Domingo must have known the moment he finished his first big sing in Il Postino. Adapted from Michael Radford's international hit film of...
View ArticleThe Solti Legacy
Late in life, Georg Solti (1912–97) harbored no illusions about his brand. "Always people want to characterize me as fiery, temperamental," he told me in Salzburg in the summer of 1992. "Now they say I...
View ArticleHis Ukulele Is On Fire
Maui, Hawaii. Just about anyone can pick up the ukulele and make music in no time, but who ever goes beyond the basics? Historically, the lowly Portuguese-descended cousin of the guitar has served to...
View ArticleA Big Man Still Dreams of the Big Times
Honolulu — "The Blind Side" meets "The Great Caruso." In the spring of 2007, Kiri Te Kanawa, the Maori-descended diva from New Zealand, had been churning out autographs in the Met Opera Shop at Lincoln...
View ArticleWagner's "Orphans"
Wednesday is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Richard Wagner. Festivities have been in full swing for some time, with no end in sight. Jonas Kaufmann starred in the Metropolitan Opera's new...
View ArticleMaui Film Festival, Preview: And Let's Not Forget
Would Eddie stay for "Islands of Sanctuary"? I'm guessing he would, definitely. Spoken-word and cinematic tributes to Hawaiian legends Eddie Aikau and Nainoa Thompson get top billing at the Maui Film...
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