It is hard to imagine a more complex piece than Korngold’s Violin Concerto. It stands on the cusp of classical music’s transformation from an art form confined to the concert hall, into a multimedia concept.
American composer Michael Dellaira secured the operatic rights to Lampedusa’s novel after rereading it following a trip to Sicily in 2014. Pandemic complications froze the entire performance world for two years, so the opera only had its world premiere in March 2022, in a run of two performances by the Frost Opera Theater.
Set against the production’s dismal sets, the action unfolded as a five-hour dirge of funereal hopelessness before ejecting spectators into equally gray Manhattan surroundings where after-theater conviviality is long dead.
Listening to Renée Fleming in an intimate recital nearly five years after her semi-retirement, one has to wonder if she left too soon. She has upcoming April concerts in France, Germany, Lithuania, and the UK.
The highlight of the Common Sense Society event was the presentation to Jordan Peterson of its inaugural Sir Roger Scruton Award.
Sadly, Macbeth turned out to be more of a miss than a hit. Livermore replaced the original Scottish setting of Verdi’s opera and Shakespeare’s play with a modern urban gangster war. The idea is far from original. Theater directors have toyed with it for at least forty years, not only with Macbeth but with other operas featuring political power tainted by betrayal and a hint of sexuality.
Interested readers should know that, in what is billed as “the return of one of the greatest pianists of our time” spanning from Beethoven’s “Appassionata” and Chopin’s “Third Sonata,” Yefim Bronfman will perform a piano recital at the Teatro Auditorium Manzoni in Bologna on February 28, 2022.
As one of the first arts companies to return to live performance as the pandemic subsided, the Palm Beach Symphony has rocketed to national importance and richly deserves international notice.
The production has aged well. Its vibrant return after a seven-year absence should have been a landmark revival and one of the highlights of the Met’s new season. Musically, it met the mark. The energy on stage was palpable. The only disappointment was to be found in the audience. The revival’s first performance reportedly filled just 57% of the seats.
Even if many of the accusations against Nero could be described as ‘fake news,’ enough of them eventually piled up to undermine his reign. Last year’s exhibit at the British Museum explored the life and rule of this legendary emperor.
Scheduled for only six performances (September 28-October 17, 2021), the Met chose, as a cost-cutting measure, to present Mussorgsky’s original seven-scene 1869 version of the opera. European houses and scholarly purists favor this original score, which is currently found in repertoires in London, Paris, Berlin, and St. Petersburg.
Early in his tenure, Dutch conductor Bernard Haitink had led one of the staples of the company’s ballet repertoire, MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet, set to a score by the Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev. It was therefore fitting that a recent performance of this revival was dedicated to his memory.
