| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 13-Mar-2013 Lincoln Center: Avery Fisher Hall | NY Philharmonic and Choral Artists blaze through Bach's culminating masterwork |
 Under conductor Alan Gilbert, the New York Philharmonic and the New York Choral Artists gave an inspired but slightly uneven performance of J.S. Bach’s Mass in B minor on Wednesday night. Playing with great panache as well as a mindful sense of the historical weight of the piece, the vocalists and musicians gave bristling and glistening life to a timeless work. Slight hiccups in vocal performance included, the music came across brilliantly. If the decisive blow is always struck left-handed, then Gilbert and the full choral-symphonic ensemble struck with both.
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| 3-Oct-2012 War Memorial Opera House | Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi in San Francisco |
 In the last few decades, Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi has flirted with standard repertory status, but it has not sufficiently won the hearts of opera-goers to warrant more than the occasional production. Though blessed with some of the composer’s finest melodies, the opera has problems for modern audiences. Firstly, the tale does not follow Shakespeare’s version of the star-cross’d lovers’ story; the protagonists are already in love when the opera begins, which means no ball, no love at first sight, no balcony scene.Read full review... | |
| 4-Aug-2012 Alice Busch Opera Theater | Glimmerglass' little Aida makes a huge impact |
 You won’t see plumed horses, a procession of camels, or a hundred supernumeraries as standard bearers parading across the Glimmerglass stage. In fact, you have to step outside the Alice Busch Opera Theater to see any elephants at all, the animal most commonly associated with Aida, Verdi’s greatest grand opera. Two brown pachyderms, a mother and a baby, made from grapevine boughs, mark the southernmost entrance to the Festival grounds this season. If you must have elephants in your Aida, you’d best enjoy this pair before settling into your seat to watch the show.
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| 24-May-2012 Carnegie Hall: Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage | Nina Stemme comes out ahead in Cleveland Orchestra's Salome |
 “When I looked at you, I heard secret music,” says Salome in her monologue to the severed head of John the Baptist. Richard Strauss’s opera trades in the unseeable and the unknowable—from the range of metaphors applied to the moon to the nearly impossible staging of a ten-minute striptease performed by a dramatic soprano—which makes it unusually well suited to concert presentation. Strauss’ high-octane, atmospheric music can seem all the more lurid and mysterious when its subjective visualization is left to the imagination.Read full review... | |
