Author Archive
Myself and Donizetti, A More Recent Marriage
As an opera lover, I have to say I’ve never been much of a fan of the standard Bel Canto repertoire. I usually like Bellini, for the most part, and really love Rossini’s gift for theatre, but apart from that it is not the first thing I go for when seeking material to which to [...]
Antony and Cleopatra
This past weekend I went to New York City Opera’s lone production of the year, a staged reading of Samuel Barber’s flop opera Antony and Cleopatra, excellently performed at Carnegie Hall. When the piece premiered in 1963—to christen the new home of the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center—it was an unmitigated disaster. It actually damn [...]
Ice Cold Music
Sometimes the CDs on the desk can overwhelm. I get sent a lot—truly an embarrassment of riches—which is a blessing ensconced within a curse because what to listen to first? What to listen to, period. It can overwhelm. Today it has. Today it is cold—very cold—and my apartment lacks heat. So to distract myself from [...]
Duelling Mimis, Duelling Musettas
On this ice-cold New York day, I’ve been in a kind of Puccini Heaven. Arriving at my doorstep during the Holiday Season was a box of goodies from Sony, which, in this case, included two recordings of Puccini’s La Boheme. Seems like perfect fare for the bound-to-the-garret indoor winter I’m having. (Go [...]
Holiday Cheer has Slipped Away, Mercifully.
Hello all, apologies for my absence. Holidays are a complicated time, but to me there’s one good thing about them ending: the mere fact that it will be next Halloween before we have to hear that constant stream of Christmas music. I mean, I love “O Holy Night” (which I only recently discovered was written [...]
Last Word on Puccini: The Complete Operas
By Daniel Felsenfeld
I could just go on and on about Puccini, because I think he’s weirdly underrated (despite being one of the more performed composers in the world). He’s given short shrift by the more “serious” among us as a composer of “shabby little shockers,” of over-the-top melodramas. But I’ve always thought of him as [...]
George Szell, Devoted to Mozart
By Daniel Felsenfeld
I promise—and this is a promise I will try to keep—that I won’t keep on about how beautiful and fulfilling these Original Jacket Collection boxes are as items (though they are) and will instead turn to the content, the music. Conductor and pianist George Szell spent almost 35 years helming the Cleveland Symphony [...]
More on Puccini: The Complete Operas
By Daniel Felsenfeld
Like I said before, I am one of those people who loves a series, a complete edition, a one-stop-shopping experience. So the Puccini: Complete Operas box is really something because you can get all of Puccini’s fantastic operas in one place, almost his entire life’s work (minus his exquisite Mass, but I’ll not [...]
Fanciulla from Puccini: The Complete Operas
By Daniel Felsenfeld
How weird is Puccini’s opera La Fanciulla del West (which translates roughly as “Girl of the Golden West”). I mean, its an Italian’s Frenchfied approach to the Wild Wild West. It is hard for us Americans (or certainly for this American), whose cowboys and swinging saloon doors are part of our own mythology, [...]
Last Bow to Broadway: The American Musical
By Daniel Felsenfeld
I’d say that disc two of Broadway: The American Musical is a great outline of commercial theatre coming into its own. It was the era of true greats throwing their first stones: Leonard Bernstein (here represented for On the Town and the inimitable West Side Story, about which more later of course) and [...]