There's nothing that comes close to standing on the stage looking out into the horseshoe of an opera house and seeing thousands in their seats with their attention on you as you're about to deliver your big aria. While not on the scale of The Met in New York, the opulence of The ROH in London, the pedigree of La Scala in Milan or the legend of La ( Read more... )

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"...Caballe was scheduled to make her stage debut at the historically important Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, singing Liu to Birgit Nilsson's Turandot. All did not go well, however. From the very first rehearsal, Montserrat came into conflict with the conductor, Fernando Previtali, who... kept insisting, however, that she sing her Act 1 aria ' ( Read more... )

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Last evening's Puccini Gala closed with what else but the crowd-pleasing Nessun dorma. To say it was to save the best for last wouldn't have been far from the truth, and definitely not in a tired-cliché way ( Read more... )

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More so than the "star-vehicle" of "Un bel di", my preference has always been for "Che tua madre", on so many levels so much more affecting and sincere. While the soprano is bound to get leeway for applause in "Un bel di", the same cannot be said for "Che tua madre" where the intensity of the moment would have been lost if the conductor had made a ( Read more... )

Those of you with post-Olympics withdrawal symptoms have cause for celebration. For a limited run only, you get a repeat of gymnastics, a preview of nanquan as well as the whole hog of Chinoiserie that heralded the start, duration and finish of the Beijing 2008 games ( Read more... )