Music and Theater
USA
- Metropolitan Opera. Some recent performances.
- 2008-09
- Amilcare Ponchielli La Gioconda. I've never heard it before. Dramatic plot, taking place in Venice (Ca d'Oro), fine music, great soprano voices: Deborah Voigt in the title role, Olga Borodina as Laura, and the moving, beautiful voice of Ewa Podles as the blind mother "La cieca". 27 Sept. 2008.
- Hector Berlioz La Damnation de Faust, Nov. 29, 2008. Superb music, great production, conducted by the maestro James Levine, featuring soprano Susan Graham, and daring 3d installation sets that worked out pretty well. Berlioz adapted Goethe's plot to his own interpretation, once again showing his genius and lack-of-conformity. The final gallop to hell had all the required powerful, spellbinding dramatism.
- Massenet's Thaiss, with Renee Fleming. Dec. 2008.
- Bellini's La Sonnambula, beautiful production with Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Flores. March 7, 2009.
- 2007-08
- Donizetti's dramatic Lucia di Lamermoor, with Natalie Dessay, 1 Oct. 2007. She was quite a show in the mad scene.
- Bellini's Norma, 23 Nov. 2007.
- Gluck's Ifigenia in Tauris, 11 Dec. 2007.
- Wagner's magnificent Tristan und Isolde, 28 March 2008. Moving, beautiful Wagnerian music, starting slow, catching up in act II and reaching its climax in the final scene with one of the most strikingly beautiful love-lost arias in the world of music, Isolde's Liebes Tod.
- 2006-07
- Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro. A fantastic production, even after the many I've seen and heard over the last 20 years. Each time, there is a new discovery, some piece of music that I never seem to have understood, or heard as intensely before. This time, the highlight was contessa's moving aria Dove sono i bei momenti, di dolcezza e di piacer and the conte's final 1-minute aria Contessa, perdona. Amazing how sincere he sounds (only Mozart can achieve this effect!), one is almost tempted to believe him!
- 2004-05
- Turandot, Feb. 2005. A beautifuly crafted Zefirelli's production, with Placido Domingo.
- 2003-04
- Rossini's L'Italiana in Algeri, 20 Feb. 2004. Great Rossini, one of my favorite opera-buffa. The "inspiring" aria of Isabella Van al diavolo and the amusing intrigues: what do you have to do to join the order of papataci? Eat, drink and have fun! Perfect message for Mustafa Bey.
- Hector Berlioz's Benvenutto Cellini, an Andrei Serban production, 12 Dec. 2003. Superb, one of the liveliest I've seen at the Met. An amusing scene, when Cellini's workers go "on strike" and carry a sign Greve generale!
- New York City Opera. Haendel's Rinaldo
- New York Philarmonic
- Lincoln Center
-
Carnegie Hall, New York.
-
Opera Orchestra of New York
- DiCapo Opera Theater
- The Amato Opera
- Brooklyn Academy of Music BAM
- Becket's Happy Days, 2 Feb. 2008.
- Eugene Ionescu's The Chairs, Dec. 2005.
- La Comedie Francaise performance of Moliere's Le malade imaginaire, June 2004. I knew, but never internalized it before, that Moliere died while performing in this role.
- Barrymore Theater on Broadway.
- Eugene Ionescu's Exit the King (Le roi se meurt), with Susan Sarandon. May 2009.
- St John the Divine
cathedral in NYC, concerts.
- St Bartolomew in New York, Music performances
- Corpus Christi Church, Sunday Afternoon "Music Before 1800" concerts.
- Philadelphia Orchestra at the new Kimmel Center.
- Opera Company of Philadelphia.
- Verdi's Don Carlos, with Ewa Podles. 7 Feb. 2004.
- People's Light and Theater Company, Malvern, PA.
- Moliere's L'Avare (The miser). 23 Oct. 2004.
- The Theater Alliance, Philadelphia
- Boston Symphony
- Princeton Music Department
-
Westminster Choir College Performances, Princeton NJ.
- An unforgettable rehearsal with Kurt Mazur and the Westminster Choir, back in 1993.
- Haendel's Oreste, set up in Japanese decor - excellent student performance.
- Toronto, Music Department.
- 4 March 2005, Haendel's Semele. One of my Haendel favorites, I never saw it live before. Student performed.
- OperaBase
-
McCarter Theater, Princeton NJ.
- Tanglewood
- Caramoor
- Sage Hall, Smith College
- Valley Light Opera, Amherst, MA
- Local productions.
- Verdi's Rigoletto, Northampton Academy of Music, Nov. 2007.
- Italy
- Milano, La Scala
- Donizetti's La fille du Regiment, a first for me. Colorful costumes, good high C's in the famous tenor aria Ah mes amis, but not overwhelming. 17 March 2006.
Later I discovered Pavarotti's amazing YouTube Pour mon ame performance and Juan Diego Flores, and finally understood why this can be such a hit. Too bad I missed the Met 2008 performance with Natalie Dessaye and Juan Diego Flores, the first solo Encore there for a tenor in the Pour mon ame aria since Pavarotti's.
- Germany
- Oper Frankfurt.
- Mussorgsky's Khovanschina, April 2005.
- Detlev Glanert's Caligula, a contemporary opera, world premiered in Frankfurt. March 13, 2009.
- Koelner Philarmonie, Feb. 2003. A superb Beethoven performance with Christophe Eschenbach.
- Hamburg, June 2005.
- Berlin
- Deutsche Oper Berlin
- Komische Oper Berlin
- Staatsoper Berlin
2006
- June 2006, Norma. Beautiful Casta Diva, the highlight of the opera, but the priestesses clad in "whirling dervishes" garb were less aluring.
- Sept. 2006, Donizetti's Maria Stuarda. Berlin premiere. Lively audience, half booing half bravo'ing the non-standard production, with Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart featured as two elderly women in a hospice (Mary is crippled and in a wheelchair), bitterly fighting each other all the way to the end.
- Oct. 2006, Mozart's Cosi fan Tutte. Set up as a 60's hippy story. There is never too much of Ferrando's Un'aura amorosa.
- 26 Oct. 2006, a few days before leaving Berlin. Mozart's Magic Flute. A great performance, with a historical touch, featuring the original Schinkel's sets: the Queen of the Night sings her dramatic, difficult area sitting on a crescent, upon a starry background. Amusing and livelyPapageno, the best I've seen in this role.
- Berliner Philarmoniker
- Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin
- Konzerthaus
- France
- Paris, Spring 2003.
- Opera de Nancy. June 2003, a nice performance of Wagner's Le Vaisseau Fantome, the Flying Dutchman or Der Fliegende Hollander.
- Russia
- Moscow
- StPetersburg, summer 2008.
- Mariinsky Theater of Opera and Ballet (Kirov), with an unmatchable, esquisitely beautiful curtain.
- Borodin's Prince Igor. Learned what a Terem Palace is (and later saw some terems in Novgorod).
- Sergey Prokofieff's Romeo and Juliet. A once-in-a-lifetime experience, one of the most beautiful performances I've ever seen. Ballet as perfect as it can be, in the world's ballet capital. July 2008.
- The Imperial Mikhailovsky Theatre.
- Queen of Spades, June 2008. The Summer Garden wrought iron fence is part of the local athmosphere.
- Glinka Capella
- Romania
I like to see, or listen to whole performances. Occasionally, it is nice to compare voices and interpretations, or to bring to mind an especially beautiful aria:
- Movies:
- YouTube selections
- Kiri Te Kanawa
- Kathleen Battle
- Diana Damrau
- Edda Moser, Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen, from Die Zauberflöte.
- Renee Fleming
- Jessye Norman
- Vesselina Kasarova
- Maureen O'Flynn
- Marilyn Horne
- Birgit Nielssen
- Waltraud Meier
- Nina Stemme
- Janet Baker
- Luciano Pavarotti
- Juan Diego Flores
- Samuel Ramey
- Dietrich Fischer-Diskau
- Philippe Jaroussky. Counter-tenor. Amazing voice!
- Andreas Scholl
- Leopold Simoneau
- Roberto Alagna
- Tito Schipa
- Rise Stevens
- Maria Callas
- Angela Gheorghiu
- Ewa Podles
- Elina Garanca
Operas
Ileana Streinu