Born Belle Miriam Silverman in 1929 in Brooklyn to immigrant parents she acquired the nickname “Bubbles” as a child. Its shadow stayed with her as a friendly reminder of her early days. She started singing when she was three and began vocal lessons at seven. She adopted her professional name Beverly Sills at nine. She…
Mexican composer Daniel Catán’s opera was the Metropolitan Opera’s third HD telecast of this season. The work was first performed by the Houston Grand Opera in 1996. This run is Florencia’s first appearance at the Met. Much has been made over two features of the opera neither of which has any bearing on its artistic…
Hector Berlioz was among the most innovative and original of all the great composers. His first opera loosely based on an episode from the Renaissance artist’s memoirs was written in 1838. It sounds like nothing that preceded it. The music moves like the molten metal that is used to cast Cellini’s famous statue of Perseus…
Dialogues des Carmélites (Dialogues of the Carmelites) is an opera in three acts with music and libretto by Francis Poulenc. It is the story of the Martyrs of Compiègne, Carmelite nuns who, in 1794 during the closing days of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution, were guillotined in Paris for refusing to renounce…
X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X was telecast today. As a piece of sophisticated parochialism it will grip the hearts of Upper West Side New Yorkers who regularly attend the Met. If you seek a work for the lyric theater that touches a spark common to all men you will not find it…
Last night the Met presented its first performance of the late Daniel Catán’s opera Florencia en el Amazonas. It takes place on a boat traveling down the Amazon to Manaus. Florencia is a legendary opera singer who’s lost her lover. I will have to wait for the telecast to comment on its staging so my…
The Met’s first HD telecast of this season ended with a whimper – a dead screen and no sound. The transmission stopped when the murderer De Rocher was strapped to a gurney and was being executed. After that nothing. No reprise of the hymn-like song sung by Sister Helen, no applause, no curtain calls, no…
Salvatore Fisichella was born in 1943 in Catania Sicily to a noble family distinguished in diplomacy, jurisprudence, philosophy, and theology since the 17th century. He was opera’s leading bel canto tenor for the last 30 years of the last century and into the first few years of the 21st century. Known for the elegance of his singing as well…
Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra was first performed in 1857. It achieved a very modest success. Verdi thought about revising it for many years. With Arrigo Boito as his librettist, he finished a major overhaul of the work in 1881. Boito’s work on the revised libretto was a test drive for his suitability as Verdi’s collaborator on…
Giuseppe Verdi was born October 9th (or 10th) 1813. Starting with the appearance of his third opera Nabucco in 1842 he has been the most popular of operatic composers. At first musical scholars were divided as to his artistic worth. Some thought him a popularizer who was not close to the artistic merit of Richard…