Category Archives: Opera
Around the World in 73 Years
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 19th June 2025Memory is a highly fallible record of the past. This divergence from fact to fancy increases with age and its attendant distance from the recalled event, as well as the fog and confabulation that the accumulation of years inevitably accrues. Despite these difficulties, I started recalling all the cities in which I had heard serious…
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Opera Massacres III – Verdi and Wagner
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 13th June 2025So many different outsiders have controlled Sicily that if an alien power were to conquer Earth, it would likely start on that island. Among the temporary rulers of the place are the Greeks, the Carthaginians, the Romans, the Vandals, the Ostrogoths, the Byzantines, the Muslims, the Normans, the Angevin French, the Bourbons, and now the…
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Opera Massacres II – Berlioz and Saint-Saens
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 9th June 2025Hector Berlioz (1803-1860) completed three operas. The second of these, Les Troyens, is based on Books Two and Four of the Aeneid. Berlioz wrote the libretto himself. It took him two years to write the words and music for the opera, from 1856 to 1858. Most musicologists consider it to be his masterpiece. It’s as impressive…
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Opera Massacres I – Two by Meyerbeer
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 6th June 2025Death and opera are as linked as bacon and eggs. The subject of this short series of articles is wholesale death – death that kills not only the principals, but the supers as well. This grim occurrence often gets the composer’s best effort, which is my excuse for presenting it. I’ll start with Meyerbeer. He…
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Met Opera’s 25-26 HD Season
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 2nd June 2025The Metropolitan Opera has announced the operas that will be telecast next season. They are listed below. For further details about the telecasts and the upcoming season, please visit this link. A few comments about these shows. Two Bellini operas out of a total of eight is an oddity. The first of these will mark…
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The Barber of Seville in HD – 2025
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 31st May 2025Rossini is life. Nowhere is this vitality as evident as in his Barber. The 24 year old composer was already a veteran when he composed his paen to mirth and human folly. Bart Sher’s production dates back to 2006, but still works. The Barber is so good that it can survive almost anything thrown at…
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Salome in HD
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 17th May 2025The Met’s new production of Strauss’s Mach 2 one-act opera was telecast today. Director Claus Guth, who made his Met debut in this production, placed the location in a dark building in some hard to place time. It certainly wasn’t biblical Galilee or Perea. Before I get to the performance, a word about inflation. Up…
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Opera and Prisons
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 15th May 2025The subject is operas with prisons or prisoners as part, or all, of their story. I’ve got a dozen of them here. There are more, but 12 are enough. They’re not in chronological order, but rather as seems logical to me. The ultimate prison opera is of course Beethoven’s Fidelio. The entire work take place…
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Franco Corelli Interview
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 30th April 2025The video below is an interview with Franco Corelli (1921-2003) made around 1990. It’s in Italian, but it has English subtitles. The interviewer is not the most facile; nevertheless, Corelli’s comments are very interesting. Besides being on the short list of the greatest tenors of the last century, he was a sensitive and intelligent commentator…
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Mario Del Monaco in Recital
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 22nd April 2025Mario Del Monaco (1915-1985) was the great Italian dramatic tenor of the last century. The dramatic tenor is a rare specimen. He is distinguished from the spinto tenor by the baritonal timbre of his sound combined with powerful high notes reaching to C5. It is the voice Verdi had in mind when he wrote Otello….
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