Viardot vs Grisi

Following the successful Parisian debut of his Lucie di Lammermoor at the Theatre de la Rennaissance in August of 1839, Gaetano Donizetti moved swiftly to establish himself in the nineteenth century’’s most prestigious musical capital by announcing four additional premieres in the city of lights.…

On Saturday November 4th, the Atlanta Opera opened its 38th season by unveiling a new production of Wagner’s “The Flying Dutchman”. “The Flying Dutchman,” or “Der Fliegende Hollander,” is the only Wagnerian work that the Atlanta Opera has staged in its thirty eight year history, and as we walked out of the auditorium following Friday night’s performance, your friends at newoutpost could not contain the flood of thoughts that we humbly offer here as the introduction to our write up.…

Back in 2003, when scheduling issues forced the company to leave its home at the Fox Theater, the company was found itself moving to the nearby Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic center. Opera patrons of that period will recall a barn like venue, not constructed with the acoustics in mind to flatter the operatic genre.…

This past Sunday, Opera Carolina made a significant leap forward in the southeastern operatic scene by unveiling its staging Puccini’s unjustly neglected masterpiece, La Fanciulla del West. While the opera has enjoyed a healthy amount of attention at the major operatic hubs periodically, it has been considered a high gamble for regional companies, which routinely overlook it in favor of its assumingly less chancier siblings (Tosca, La Boheme and Madama Butterfly).…

Last Saturday night, as the audience readied itself for the Atlanta Opera’s opening performance of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale for the first time in the company’s history, the ante was unexpectedly raised. Following his customary salutations and the announcement of next season’s offerings, General Artistic Director Tomer Zvulun reported on the indisposition of the evening’s Ernesto, tenor Ji-Min Park, and confidently predicted an overwhelming success for his cover, Argentinian tenor Santiago Ballerini.…

Absent from its stage for 22 years, Verdi’s Macbeth returned to the New Orleans Opera this past weekend for two performances (November 11 and 13 to be exact). As it came to pass, your friends at newoutpost just happened to be in town on unrelated business and invariably asked “What better way to cap the most intense and distasteful presidential campaign in our lifetime than to simmer in the dark world of Macbeth?”…

The Atlanta Opera opened its 2016-17 season this past Saturday October 8^th with a delightful presentation of Mozart’s singspiel Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail. Though the opera does not enjoy top tier status in the international repertoire, it has been championed by the Atlanta Opera company twice before, and the opera’s 2006 production even marked the company’s first (and to this day, only) pre-recorded broadcast for local radio.…

Following the tremendous success of their first operatic collaboration Silent Night, the team of Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell are at it again, offering a riveting operatic adaptation of Richard Condon’s The Manchurian Candidate. The opera debuted in Minnesota in 2015 to great enthusiasm, and premiered regionally at the Austin Opera this past Saturday, September 17 to thunderous ovations.…

To close its 2015-16 season, The Atlanta Opera tipped its hat to French Grand opera and unveiled a star-studded production of Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette this past Saturday. While all opera is dependent on singers of not only extraordinary technical pedigree but also of a musical understanding of how language informs declamation, Grand French opera relies on the latter more heavily so, making Romeo et Juliette notoriously difficult to cast. …

On the evening of March 4^th, the Washington Concert Opera closed its 2015-16 season with a wildly applauded performance of Donizetti’s grand opera “Le Favorite”. Central to the performance’s success was the work of maestro Antony Walker, who remains a tireless champion of the Bel Canto repertoire represented through this unjustly neglected piece. …