Category Archives: Uncategorized

Riccardo Muti is Saving Opera: Un Ballo in Maschera

The dean of opera critics has stated the problem best: “I have said that in today’s  operatic world too much territory is ceded to the realm of the eye; that even within this realm too much attention is  paid to physical production and not enough to performance and that auteuristic privileges  claimed by directors and […]

SINGING SAVES STONE’S CAMPY LUCIA AT THE MET

  In 1964 the literary critic Susan Sontag published the definitive work “On Camp”’ in which she defined the genre as loving “the unnatural, the artificial, the exaggerated.” In art, Camp’s exaggeration proceeds from both passion and naiveté, both of which opera director Simon Stone employed in his production of Lucia di Lammermoor at the […]

STEPPENWOLF’S SEAGULL SOARS IN NEW TRANSLATION, NEW THEATRE

The almost half century old Steppenwolf Theatre opened its new 600 seat Ensemble Theater with a beautiful new translation of Anton Chekhov’s historic play, directed by the translator  Yasen Peyankov. The Seagull, directed by Konstantin Stanislavski for the new Moscow Art Theater, established the Russian theater as one of the finest in the world, and […]

LYRIC OPERA’S MAGIC FLUTE: SAD AND SOULLESS

Chicago’s first Magic Flute played on Tuesday evening, January 17, 1865. Carl Anschutz (1813-1870) conducted. In January 1864 Leonard Grover (1833-1926) brought to Chicago the first real German opera troupe for fifteen performances at the recently remodeled  McVicker’s Theater at Madison and Dearborn,  among them Mozart’s The Magic Flute. The city’s German population was very […]

MUTI AND THE CSO RETURN

Classical music organizations have always looked for ways to expand their repertoire beyond the tried-and-true canon. New symphonies and operas have been commissioned almost from the beginning of the group’s founding. The problem is that the new works have a short life span; few, if any, ever have a life beyond their premiere. Artistic directors […]