Opera comique (seriously, it actually is!) in one act. Running Time: 1 hour. This post marks my 3rd year anniversary! Thank you to all readers! PHIL OF THE OPERA WORLD: Get ready to have your mind blown, somebody beat Weber to being Weber! French composer Mehul accomplishes this by using the violas, lots of violas, […]
Oratorio in four acts. Running Time: 2 hours 8 minutes. Genoveva is a work that must be understood within context, otherwise it makes little sense and will make you want to cut your own wrists out of sheer boredom. Written at the same time Wagner composed Lohengrin, (although no one of less stature than Wagner himself looked at […]
Opera en trois actes. Running Time: 2 hours 10 minutes. This review is of a 1941 live performance at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City of the French version using a 19th century style orchestra. This recording was released by Naxos and is available on Amazon Music. This was the second Reform Opera that Gluck […]
Cantata. Running Time: 30 minutes. Lili Boulanger was the first woman to win the Prix de Rome. She did so with this cantata for mezzo, tenor, baritone, and full orchestra, at the age of 19. Her life was cut short when she died at age 24 of either Tuberculosis or undiagnosed Crohn’s Disease. Her family […]
Opera in one act. Running Time: 1 hour 5 minutes. OperaScribe suggested this opera for comparison to Turandot. I will also be doing Iris by Mascagni soon for a comparison with Madama Butterfly. Leoni was a Milanese-born contemporary of Puccini so the comparisons are apt. Never as successful globally, he lived significantly longer, dying at age 84 in 1949 at Hampstead, […]
Opera in four acts. Running Time: 2 hours 18 minutes. As you all know, today is my 29th birthday and I always release a post on my birthday. I finished this one in April, although I had been working on it since January. Rimsky-Korsakov dedicated this score to Frederic Chopin and it possesses strong Polish […]
Opera semi-seria in three acts. Running Time: 2 hours 42 minutes. Opera likes to use mental illness as a theatrical element a lot. From mad scenes to mass-immolation, the genre has got it all. But rarely does opera present the probable mental illness of a real life historical figure as it does here, even though […]
Opera in tre atti. Running Time: 2 hours 6 minutes. This opera is a case of weird vocal casting. The lead is a baritone, which is fine, but the villainess (his wife) is a soprano, and the good girl (their daughter) is a mezzo-soprano. Their son (who was supposed to be dead) is a tenor […]
Opera in two acts. Running Time: 2 hours 47 minutes. The fifth of Rossini’s nine innovative scores for the San Carlo in Naples, Ricciardo e Zoraide (although perhaps the most darkly Teutonic and with very effective music, particularly for the tenors) has been critically considered to be the subjectively least interesting of the nine. Lord Byron claimed […]
Opera in four acts. Running Time: 2 hours 2 minutes. Portrait of Katerina Rosa Botzaris, daughter of Markos Botsaris, by Joseph Karl Stieler. Now, something different, a Greek opera! Actually this is a performance in Greek translation of an originally Italian-language opera by an Ionian composer which incorporates a hybrid (LOVE saying that word!) musical form: although […]
