April 24, 2018 • 12:40 pm Comments Off on Handel in Omaha
One of the many remarkable moments from this past weekend at Opera Omaha’s ONE Festival.
Filed under: Handel, Opea Omaha
March 1, 2018 • 1:14 am 1
In the mood to ignore this brutal Siberian cold spell and enjoy tonight’s Serse from 1738 (the Stefan Herheim production, conducted by Konrad Junghänel) at the Komische Oper.
Writes Richard Wigmore:
‘One of the worst that Handel ever set to music’, ran a contemporary verdict on the libretto of Serse, whose ‘mixture of tragic-comedy and buffoonery’ fazed London audiences in 1738. History, of course, has had its revenge. Today the very qualities that puzzled its original hearers – the lightly ironic, occasionally farcical tone, the fluid structure (many short ariosos, relatively few full-dress da capo arias) – have made Serse one of Handel’s most attractive operas for stage directors and audiences alike. There are episodes of high seriousness, above all in the magnificent sequence of Act 2 arias beginning with Serse’s aria di bravura ‘Se bramate’. But much of the invention has an airy melodiousness, whether in the dulcet minuet songs for the coquettish Atalanta, or Serse’s invocation to a plane tree, ‘Ombra mai fu’, immortalised and sentimentalised as ‘Handel’s Largo’.
Complete Italian libretto here.
Filed under: Handel, Stefan Herheim
February 10, 2018 • 12:17 pm Comments Off on Handel in Los Angeles
Tomorrow night’s performance by the Los Angeles Master Chorale of Israel in Egypt by Handel is sold out. Not surprising, given the remarkable collaboration that is taking place.
The Master Chorale and Grant Gershon have teamed up with the Syrian-Armenian artist Kevork Mourad, who will provide his unique visual accompaniment to the music.
Here’s my essay for the program:
SLAVERY, PLAGUES, AND RESTORATION
“I’m struck by how the Exodus story has spoken to so many different peoples over the last three millennia — especially today, with so many refugee crises and displaced peoples,” says Los Angeles Master Chorale’s Kiki and David Gindler Artistic Director, Grant Gershon. “To me, the heart of the Exodus story is this miraculous and unique restoration of a people to their homeland.”
Filed under: Handel, Los Angeles Master Chorale
August 3, 2017 • 10:02 am Comments Off on Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered: Alcina Casts Surprising Spells in Santa Fe
Elsa van den Heever (Alcina) © Ken Howard for Santa Fe Opera, 2017
My review of Santa Fe Opera’s Alcina for Bachtrack:
George Bernard Shaw crystallised longstanding biases when he declared that Handel’s operas were “only stage concerts for shewing off the technical skill of the singers”. David Alden, a longstanding maverick director and hero of Regie-philes, made his reputation in part through his striking interpretations of Handel. If anything, his production of Alcina, which he first staged at the Opéra National de Bordeaux in 2012 (with many of the same singers), pushes too far in the opposite direction to the theatrically static fossil of Shaw’s stereotype.
Filed under: directors, Handel, review, Santa Fe Opera
February 16, 2017 • 11:05 am Comments Off on The Devil Gets the Best Tunes
Laurence Cummings (Photo by Robert Workman)
Here’s a piece I wrote for this month’s Juilliard Journal about Agrippina:
In one of Agrippina‘s pivotal scenes, the Emperor Claudius—at first presumed dead at sea by the scheming title character, only to be inconveniently rescued—crows in triumph over “conquered Britain” as a “new subject” for the Roman throne. That wouldn’t exactly be music to Brexit supporters—but, then, international migrants like George Frideric Handel (né Georg Friedrich Händel) would have had a harder time in a Europe of zealously policed borders.
April 12, 2016 • 4:39 pm Comments Off on Mr Handel
Keeping watch in his Brook St bedroom.
Filed under: Handel, photography
April 12, 2016 • 12:42 am Comments Off on Alexander’s Feast: A Handelian Ode to the Power of Music
My essay on Handel’s magnificent ode Alexander’s Feast has been posted on the LA Master Chorale Site:
It sounds strange to refer to George Frideric Handel as a neglected composer. Messiah is such a fixture that the holiday season would feel bereft were it suddenly to disappear from the scene. (Never mind that its association with Christmas postdates the practice during the composer’s lifetime.)
Filed under: choral music, Handel, Los Angeles Master Chorale
March 21, 2016 • 7:18 am Comments Off on Hidden Handel
Director Trevore Ross on staging Handel’s oratorios for the LA Master Chorale. First in their five-season-long project is Alexander’s Feast.
Filed under: choral music, directors, Handel, Los Angeles Master Chorale
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