February 4, 2020 • 1:53 am Comments Off on A Chat with Nicholas McGegan
Nicholas McGegan conducting Juilliard415 in 2019
Ahead of his upcoming Juilliard projects, I spoke with the always delightful Nicholas McGegan.
A new year and decade: 2020 brings some major milestones for eminent conductor, harpsichordist, and flutist Nicholas McGegan…
Filed under: conductors, early music, Handel, Juilliard
July 8, 2019 • 10:29 am Comments Off on Review of San Francisco Opera Season Closers
Sasha Cooke as Orlando and Christian Van Horn as Zoroastro in Handel’s “Orlando.” Photo (c) Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera
In addition to the wondrous Rusalka that was — by consensus, it seems — the highlight of the 2019 summer season — I wrote for Musical America about the company’s productions of Carmen and Orlando here
Overall, I found the Carmen deeply disappointing on account of misguided direction — direction that also worked against the cast. Orlando, on the other hand, was engaging and beautifully produced. Despite some miscasting, it offered an insightful interpretation of one of Handel’s richest scores.
SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco Opera made a bold move when it last presented Carmen only three years ago, at the end of the David Gockley era. It marked the first-ever North American platform for the highly controversial Catalan director Calixto Bieito, and — in spite of some flaws (the revival was actually directed by a longtime Bieito associate) — offered genuinely fresh perspectives.
Filed under: directors, Georges Bizet, Handel, Musical America, review, San Francisco Opera
November 15, 2018 • 4:38 am Comments Off on Byron Schenkman & Friends Explore Handel’s Italian Cantatas
Sunday evening’s Byron Schenkman & Friends program looks delicious: focusing on two early cantatas by Handel (including Vedendo Amor from his sojourn in Rome), it also includes some of his instrumental music plus pieces by Domenico Scarlatti, Antonio Caldara, and Anna Bon.
For some background, here’s my piece in this month’s Juilliard Journal on Handel in Rome (on p. 16).
Complete program:
George Frideric Handel:
Sonata in G Major, op. 1, no. 5, for flute and continuo
Domenico Scarlatti:
Four keyboard sonatas, K. 238, K. 239, K. 99, K. 100
George Frideric Handel:
Cantata “Vedendo Amor” for voice and continuo
Antonio Caldara:
Cantata “Soffri, mio caro Alcino” for voice and continuo
Anna Bon:
Sonata in F Major, op. 1, no. 2, for flute and continuo
George Frideric Handel:
Cantata “Mi palpita il cor” for voice, flute, and continuo
Performers:
Reginald Mobley
COUNTERTENOR
Joshua Romatowski
FLUTE
Nathan Whittaker
CELLO
Byron Schenkman
HARPSICHORD
Concert starts 7pm on Sunday 18 November at Benaroya’s Nordstrom Recital Hall.
Tickets here.
Filed under: Byron Schenkman, Handel, Juilliard
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
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
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