ionarts

• 

  Glimmerglass: 'Lost in the Stars'

  Posted: 30-July-2012, 3:29pm EDT by Charles T. Downey

  Weill, Lost in the Stars, G. Hopkins, A. Woodley, Orchestra of St. Luke's, J. Rudel Charles T. Downey, Weill?s ?Lost in the Stars? proves a bit lost itself at Glimmerglass (The Classical Review, July 29) After many seasons mounting four operas each summer, the Glimmerglass Festival is presenting only two operas this year, while it spends the other half of its budget on musicals. Glimmerglass?s

  
  

• 

  Glimmerglass: 'Armide'

  Posted: 30-July-2012, 4:06pm EDT by Charles T. Downey

  Lully, Armide, G. Laurens, H. Crook, V. Gens, Collegium Vocale, La Chapelle Royale, P. Herreweghe Charles T. Downey, Glimmerglass scores with a colorful, sumptuous ?Armide? (The Classical Review, July 29) Baroque opera, thankfully, is flourishing at the Glimmerglass Festival. The willingness to stage operas from the century and a half before Mozart ? Monteverdi, Handel, Purcell, Gluck, and

  
  

• 

  Glimmerglass: 'Aida'

  Posted: 30-July-2012, 12:22am EDT by Charles T. Downey

  Verdi, Aida, M. Caballé, P. Domingo, New Philharmonia Orchestra, R. MutiCharles T. Downey, A fine ?Aida? cast gets water-boarded by clumsy staging at Glimmerglass (The Classical Review, July 29) Nestled on the idyllic shores of New York?s picturesque Otsego Lake, between the Adirondack and Catskill Mountains and just north of Cooperstown, is the home of the Glimmerglass Festival. With a

  
  

• 

  In Brief: Green Hill Edition

  Posted: 29-July-2012, 7:53am EDT by Charles T. Downey

  Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to online audio, online video, and other good things in Blogville and Beyond. (After clicking to an audio or video stream, press the "Play" button to start the broadcast.) Listen to the performance of Der Fliegende Holländer, the one that was supposed to have featured Evgeny Nikitin, from the opening of the Bayreuth Festival. [France Musique] At

  
  

• 

  Glimmerglass: Let's Put on a Show!

  Posted: 28-July-2012, 7:43pm EDT by Charles T. Downey

  One of the more recent summer opera festivals in the northeast is Glimmerglass, with a rural theater outside of Cooperstown, N.Y. Styling itself the Glimmerglass Festival since last season, one of the changes instituted by current artistic and general director Francesca Zambello, who was appointed in the fall of 2010. Since the late 1980s, when it opened a new theater, Glimmerglass has presented

  
  

• 

  A Century of Toys and More @ MoMA

  Posted: 27-July-2012, 2:36pm EDT by Mark Barry

  In 1900, Swedish design reformer and social theorist Ellen Key published Century of the Child, a manifesto for change -- social, political, aesthetic, and psychological -- that presented the universal rights and well-being of children as the defining mission of the century to come.Those were the days, at the turn of the last century, when children were adults and brought home a pay check -- or a

  
  

• 

  À mon chevet: 'Pauline Kael'

  Posted: 26-July-2012, 7:02am EDT by Charles T. Downey

  À mon chevet is a series of posts featuring a quote from whatever book is on my nightstand at the moment. With all of the enthusiasm New Yorkers showed for the movies, it wasn't surprising that the activities of the New York Film Critics Circle were more frequently reported than they had been in years. Pauline was, by 1970, an integral member, having been admitted in 1968, following her

  
  

• 

  Tanglewood at 75

  Posted: 25-July-2012, 2:30pm EDT by Charles T. Downey

  Schoenberg / Liszt, Piano Concertos, E. Ax, Philharmonia Orchestra, E.-P. Salonen Ives, Three Places in New England (chamber orch. version), Boston Symphony Orchestra, M. Tilson Thomas Stravinsky, Petruchka (1911 version), New York Philharmonic, P. Boulez Charles T. Downey, Tanglewood continues its traditions with student musicians tackling Ives (The Classical Review, July 24) In 1936,

  
  

• 

  Bayreuth and its Swastikas - Dutchman Overboard

  Posted: 25-July-2012, 3:27pm EDT by jfl

  updated, 7.26.12 Today the Bayreuth Festival opens its gates with The Flying Dutchman, broadcast live on BR Klassik. The Dutchman will be sung by the German-based South Korean bass-baritone Samuel Youn. It might well be best to hear the broadcast of this performance, rather than see it in the theater, since Mr. Youn (vocally fine, dramatically nothing to write home about) was cast last minute,

  
  

• 

  Anton Kuerti's Beethoven

  Posted: 24-July-2012, 7:20am EDT by Charles T. Downey

  Beethoven, Complete Piano Sonatas / Diabelli Variations, A. Kuerti In the exhaustive survey of complete Beethoven piano sonata cycles compiled by Jens Laurson, Anton Kuerti's traversal, recorded in the mid-1970s, does not come in for much praise. "Interesting, but hardly essential," is how Jens sums it up, and I cannot really disagree. It is true that the Austro-Canadian pianist is not the