Category Archives: Opera
College’s Vocal/Choral Program Struts its Stuff
Just a few blogs back I told you that the choral arts are alive and well in Charleston – make that WORLD-CLASS well. And that’s just part of the vital and rapidly growing vocal music scene at the College of Charleston’s School of the Arts (SOTA). The quality and diversity of the Vocal/Choral Program have […]
Impending Eargasms: Vocal, Chamber and Symphonic happenings
A busy musical weekend looms, beginning tomorrow evening (8:00 p.m., Friday, Oct 26th) with a gala vocal scholarship benefit concert at the College of Charleston’s Simons Center Recital Hall. The College’s vocal/choral programs have never been better – and your support will help keep their efforts on an upward curve. Featured will be the College’s […]
R.I.P. Bubbles
We lost one of America’s greatest-ever musicians and arts champions last week. Yup, “Bubbles” is what they called her, from infancy … ’cause Beverly Sills was one of the most relentlessly cheerful folks out there. She was also a spectacular coloratura soprano, and America’s pioneering home-grown operatic diva: one of the first to buck the […]
Mahagonny? We Still Live There
– The final installment of my promised opera overview.
Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny was Spoleto’s magnum operatic opus this time ‘round. Just about everybody around here who’s written about it has also raved about it. I don’t need to go into great detail here – just take a look at […]
Faustus: Sharing the Nightmare
Before I experienced Pascal Dusapin’s Faustus, the Last Night in the flesh, I suppose I knew what to expect better than most – as I’d already seen a DVD of the opera (more about that one later). Having found the recording rather disturbing, I approached the real thing with a mixed sense of foreboding and […]
Opera Overview
Well, I managed to get to all the operas this time – and in the first week, too. But other blogging priorities kept me from getting to them here in “Eargasms.” It’s just as well; I’ve had time to stew about them and discuss them with others (not that what anybody told me changed my […]
Amahl, Great Joy with a Little Frustration
Gian Carlo Menotti’s classic Christmas tale, Amahl and the Night Visitors, captured the hearts of Americans in the 1950’s and sent thousands of television viewers on their first foray into the seemingly erudite realm of opera. Indeed, it can claim the distinction of being the first work of this nature specifically composed for the small […]
L’Ile de Merlin, reviewed
Well, it looks like I get off easy — cause all you have to do to get to my full review of that frothy confection is to click here. I hope to blog about it later, in Spoleto’s broader operatic context. But for now, enjoy!
I Got Merlined
Folks — it’s nearly 2:00 AM, and I just finished my review of L’Ile de Merlin for the next issue (deadline’s in just a few hours), and Sunday’s an early day for me. So forgive me if I forget about blogging for a few hours and crash … I’ll make it up to you later […]
One Last Spoletogasp
It’s hard to believe it’s over — that it’s been over, for more than a week. It seems like a rich, juicy dream of musical gluttony. But it must’ve happened: I emerged from my usual semi-comatose post-Spoleto state this morning to find my own festival music overview on the streets in today’s City Paper (and […]