Mozart wrote some wonderful music in Idomeneo for his wind players, who were up to the task under the capable baton of David Angus.
Reviewed By Caldwell Titcomb
Turning out an enormous amount of music in a host of genres during his short life (1756–91), Mozart felt that opera was his most important task. It was [...]

By Caldwell Titcomb
April 1: Ursula Oppens, long a champion of contemporary music (and a 1965 honors graduate of Harvard), presents a free piano recital under the auspices of the Blodgett Distinguished Artists Series. The program includes John Corigliano’s “Winging It,” William Bolcom’s “Ballade,” Tobias Picker’s “Three Nocturnes,” the world premiere of Charles Wuorinen’s “Oros,” several [...]

Reviewed By Caldwell Titcomb
I was not able to catch Ariadne auf Naxos until the last of six performances that the Boston Lyric Opera (BLO) presented at the Shubert Theatre. By this time everything was clicking superbly—both the singers and the instrumentalists in the pit. What we got was a production that the BLO imported from [...]

By Caldwell Titcomb
March 2: The Contemporary Music Ensemble in residence at Boston University, Alea III, under the direction of Theodore Antoniou, offers a free concert in celebration of the late eminent composer/teacher/conductor Lukas Foss (1922–2009). Works by Foss to be performed are “Echoi,” “For Toru,” “Elegy for Anne Frank,” “For Aaron,” “The Prairie,” and “Behold! [...]

Reviewed By Caldwell Titcomb
The Boston Lyric Opera (BLO) initiated this week what it calls Opera Annex by moving out of its usual venue for its production of Benjamin Britten’s opera The Turn of the Screw. The site chosen was the Park Plaza Castle, built in 1891 as a Boston armory.
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By Caldwell Titcomb
The Boston Lyric Opera (BLO) is currently offering Georges Bizet’s “Carmen,” his last completed and finest opera, which had its delayed and unsuccessful premiere in 1875. According to Opera America, “Carmen” ranks No. 4 in the list of most performed works from the 1880s to 2005, surpassed only by Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” and [...]

By Caldwell Titcomb
Nov 1: Dinosaur Annex celebrates the 80th birthday of composer Yehudi Wyner with two of his works, plus music by David Liptak, Stefan Hakenberg & others. Wyner will himself perform. Goethe-Institut Boston, 170 Beacon Street, Boston, at 7:30 p.m. (Talk with composers at 6:30 p.m.)
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By Caldwell Titcomb

In “The Bartered Bride,” Jennifer Aylmer plays Marenka, who loves the farmhand Jenik, but is pressured to marry Vasek, the son of a wealthy neighbor.
Boston has had the unusual luck of experiencing two major Czech operas within a few weeks. First, the Boston Lyric Opera gave us Antonin Dvořák’s “Rusalka” (see [...]

By Caldwell Titcomb
Czech opera is not often mounted in these parts. The two major composers were Bedrich Smetana (1824-84) and Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904). The latter wrote ten operas, some comic and some tragic. Among Czech natives, the palm goes to the latter’s “Rusalka,” the composer’s penultimate opera, written in 1900.

The Wood Sprites (mezzo-soprano Emily [...]

By Caldwell Titcomb

The scientist Spalanzani (tenor Neal Ferreira) strikes an unlikely deal with the nefarious inventor Coppélius (baritone Gaétan Laperrière) in the BLO’s fine production of “Tales of Hoffmann.”
One of history’s most famous and beloved French operas wasn’t written by a native Frenchman. “The Tales of Hoffmann” came from the pen of Jacques Offenbach (1819-80), [...]