be very afeard

Random thoughts on Alcina at Carnegie Hall, as scribbled on the fly in a notebook in the  wayback:

Di', cor mio -- OMG, as the young people say.

Ruggiero, dude, don't cut yourself on that dress. 

killer cello obbligato!

Tornami a vagheggiar -- effect on foetus in utero? Recheck 20 years.

Mi lusinga -- hearing Alice Coote sing this is like falling backwards into a goosefeather barcalounger.

Verdi prati -- strings go all mingey when the beauty vanishes. Ew.

Ombre pallide -- yeah yeah, guess how that was LOL

___________________

Overheard at Intermission:

"She's a villain, you know."

"And if we didn't know, the dress would tell us!"

___________________

more killer cello obbligato!!

The dress erodes as the power does

Rage! Look out how she handles that score!

"Bring your Gorgon shield!" Really this opera is all about accessorizing.

Sta nell'ircana -- Horns! and vehement page-turning!

Man these scores get a workout, hope they didn't rent them.

Barbara! -- Wakey!

                   let me introduce you to my fully-armed and operational cadenza.

If you want to know how spectacular this performance was, I really have nothing to add to Earworm's assessment.

a blood red parachute

Oh hey, so Matthias Goerne happens to be in town to jump into tonight's Wozzeck, replacing Thomas Hampson, who has apparently contracted the House Plague.* AND it's streaming free right here at 7:30 ET. Other fun points are Deborah Voigt making her role debut as Marie, and James Levine back on the podium.

*This may or may not be the same plague that took Kaufmann out of Werther on Monday and replaced him with this guy, who, from the vantage point of SiriusXM, was pretty excellent.

sundry items

Culturebox has Théâtre du Châtelet's Einstein on the Beach from last week archived here for a good long while. 

Some cool concert stuff is housed on Trinity Wall Street's website, including this hour with BEMF regulars Robert Mealy (baroque violin) and Avi Stein (harpsichord and organ). 

Bard Summerscape's 2014 opera will be Weber's Euryanthe. Details will no doubt materialize somewhere around here at some point. 

This Digital Theatre thing is pretty excellent, in a Where have you been all my life kinda way. 

In that same vein, having had a fair success with streaming opera (we imagine), the Guardian now ventures into streaming theater: Howard Brenton's Drawing the Line, about the partition of India, is up live this Saturday at 2:30pm ET. Reviews from Guardian and Arts Desk.

For those contemplating a road trip to Glimmerglass this summer, Induction Weekend at the Baseball Hall of Fame is July 25-28.  Don't pick that weekend if you need a room or restaurants within forty miles. Oh wait, they're inducting Joe Torre...make that eighty miles.

sundry items

So. Summer. That went fast. Here's the recap: Boston Early Music Festival, Old Songs, BEMF Almira redux @ Great Barrington, Bryn Terfel @ Ozawa Hall, Don Carlos Day @ Caramoor, Richard II @ Lenox, Mahler 3 @ Tanglewood, Curlew River/Dido & Aeneas @ Ozawa Hall, Dutchman/King for a Day/Passions/Camelot @ Glimmerglass, Written on Skin @ Ozawa Hall, Dutchman/King for a Day @ Glimmerglass again, Mother Courage @ Lenox.

A few days to catch the breath and, y'know, show up for work, and then it's opening day at the Met already. Onegin-related festivities begin this Monday, 9/23, at 6:30 on Sirius or streaming live at the Met website.

Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music beats them to the punch, though, live video streaming their student production of Le Nozze di Figaro tonight, 9/20 and tomorrow at 8pm EST. Different casts each night, a good place to catch the next generation.


If you're within broadcast range of Americanistanian Public Broadcasting, Great Performances has finally seized The Hollow Crown. Ostensibly starts tonight but check local listings, as I'm not sure if GP will post it to their website. UPDATE: Yes, it's here. When you've sorted through all that political and familial dysfunction, then go to the Space for the Globe's battlefield HenryVI. It's shouty but entertaining. Uh, you'll have to scrounge a Richard III, sorry. It all ends in Tudors, but that's another miniseries and will be shown another time.

pitchers & catchers

So while we're rifling through stacks of virtual papers trying to find the George Eliot money quote on Don Carlos the play (and like most things encountered in graduate lit classes, it may have been only a dream), this might be a good time to point out that the next free Met webcast is Don Carlo the opera, this Friday at 7pm Eastern, at the usual place.  (That's the opener with Vargas, Frittoli, Smirnova, Hvorostovsky, Furlanetto, Halfvarson, and Maazel on the mound in the pit, for anyone keeping a scorecard.)