Welcome to Opera Spy
Here, I post my reviews and document my love of opera. I hope you enjoy it. Please feel free to comment on any of my posts or contact me if you wish to.
Have a nice stay!
David Buchler
Here, I post my reviews and document my love of opera. I hope you enjoy it. Please feel free to comment on any of my posts or contact me if you wish to.
Have a nice stay!
David Buchler
Oh Sceptical Me. With my holier than thou values of opera viewing, going to see a drive-in opera left me foreshadowing a car crash of immense proportions. If this is what I was expecting then I was sorely disappointed. It turned out to be a fabulous night. ENO’s immensely talented Casting Director Michelle Williams had put together two mainly home grown, but exciting casts over nine nights.
Covid-19 had ravaged this part of Italy, including the Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago, but with typical Italian character and guile a reduced Festival starting in August has been possible, albeit at less than 40% capacity with constant Covid testing of artists and all involved. By using a more local fully Italian cast the Festival made it work and put on a real show. It is of course easier to downsize audience when you have nearly 3,500 seats to play with and a beautiful outdoor arena on the lake! Nevertheless there was a large number of medical staff available, temperatures were taken when you entered the grounds and masks were worn. Perhaps this was the first real Corona-Puccini Festival!
Probably the hottest opera ticket was the opening night of a reduced Salzburg Festival in its hundredth year anniversary. A few months ago it was almost inconceivable that there would be any festival at all in August, but as a result of continual Covid testing amongst artists, orchestra and theatre employees, together with proper zoning and social distancing, the first operatic notes were played, sung and streamed simultaneously to the pleasure of all present.
I have a list of approximately 20 opera scenes & arias that are amongst my favourites in the operatic repertoire. For my audience purpose, I have taken this list from YouTube, so not all my favourite recordings are in the list, but it is an extraordinary list with extraordinary singers and musicians and I hope you can take as much enjoyment from this group as I have in compiling them. I am dividing my list into groups of approximately six over the next few weeks to give you between 30 and 45 minutes of musical relaxation. Enjoy!
As the coronavirus approached its peak in Britain and the cobwebs grew larger at London’s Coliseum, there came sad news that the English National Opera’s illustrious head, Sir Peter Jonas, had passed away.
I have a list of approximately 20 opera scenes & arias that are amongst my favourites in the operatic repertoire. For my audience purpose, I have taken this list from YouTube, so not all my favourite recordings are in the list, but it is an extraordinary list with extraordinary singers and musicians and I hope you can take as much enjoyment from this group as I have in compiling them. I am dividing my list into groups of approximately six over the next few weeks to give you between 30 and 45 minutes of musical relaxation. Enjoy!
Verdi’s Luisa Miller opened in Naples at the end of 1849. It was his fifteenth opera and regarded as the beginning of his middle period. Based on Schiller’s play Intrigue and Love it never has had the popularity of some of Verdi’s other works and indeed its UK debut at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London was not until nearly 10 years after its premiere.
