Apropos Musik - Ö1 Radio offers Live Opera Excerpts from Vienna

Apropos Music is Vienna State Opera's radio magazine on Ö1 Radio. This week, they broadcast excerpts from live performances recorded last month (September 2013) at the Wiener Staatsoper. I really appreciate the opportunity to hear more “live” opera, even if only in excerpts. The musical performances include bits from La Traviata, Tosca, Carmen, Tristan und Isolde, Otello, and quite a few from Simon Boccenegra. Thanks to this program, I now know:

• I don't care for Massimo Giordano's voice in Verdi, but I can stand him in Puccini (but I wouldn’t go out of my way to hear him sing anything)
• Aleksandra Kurzak has a lovely voice (she sings Violetta here, and is also appearing in Daughter of the Regiment)
• Angelina Georgiou is still sounding pretty darned good
• Anja Harteros could sing the ABC song and still be awesome
• José Cura and Dmitri Hvorostovsky still have “it”
• I still have trouble recognizing Thomas Hampson’s singing voice; but I do recognize his speaking voice, and his German is pretty easy to understand (he is interviewed during the program, hence all the Simon Boccenegra excerpts)
• I find Joseph Calleja much less annoying than I used to
• Rinat Shaham is vastly underrated
• As much as I love the Ö1 app, it’s unreliable (on my phone, anyway) and therefore it can be quite frustrating.

The program was broadcast on Sunday, September 30, so we have a few more days to hear it via Ö1’s 7 Tage service. Now…about those alleged live streams from Vienna:


This just in from Intermezzo: Tomorrow night, Ö1 Radio will broadcast the Staatsoper premiere of Puccini's La Fanciulla del West starring Jonas Kaufmann, Nina Stemme, and Tomasz Konieczny (an outstanding and romantic Mandryka in Arabella last year.) See Intermezzo's post for more (most likely Europe-only) broadcast information.

The cowboy drag works much better for him than for her.