Five Flute Friday (Magic Flutes, that is!)

ROH, 2008

Salzburg, 2006

Royal Concertgebouw, 1995
Act 1

Act 2



Hamburg Oper, 1971

Kenneth Brannagh Film, 2006
Act 1

Act 2

In Memorium Nikolaus Harnoncourt

RIP Nikolaus Harnoncourt: cellist, conductor, musicologist, musician, artist. This man helped influence my love of Bach (through his chamber music recordings, the B-minor Mass, St. Matt Passion, the Gamba sonatas, and, especially his participation in the intrepid Bach cantata series on Telefunken). Later he taught me to listen to Mozart (and Beethoven and Schumann, and even Brahms and Verdi) in different ways. Fortunately, his expansive recorded legacy ensures that he will always be with us.

Speaking of Mozart, here is the finale from his quintessential 2003 La Clemenza di Tito.

Opera from Salzburg (and beyond) on Medici.TV

I tuned in to medici.tv this afternoon just in time to see the curtain calls (live) for Il Trovatore. But not to worry, it will be available in archive very soon. Some additional exciting opera performances from the Salzburger Festspiele are (or will be) on medici.tv this month. And they feature some of our favorite singers, including DR, LP, and MS.

I like what I've seen/heard so far of Don G. First of all, any production with Brando and Luca is going to look and sound good. And when Donna Elvira enters a muddy, torn wedding gown, immediately heads for the bar, skips the glass and goes straight for the bottle, you know it's going to be an interesting ride! (Not to mention Anna poking Ottavio in the chest with the knife that offed her father...she seemed to actually be holding the knife (trying to get it away from DG) when it killed her dad. I am interested to see where they go with that!)


Mozart: Don Giovanni

Lenneke Ruiten (Donna Anna) 

Anett Fritsch (Donna Elvira) 
Valentina Nafornita (Zerlina) 
Ildebrando D’Arcangelo (Don Giovanni) 
Luca Pisaroni (Leporello) 
Tomasz Konieczny (Il Commendatore) 
Andrew Staples (Don Ottavio) 
Alessio Arduini (Masetto)

Sommerakademie of the Vienna Philharmonic 
Philharmonia Chor Wien 
Wiener Philharmoniker 

Christoph Eschenbach conductor
Sven-Eric Bechtolf stage director
Rolf Glittenberg set designer
Marianne Glittenberg costumes
Friedrich Rom lighting
Ronny Dietrich dramaturgy
Walter Zeh chorus master

Verdi: Il Trovatore

Anna Netrebko (Leonora) 

Marie-Nicole Lemieux (Azucena) 
Diana Haller member of the young singers project (Ines) 
Francesco Meli (Manrico) 
Plácido Domingo (Count di Luna) 
Riccardo Zanellato (Ferrando) 
Gerard Schneider member of the young singers project (Ruiz) 
Miloš Bulajić member of the young singers project (A Messenger) 
Raimundas Juzuitis member of the young singers project (An Old Gypsy)

Members of the Angelika Prokopp Sommerakademie of the Vienna Philharmonic 
Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus 
Wiener Philharmoniker

Daniele Gatti conductor 

Alvis Hermanis stage director, set designer
Eva Dessecker costumes
Gleb Filshtinsky lightings
Ineta Sipunova video
Gudrun Hartmann associate director
Uta Gruber-Ballehr associate set designer
Ronny Dietrich dramaturgy
Ernst Raffelsberger chorus master

And Coming Soon:

Schubert: Fierrabras

Broadcast date : Aug. 25, 2014, 1 p.m. EST

Julia Kleiter (Emma)
Dorothea Röschmann (Florinda)
Marie-Claude Chappuis (Maragond)
Michael Schade (Fierrabras)
Georg Zeppenfeld (King Karl)
Markus Werba (Roland)
Benjamin Bernheim (Eginhard)
Peter Kálmán (Boland)

Members of the Angelika Prokopp 
Sommerakademie of the Vienna Philharmonic
Wiener Philharmoniker 

Ingo Metzmacher conductor 

Peter Stein stage director
Ferdinand Wögerbauer set designer
Annamaria Heinreich costumes
Joachim Barth lighting
Ernst Raffelsberger chorus master

This Just in from Switzerland:

There's also a quite nice concert performance of  Beethoven's Fidelio from the Verbier Festival. Nicely sung, and OKly acted. The singers did their best, I guess, but it looks like, with a little stage direction, they could have done so much more with the drama. I'd love to see a stage director have a bit of input in concert performances of opera. Although EN seems to be the biggest name there, I thought he was well outshone by Messers Gleadow and Jovanovich (hooray for North American singers) and Frau Brimberg (another exciting sound from Sweden.) The ingenues, the phantom baritone (Don F.), and M. Minkowski all did a great job, too. 

Ingela Brimberg (Leonore)
Brandon Jovanovich (Florestan)
Evgeny Nikitin (Don Pizarro)
Robert Gleadow (Rocco)
Sylvia Schwartz (Marzelline)
Bernard Richter (Jaquino)
Charles Dekeyser (Don Fernando)

Collegiate Chorale 
Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra 
Marc Minkowski conductor 

Alexander's Feast – Röschmann, Schade, Finley, and Harnoncourt

Unfortunately, Nikolaus Harnoncourt was not well enough to conduct a performance of Haydn's Seasons for this year's Internationale Barocktage Stift Melk (Michael Schade, Artistic Director). The upside is, in its place, Ö1 re-broacast this 2001 Festival performance (the first year Herr Schade participated in the festival):

Georg Friedrich Händel: 

Alexander's Feast or The Power of Music

Dorothea Röschmann, Soprano

Michael Schade, Tenor

Gerald Finley, Bass

Arnold Schoenberg Chor

Concentus Musicus Wien

Nikolaus Harnoncourt

Recorded December 7, 2001 in the Stiftskirche Melk

Bonus: If you'd rather watch and listen, I just came across this: 

Lieder in a Foreign Land – Two Recitals on Radio 4 Concerthuis

For about 20 more days you can listen to Austrian Florian Boesch singing in England and Michael Schade (oft described as German/ Canadian) singing in Switzerland.

Here is Herr Boesch's recent Wigmore Hall recital of Schubert and Wolf, accompanied by Malcolm Martineau.

And here is Herr Schade's Freiberg program of mostly Schubert and Beethoven, accompanied by Justus Zeyen and recorded in June 2013.

Happy Listening!

Watching the Radio – Gösta Winberg (and others) on Ö1 Radio

Apropos Musik on Ö1 Radio remembers Swedish tenor Gösta Winbergh just a week before what would have been his seventieth birthday, in a program called: Not just a Mozart Tenor – Gösta Winbergh.  This may come as a bit of a surprise for those of us who do think of this Swedish tenor primarily as a Mozart singer who dabbled in Wagner (notably Lohengrin). In between, he sang music of Donizetti, Bizet, and Puccini (!), to name a few others. Sadly, he died of a heart attack at the early age of 58, right after a Vienna performance of Fidelio. See! Singing Beethoven is hazardous to your health.

In this hour-long program, we get to hear him in arias from Fidelio, Carmen, Tosca, and of course, Die Zauberflöte. The program also includes duets from Die Entfürhung aus dem Serail* with Edita Gruberova, L'elisir d'amore with Barbara Bonney (BB’s Adina is another pleasant surprise!), and The Pearl Fishers.

Sunday Brunch – Malin Hartelius is Vitellia (La Clemenza in Concert)

This is audio only (and not the greatest sound—although pretty amazing, considering it probably was recorded from inside someone’s vest pocket), but it’s so wonderful to have. I don't know how I missed this. I really need work on my soprano-stalking skills.

3sat Television Online – Salzburg's Seasons and Mastersingers

Dorothea Röschmann and Michael Schade 

I was watching Haydn's The Seasons from Salzburg again. It is an über-Austrian wonder of music making, with Nickolaus Harnoncourt, Dorothea Röschmann, Michael Schade, and Florian Boesch fronting the Viennese chorus and Philharmonic. Papa Haydn would be proud! The oratorio is a hymn of praise to God and nature. The libretto is kind of hokey—maybe naïve would be a nicer way to say it—but the three soloists give it their all.

Unfortunately, the 3sat Television feed kept freezing. The good thing is the screen-cap above. When the feed froze on this image, I just knew I had to share it—two singers who love what they’re doing, and seem to love singing together. Here is the link to the Seasons feed.

Luca Pisaroni – A James Dean for Mozart (According to the Salzburg Festspielfreunde)

"Luca Pisaroni has a very special relationship with the Salzburg Festival. He has been performing here for as long as he has been an opera singer, and throughout his career he has had an association with the Festival. In 2013 he is singing Guglielmo in Così fan tutte, an opera in which he reads between the lines."

Gratuitous Luca Pisaroni (and friends) Post – from La Clemenza di Tito

Pisaroni, Kasarova, and Schade

This 2003 performance of Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito was my first exposure to:

• Luca Pisaroni
• La Clemenza di Tito
• Michael Schade
• Vesselina Kasarova