La traviata

The tale of a quick-witted fox and her escape from confinement for a life in the forest.

At first glance, the title of Shostakovich’s opera seems to speak for itself: Katherina, neglected and unhappy in her marriage, commits the most heinous crime just like the Shakespearian Lady Macbeth. But Nikolai Leskov’s short novel, which portrays Katherina as a monster, was only the starting point for Shostakovich to elicit understanding for an oppressed woman whose pursuit for self-determination is suppressed by society. Through combining satiric, grotesque and tragic elements in his music, Shostakovich succeeds in striking the balance between repulsion at Katherina’s immoral acts and sympathy for her. Violence, eroticism and the paralysing boredom of Russian society in the 19th century are the founding elements of this composition. The choir and orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino conducted by James Conlon accompany tremendous soloists such as Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet, Vladimir Vaneev and Vsevolod Grivnov in the original language in this live recording.

Vivian, Roe, JJ, Ines and a mysterious French man through a 20 year musical memory of New York City. As people and places in their lives drift away, visual impressions meld with sound and narrative stories to reveal a complex yet moving tableau. As the characters recall their own personal histories, conflicting images reveal their past, present and future.

2014 marks a year of celebration recognizing the 150th birthday year of the German late-Romantic orchestral, operatic and lied master composer, Richard Strauss (1864-1949). Arabella (premiered 1933, Dresden) was the last of the half dozen Strauss works to feature a libretto by the great Austrian writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal. This production, from the most recent Salzburg Easter Festival is, after Capriccio, the second of three Richard Strauss operas C Major is releasing in honor of the composers birth, life and work. The star-laden cast includes soprano Renèe Fleming, baritone Thomas Hampson, Albert Dohmen (Covent Garden, Wiener Staatsoper, MET) and Gabriela Beaková (Wiener Staatsoper, Covent Garden). With Christian Thielemann and the Staatskapelle Dresden, the music of Richard Strauss is in the best of hands. (ORF) Thielemann gets the best out of the cast...especially Renée Fleming with her luxurious soprano FAZ

Rarely has a production of Verdi’s Otello been staged in such a prestigious location: the courtyard of the Palazzo Ducale in Venice! This special outdoor “event production” of the Teatro La Fenice takes place amidst genuine late-Gothic and Renaissance architecture highlighted by spectacular projections: “A set of singular fascination” (Il Corriere Musicale). Critics were full of praise for the musical performance, designating conductor Myung-Whun Chung as the “absolutely dominating force” of the performance (GB Opera). The lead role is sung by Gregory Kunde, who successfully interpreted both Verdi’s and Rossini’s Otello in one year, perhaps the first tenor ever to do so. He “reproduces every accent, every colour demanded by Verdi with sensibility and intelligence” (OperaClick).