July, 2018

57 Posts
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Wagner: Parsifal
Premiered Today in 1882
Hoping to gain financial independence, Richard Wagner was eager to establish an annual music festival that would realize his particular vision of music and theatre. Initially he contemplated Munich, but his extravagant and scandalous behavior in that city caused him
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Early Works
The other day I was looking through the earliest articles written for my blog. Some of my early writing is horribly self-conscious, and evidently written with little expectation of anyone actually reading it. But however much this “juvenilia” may make
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Competing In a New World – An Interview with Samantha Crawford
Soprano Samantha Crawford was recently a finalist at the Hong Kong International Operatic Singing Competition (HKIOSC) and spoke with us about the competition and her thoughts on the whole competition process.
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Making Percussion a True Soloist – John Corigliano’s The Conjurer
Percussion can be anything from the lowly triangle to the majestic piano and all struck things between. In his recent work Conjurer, John Corigliano took on the difficult task of writing a percussion concerto. In his own words, he said
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Penderecki: Viola Concerto
Premiered Today in 1983
24 July 1983 marked the 200th birthday of Simón Bolívar, known around South America as “El Libertador.” The Venezuelan military and political leader played a significant role in the establishment of Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Panama as sovereign
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A more than luxuriously cast Lucia di Lammermoor: Teatro Real Madrid
Madrid pulled together an absolute dream production of Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, with a cast few houses could even think about. This production by David Alden, first commissioned for the English National Opera in 2008, sets the scene in
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Mozart and The Deluded Bridegroom
In a letter to his father, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart made a reference to a seven-member Italian opera troupe visiting Vienna. That troupe arrived in the Austrian capital during Lent 1783, and first performed on 22 April 1783 in Antonio Salieri’s
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The Musical Bed of Sadiq Muhammad Khan IV
We’ve all heard of musical chairs, a game of elimination involving players, chairs, and music. With one fewer chair than players, when the music stops the player who fails to sit on a chair is eliminated. A chair is then
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