André Casanova News
French composer
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Last update
2024-04-25
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The Boston Musical Intelligencer
2024-03-25 20:45:39
Atmospheric But Not Dreary
[…] extravagant, fantastic world. It’s a daunting piece to take on as a full-blown production. The money that would be required to do it at the highest level is substantial. When they did it in Chicago and Dallas in the 90s, they cut about a third. We’re not cutting it because, since we’re recording it; we’re beholden to pull it all off by hook or crook. Miss Havisham’s Fire is neglected but his smaller works like Casanova’s Homecoming and Postcard from Morocco—the one acts—have lives often in colleges and conservatories, because, they’re doable. Poe’s Voyage, by contrast, is a big, big, roiling monster. Again, that made me think of Menotti. He made all those TV operas that ran 55 minutes and they’re always being done by community colleges and conservatories and so forth. They’re good because the singers can handle them at that stage and their development, but Dominick’s bigger operas […]
2021-07-09 14:08:00
Don Giovanni, Royal Opera, 5 July 2021
[…] too is Finley a noted Giovanni—in musicotheatrical and metatheatrical terms. The particular mix of, and on occasion tension between, Mozart and Da Ponte that make the work what it is, galvanised by conscientious and charismatic performance was seen and heard not only in Finley and Schrott, but throughout the cast: Adela Zaharia and Frédéric Antoun a noble seria pair, their fundamental dignity both corroded and, especially in Donna Anna’s case, transformed by Giovanni’s combination of Casanova and Faust. Their arias, beautifully prepared and contextualised by recitative that told us just as much, proved moments of beauty yet, insofar as possible—that Prague-Vienna conflation really does not help—crucial dramatic reflections too. Zaharia’s coloratura was properly expressive, no mere decoration, as was that of Nicole Chevalier’s yearning Donna Elvira. Zuzana Marková and Michael Mofidian offered sweetly expressive and disarmingly bluff personifications of Zerlina and Masetto, studies in ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ that always offered […]
2021-05-09 13:48:44
Anglais - Sondra Radvanovsky: Three Times a Queen at Gran Teatre del Liceu
[…] rather less perfect, were the overtures of the operas, which separated the scenes and allowed the soprano to recover and change the complex costumes. The success was tremendous, memorable. If there’s something that always triumphs at Liceu that is well served belcanto. Xavier PujolGran Teatre del Liceu. Barcelona, 6th May 2021 © Paco Amate / Pig Studio Sondra Radvanovsky, soprano. Gemma Coma-Alabert, mezzosoprano. Marc Sala, tenor. Carles Pachón, baritone. José Luis Casanova, tenor. Dimitar Darlev, bass. Scenes from Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux by Gaetano Donizetti. Orchestra and Choir of Gran teatre del Liceu. Riccardo Frizza, conductor. Staging, Rafael Villalobos.
2021-03-24 09:42:45
A castrato in Ireland: Tara Erraught, Peter Whelan & the Irish Baroque Orchestra recapture some of the magic of superstar castrato Tenducci
The Trials of Tenducci - van Maldere, Arne, Giordani, Fischer, JC Bach, Mozart; Tara Erraught, Irish Baroque Orchestra, Peter Whelan; Linn Records Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 23 March 2021 Star rating: 5.0 (★★★★★) A delightful journey through the eventful musical life of soprano castrato Tenducci whose performing career encompassed London, Dublin and EdinburghThe Italian soprano castrato Giusto Ferdinando Tenducci (c. 1735–90) seems to have had a remarkably eventful life, including a period in a debtors' prison in Southwark, a short period on the run, becoming secretly married to a 16-year-old which involved, flight, trial and imprisonment (and evenutually the marriage was annulled). He was also reputed, by Casanova, to have father two children but these are thought to be his wife's offspring by her second husband. But Tenducci also found time to sing and much of his career was in Britain and Ireland. On this new disc, The […]
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