The Night of the Holy Bail

Andris Nelsons is out of Bayreuth's new Parsifal.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Andris Nelsons at the helm of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Photo © 2016 the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

According to reports published today by The New York Times and the Boston Globe, Andris Nelsons, the fiery Latvian conductor who is the still-new music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra has exited from his commitment to open the 2016 Bayreuth Festival and its new production of Wagner's Parsifal.

Superconductor Audio Guide: Der Fliegende Holländer

The series sails forth with Wagner's high seas ghost story.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

The legendary ghost ship The Flying Dutchman inspired Wagner's 1843 opera.
Digital image is © UbiSoft.

This is the first outing, the maiden voyage if you will of a new feature on Superconductor focusing on classic (and some modern) recordings of the great "canon" operas. We're going to start with a series on the ten major operas of Wagner and whether it will continue beyond that will depend on how many of you all click and read. Sounds good? OK. Let's go.)

Der Fliegende Holländer is Richard Wagner's fourth opera, but the earliest of his works to be considered "canon" by the Bayreuth Festival, the German opera festival that was founded by the composer himself in an opera house of his own design in the tiny Franconian spa town of Bayreuth. Holländer (referred to hereafter by its English title The Flying Dutchman) was written in 1842 as the struggling Wagners lived in Paris and Richard tried (and failed) to get Rienzi staged at the Paris  Opera.

Summer Festival Preview 2016: The MET Live in HD Screenings

Because watching movies of opera productions on a screen for free couldn't possibly diminish the opening of the actual opera season a month later....
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Mozart (Tom Hulce) celebrates a field goal in this scene from the
award-winning Milos Forman film Amadeus. Image © 1984 The Saul Zaentz Company/Orion Pictures.

This August, the Metropolitan Opera will fill Lincoln Center 's outdoor space with seats and turn Josie Robertson Plaza into a venue for repeats of the company's  omnipresent Live in HD series. This is an enjoyable summer festival event, free to all and stunning passers-by and curious tourists. Here's the slate for this year's festival which opens not with an opera but with an Academy Award-winning movie. And yes, we tell you which operas to catch and which ones to skip...or at least bring a good bottle of wine.

Spring Breakdown 2016: The Orchestra Concerts

Superconductor recalls the five best orchestra concerts of Spring 2016.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The amazing Esa-Pekka Salonen in flight. Photo by Chris Lee.

The blog reviewed a lot of orchestra concerts this spring, with performances in far-flung exotic places like Cleveland, Ohio, Newark, NJ and Brooklyn, NY. Here's our list of the best-conducted and best-played shows of the last six months.