Opera Review: The Start of Something Beautiful

Will Crutchfield's Teatro Nuovo tackles Tancredi.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Warrior woman: Tamara Mumford as Tancredi confronts the chorus.
Photo by Steven Pisano for Teatro Nuovo courtesy Unison Media.

For the past twenty years, Will Crutchfield brought the sound of bel canto opera to the Caramoor Festival. Now, in 2018, the conductor and musicologist has turned impresario, launching Teatro Nuovo, a new series of opera performances held in the less sylvan but more sturdy environs of the Arts Center at the State University of New York at Purchase. An ugly brick block-house on the outside, the Purchase venue is everything Caramoor is not: acoustically live, air conditioned and endowed with theatrical basics (like a proscenium arch and orchestra pit) that are not readily available at the Venetian Theater.

The Bernstein Legacy III: Mahler's Symphony No. 3

Leonard Bernstein takes on the world according to Gustav Mahler, in six movements.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Art for the original release of Mahler's Symphony No. 3 by Erte. 

Of the wild and unpredictable early symphonies of Gustav Mahler, it could be argued that the composer’s Third, heard here as played by  Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic in 1987, is the wildest. It is certainly the longest, a sprawling six-movement work whose outer movements are each longer than most Beethoven compositions. The Third charts a cosmological course, starting with the the upthrust and upheaval of primeval mountain ranges and culminating in a slow finale that looks the Almighty square in the eye.

No Nukes is Good Nukes

The Metropolitan Opera reaches an agreement with its orchestra.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

This protest is fake news. Also its art is © Comedy Central and South Park.

Although there are no performances of the John Adams opera Doctor Atomic on the schedule of the Metropolitan Opera this season. opera goers at North America's busiest opera company don't have to worry about labor negotiations blowing up the 2018-19 season.

Gatti-dämmerung

Noted conductor canned in Amsterdam
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Daniele Gatti con pomodori. Original publicity photo by Marco Borggreve, photo editing by the author.

Another famous conductor's career has bit the proverbial dust. This time it's Daniele Gatti, the Italian maestro with a scoreless, seat-of-the-pants podium style who has been dismissed from his duties as Chief Conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.