OperaBlog

Folks --

A number of you have privately expressed some interest in what my retrospective on Tristan recordings might look like once I've heard the new Pappano/Domingo/Stemme set. Accordingly, having now heard this set, I can finally offer a revised version of the overview for those who may still be intrigued:

http://www.operacast.com/tristan.htm

Hoping this may be useful to a few here and looking forward to any responses either pro or con,

Cheers,

Geoffrey

URGENT NEWS FOR OPERACAST USERS:

Our Operacast Inbox is down!! Our host now has an official status report indicating a severe problem that has affected their entire mail setup. They started yesterday morning (Friday morning) by saying that the problem might last just a few hours. But by the end of the day it was plain that the problem was a lot more serious. By this morning (Saturday morning), they are talking in terms of 24 hours or so. Personally, our hunch is that it may not be fixed until toward the end of the day, Monday.

This means, we're sure, that there are plenty of URGENT e-mails from a number of our faithful users waiting in our official Operacast Inbox right now to which we have NO WAY of gaining access whatsoever! Please, if you are faithful readers of this blog, I urge those who have sent us messages and are perplexed at the lack of follow-up and can read this message to resend those messages to our private Inbox under Liz's name at elizabeth.hubbell@verizon.net. If, by a miracle, you could resend your message well before 12:00 NOON EST Saturday, there may be a chance we can still address it today.

Urgent thanks,

Liz & Geoffrey

A couple of rebraodcasts are noteworthy this weekend. Those who have been wondering where all the repeat Bayreuth broadcasts had disappeared to should be very happy this week - RDP Antena 2 from Portugal is starting what looks to be a complete cycle of those broadcasts, starting on Saturday with Tristan und Isolde and continuing on over the next two Saturdays with Flying Dutchman and Tannhauser. Also look for the the rebroadcast of the World Premiere from Houston Grand Opera (as part of NPR World of Opera), of Salsipuedes, a Tale of Love, War and Anchovies by Daniel Catán.

Some other exciting items are on offer for Saturday as well:

• KLASSIKARAADIO, DR P2, LATVIA KLASIKA RADIO and RADIO OESTERREICH INTERNATIONAL - A special Gala from Vienna Staatsoper celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the reopening of that house after WWII, featuring the likes of Thomas Hampson, Placido Domingo, Bryn Terfel, Soile Isokoski, Agnes Baltsa and Angelika Kirchschlager.
• BBC RADIO 3 - A Cleveland Orchestra concert performance of Verdi's Don Carlo with Samuel Ramey, Marcus Haddock, Simon Keenlyside, Miriam Gauci, Yvonne Naef and Hao Jiang Tian, conducted by Franz Welser-Most.
• DEUTSHLANDRADIO - a Concert performance from Salle Olivier Messiaen Paris, of Johann Adolf Hasse's oratorio, Les Serpents de feu dans le désert, with Sandrine Piau, Stéphanie d'Oustrac, Isabelle Poulenard, Valérie Gabail, Annette Markert and Robert Expert, Econducted by Jérôme Corréas.
• ESPACE 2 - A double bill: first a reairing a wonderful performance from Geneva of Janacek's From the House of the Dead, with Peter Mikulas, Stéphanie Novacek, Stefan Margita, Alexander Vassilev, Gordon Gietz and Pavlo Hunka, conducted by Jirí Belohlávek (if you missed this one the first time around, try to catch it this time); then a performance of Rachmaninoff's Francesca de Rimini, with Marina Shaguch , Vialy Tarashenko, Viktor Savaley, Vladimir Matorin and Konstantin Gorny, lconducted by Eliahu Inbal.
• KLARA - From Radio France, Vivaldi's 1719 opera, Tito Manlio, with Lorenzo Regazzo, Anne Hallenberg, Patricia Ciofi, Marina de Liso, Mariana Pizzolato, Barbara di Castri, Mark Milhofer and Christian Senn, conducted by Ottavio Dantone.
• RADIO 4 NETHERLANDS - From Amsterdam, a performance of Handel's Alcina, with Christine Schäfer, Alice Coote, Marijana Mijanovic, Ingela Bohlin, Cassandre Berthon and Jeremy Ovenden, conducted by Christophe Rousset.
• NPR WORLD OF OPERA - From Houston Grand Opera, Mozart's Idomeneo, with what looks to be a superlative cast, Susan Graham, Laura Claycomb, Richard Croft, Alexandra Deshorties, Norman Reinhardt and Arturo Chacón-Cruz, conducted by Patrick Summers; and, as mentioned above, the repeat on certain stations, of last week's broadcast from Houston Grand Opera, the world premiere broadcast of Catán's new opera, Salsipuedes, a Tale of Love, War and Anchovies, with Ana Maria Martinez, Zheng Cao, Chad Shelton, Scott Hendricks, James Maddalena, Oren Gradus, Nicholas Phan, Laquita Mitchell, Heidi Stober, Joseph Evans and Pablo Bracho, conducted by Guido Maria Guida.
• BARTOK RADIO - A Hungarian performance of Puccini's Madama Butterfly, with Kincses Veronika, Takács Klára, Peter Dvorsky, Számadó Gabriella, Miller Lajos, Rozsos István and Korcsmáros Péter.
• WETA - Is now carrying the Washington National Opera on Saturday afternoons. Today's opera is Giordano's Andrea Chanier, with Salvatore Licitra, Paoletta Marrocu, Jorge Lagunes, Keri Alkema, Elizabeth Bishop, John Marcus Bindel, James Shaffran and Peter Joshua Burroughs, conducted by Eugene Kohm. (Next week WETA will be carrying the live simulcast of a special WNO performance of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, along with stations on the NPR World of Opera network).
• FRANCE MUSIQUES - From Opéra de Marseille, a concert performance of Henri Tomasi's Sampiero Corso, with Irina Mataeva, Laurence Schonn, Nadia Ninio, Carlo Guido and Sergey Murzaev, conducted by Direction : Patrick Davin.
• RADIO TRE (RAI) - From Teatro la Fenice in Venice, a performane of Offenbach's La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein, with Elena Zilio, Patrizia Cigna, Massimiliano Tonsini, Thomas Morris, Enrico Paro, Olivier Grand, Gabriele Viviani, Franck Cassard, Sabrina Vianello, Elisabetta Martorana,Ornella Silvestri and Julie Mellor, conducted by Cyril Diederich.
• KUAT - Continues wiuth their series from Arizone Opera: Mozart's Cosi fan tutte, with Barbara Shirvis, Mary Phillips, Chad Shelton, Philip Cutlip, Arianna Zukerman and Steven Condy, conducted by Joel Revzen.
• LYRIC FM - Continues its series from rthe Wexford Festival with Pénélope by Gabriel Fauré, with Nora Sourouzian, Gerard Powers and Vincent Pavesi, conducted by Jean-Luc Tingaud.

Happy listening!