Playboy Ann Stasia

It is a truism that the organ, like no other instrument (even the piano), determines the impact of a piece of music which is played upon it. Conversely, however, the fact that not every work is suitable for every organ, is anything but trivial. For this immediately leads to questions around the connection between the instrument’s disposition and the compositional style, and what influence the choice of a specific instrument might have on the design of a programme.

Lee Ann Womack began recording a sequel for MCA Nashville after 2008's Call Me Crazy, but none of its advance singles stuck, leading the singer to shift direction for her seventh studio album. This album didn't appear until 2014, not on Universal but on Sugar Hill/Welk, who picked up The Way I'm Livin', an album that effectively reboots her career. Produced by Frank Liddell – Womack's husband but more notably the producer behind recent hit records by Miranda Lambert, Pistol Annies, David Nail, and the Eli Young Band – The Way I'm Livin' finds the veteran singer intentionally abandoning the chart race for deeply felt intimacy. Womack didn't write any of the songs on The Way I'm Livin' – a collection of writers ranging from Bruce Robison, Kenny Price, Julie Miller, and Mindy Smith to Hayes Carll and Neil Young bear credits – but the material is so carefully selected, the album plays personally.

La Cenerentola is one of the few operas to have an important subtitle, "The Triumph of Virtue". This Salzburg production makes a point of its being a moral tale rather than a mere fairy tale like the version reflexively sung by Angelina in her "Cavatina": the defeat and forgiveness of the stepsisters and their greedy father is a settling of moral accounts. The production is also tremendous fun–partly because of gimmicks like the mechanical coach and horses that arrives on stage in the high wind of the Act Two storm–but mostly because of the endlessly energetic pulse of Riccardo Chailly's conducting of the Vienna Philharmonic.