Opera 2023

The emotive young American tenor Eric Ferring delivers a moving and ambitious collection of art songs with a chamber music emphasis. In this follow-up release to his acclaimed debut album No Choice but Love (Lexicon Classics), Ferring is joined to great effect by pianist Madeline Slettedahl and the French ensemble Quatuor Agate.

Fritz Busch (1890-1951) was one the greatest German conductors of the first half of the twentieth century, noted for his illuminating performances and his ethical principles.

Parsifal (WWV 111) is a music drama in three acts by the German composer Richard Wagner and his last composition. Wagner's own libretto for the work is freely based on the 13th-century Middle High German chivalric romance Parzival of the Minnesänger Wolfram von Eschenbach and the Old French chivalric romance Perceval ou le Conte du Graal by the 12th-century trouvère Chrétien de Troyes, recounting different accounts of the story of the Arthurian knight Parzival (Percival) and his spiritual quest for the Holy Grail.

Pagliacci is an Italian opera in a prologue and two acts, with music and libretto by Ruggero Leoncavallo. The opera tells the tale of Canio, actor and leader of a commedia dell'arte theatrical company, who murders his wife Nedda and her lover Silvio on stage during a performance. Pagliacci premiered at the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan on 21 May 1892, conducted by Arturo Toscanini, with Adelina Stehle as Nedda, Fiorello Giraud as Canio, Victor Maurel as Tonio, and Mario Ancona as Silvio. Soon after its Italian premiere, the opera played in London (with Nellie Melba as Nedda) and in New York (on 15 June 1893, with Agostino Montegriffo as Canio). Pagliacci is the composer's only opera that is still widely performed.

'The Flying Dutchman', a romantic opera in three acts, was first performed in 1843. The story of the Dutch captain Bernard Fokke provided the material for the plot. Unlike many other sailors, he did not succeed in circumnavigating the Cape of Good Hope. He tried to defy God and the forces of nature but did not wrestle them down because he cursed them and has since been doomed to cruise the world's oceans forever with his ghost ship. Anyone who encountered this ship with a black mast and blood-red sails was destined for misfortune.

Our Artist of the Week is Spencer Britten: a tenor, an actor and a dancer—a triple threat. Britten has been busy performing on international stages, most recently with Berlin’s Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Royal Opera Versailles, Bregenzer Festspiele, The Glimmerglass Festival, Opéra de Montréal, The Atlanta Opera, and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.

This is a great love story worthy of a movie: "An American In Warsaw." My Friend and buddy, American Jazz trumpeter/composer Gary Guthman meets a beautiful Polish harpist Malgorzata Zalewska (Gosia as we call her), and his heart is lost forever, resulting in his relocation to Warsaw and a process of building not only a new life but also a new career, mostly as a composer.

Nearly ninety years after its opening in Paris at Opera Garnier, Transylvanian expat pianist Lucian Ban and American violist Mat Maneri present a radical re-imagination of George Enescu’s famous Oedipe opera. For decades, the opera was seen as too difficult to perform, the score and four long acts demanded much from the musicians, but Enescu’s Oedipe has finally begun to receive the attention that it rightly deserves and to be recognized as one of the greatest works in the operatic repertoire.

We know Ignaz Jan Paderewski (1860-1941) as a legendary pianist, probably also as the first president of the newly founded state of Poland in 1918 - and we have certainly heard that he left behind a not insignificant compositional œuvre: In particular, his Piano Concerto in A minor and the Symphony in B minor "Polonia" have deservedly made it to recording honors. A similar one-off to these works is the opera Manru, which was premiered at the Dresden Semper Opera on May 29, 1901, and met with triumphant success.

The “Hellier” 1679 violin and the “Sabionari” 1679 guitar are two wonderful instruments made in the same year by Antonio Stradivari, the greatest violin maker of the history.