Opera Warhorses

Zurich was warmer than usual for late September when soprano Malin Hartelius set down to eat a mid-day meal with her children. At the Zurich Opera House, veteran conductor Nello Santi, celebrating what would become an unforgettable birthday, raised his baton for the Zurich season’s second performance of Donizetti’s “Don Pasquale”.
As the overture began, the [...]

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Paris is the first stop in my 2007-08 pilgrimage “In Quest of Donizetti” that I have planned to honor the 50th anniversary of Leyla Gencer’s first Donizetti role, Lucia di Lammermoor - her role debut taking place at the San Francisco Opera. In Paris, I experienced the first revival of Laurent Pelly’s imaginative staging of [...]

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Those anticipating my review of Saint-Saens’ “Samson et Dalila” at the San Francisco Opera know that I have already highlighted the production in a earlier web-page as a best bet for seeing a world class performance. As I approached this evening, I wondered what I was was going to say in my review of this [...]

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