Criticultura em Portugal

 I think Madama Butterfly  is Puccini's greatest opera. It has a famed soprano lead, with perhaps the most famous aria of all time ("Un bel di"). Unlike La Boheme, a one act wonder (but what a first act!), Butterfly starts strong with a sublime Act 1 love duet and builds to a cataclysmic finish with Cio-Cio-San's suicide. Unlike  Turandot , it is complete. Unlike Tosca, it does not rely on gimmicky plot twists (eg a fake firing squad) but instead tells a down to earth human story (love, betrayal, cultural incompetence). The music is relentlessly gorgeous, exemplifying the strengths of post-romantic harmony pushing all the way up against its boundaries. The score is glorious from moment one, when a Bachian fugue set to "Asian" motifs emphasizes the recurring West vs. East theme of the opera. The orchestral dynamics are extreme and almost violent, pushing the romantic era to it's emotional apex. It is one of my favorite operas to listen to, just for the or...

 I just came back from a one week railroad blitz to central Europe, including four concerts in five days. Two of them featured symphonic concerts by prominent European orchestras.  First, I saw the renowned Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (BPO) under its principal conductor Kirill Petrenko, at the Baden Baden Easter Festival in southwest Germany. The town is charming but a bit sleepy, set up for spa visitors, Black Forest hikers, and intermittent classical musical fans. The 2500 seat theater, equipped for opera, is the largest in Germany and draws lots of big time performers including the BPO. They had a tiff with their longtime spring festival home in Salzburg a few years back (apparently Salzburg was resistant to innovative programming), so have since been residing in Baden Baden.  I saw their last concert at the 2025 Easter Festival before the orchestra returns to Salzburg next year (apparently Salzburg conceded to the BPO demands), so the audience was extra appreciative...

My first real exposure to high quality Renaissance music was via Tallis Scholars recordings, back in the 1980s when they were a relatively new group. Remarkably, the founder of the group, Peter Phillips, is still leading them over 50 years after their founding. Based on the performance I saw last week in Belém, there has been remarkably little change in the group's sonic or interpretive stance over that timespan. Depending on your perspective, that is either comforting or disappointing. Count me in the latter group (I know, what a surprise). Over recent decades, new groups performing the core Renaissance repertory have sprung up and have communicated new interpretive and sonic ideas. You would never know this from last week's performance. Phillips' interpretive view is seemingly etched in granite. High quality granite, to be sure, but still granite. Back in the 1970s and 80s, recordings of Renaissance music were unusual. Phillips started the Tallis Scholars in 1973, when he...

Recently, I saw the forces of the São Carlos Opera perform the rarely-done  Scenes from Goethe's Faust  by Robert Schumann. I got oddly nostalgic. It was good to finally hear this work, since I remember discussing it in my term paper for an Opera course in college (my discussion was rather abstract, since Pomona college had no recording of the work). My paper addressed Romantic treatments of Goethe's famed  Faust , probably the most revered and influential play of the era. It's a strange rambling play, rarely seen outside of Germany. Alongside the familiar story of Faust selling his soul to the devil, there are spirits, demons,  a charming and intelligent devil (Mephistopheles), and an uber-victimized woman (Gretchen) who strangles her illegitimate child, but is redeemed in the end. The big theme of Faust's rejecting traditional religion, falling into depravity, then being resurrected via his curiosity and creative spirit resonated with the romantics, for whom "...

Last week I had the rare opportunity to see Benjamin Britten's War Requiem  (1961) done by the orchestra and chorus of the Lisbon São Carlos Opera. It is a fine piece, and is not done often because of the large forces required: big orchestra, chorus, chamber orchestra (12-13 players), children's chorus with organ, and 3 vocal soloists. The São Carlos musicians are doing very big complex pieces this year at various sites around the country, since they are unable to use their under-renovation opera house. As a result Lisbon music lovers are reaping the benefits in hearing some big rare pieces like this one and a well-played Mahler Eighth Symphony last fall. This performance was well conducted by Graeme Jenkins, with Portuguese soloists Silvia Sequeira, Marco Alves dos Santos, and André Baleiro, all of whom sang with excellent English diction. The company provided an excellent program book with full texts and translations (into Portuguese), along with projected Portuguese supratit...