Eric Owens

Opera

Friends and Foes of the Enlightenment: Glimmerglass 2015, Fortieth Anniversary Season

Shakespeare's stygian supernatural tragedy, replete with witches, paradoxical prophesies, grisly murders and ghosts, was embraced enthusiastically by Verdi. He made the following remark: "This tragedy is one of the greatest creations of man." His enthusiasm for the play and his own adaptation never waned. The original Italian four-act 1847 score was heavily revised in 1865, the latter version used a libretto in French and was in five acts. This 1865 revision really has the most compelling music for Lady Macbeth and the chorus, the latter carrying much of the weight of the opera. In fact, the choruses throughout Macbeth show Verdi at his most innovative and are on the par with those in his Requiem.  Tonight's performance followed the revised version, sung in Italian, with the laudatory reinstatement of “Mal per me che m'affidai,” Macbeth's stunning final aria from the original.
Opera

An Interview with James Bagwell, Music Director of the Collegiate Chorale, Soon to Lead them in a Concert Performance of Boito’s Mefistofele

The Collegiate Chorale, as part of their famously diverse season, will present a single concert performance of Arrigo Boito's Mefistofele at Carnegie Hall on November 6, 2013 at 8 pm. In this concert production, the Collegiate Chorale will feature Eric Owens, one of the most intelligent and impressive singers of the present day, in the role of Mefistofele, with Arturo Chacón-Cruz, as Faust and Julianna Di Giacomo as Margherita. Mefistofele is no less a vehicle for the chorus, stressing as it does large-scale ensembles, with colorful evocations of devilry and witchcraft, angelic hosts, and solid fugues.
New York Arts

Hector Berlioz, Les Troyens, Boston Symphony Orchestra, James Levine, conductor

Les Troyens is so widely accepted as Berlioz’s greatest work, that the progress of the Berlioz Renaissance is punctuated by performances of it in the opera house and in concert, beginning, arguably, with Sir Thomas Beecham’s moderately abridged 1947 BBC broadcast. Now Boston music-lovers may consider the Berlioz Renaissance to be something of a noble fiction, since his music has had its own secure place in the Boston Symphony repertoire for many years, maturing with Charles Munch’s arrival in 1949. During his tenure he and the BSO performed and recorded several of Berlioz’s most important works, and the recordingsare still considered among the best. Later, both Jean Martinon and Seiji Ozawa continued the tradition most capably, and Berlioz has been one of James Levine’s great enthusiasms since early in his career. Expertise in Berlioz seems to be a prerequisite for the job. Yet, this is the first complete performance of Les Troyens by the foremost Berlioz orchestra in America, which in the past has only played brief excerpts, above all the “Royal Hunt and Storm” from Act IV. Hence these concert performances of Parts I and II on following weeks, culminating in a complete performance on Sunday May 4, are in fact landmarks.
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