Tag Archives: beier

A bit of an oddball

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Once in a while I go out on a limb with recordings.  Sometimes it’s great.  I’m not as a rule particularly fond of “cross-over” material but I loved Emily D’Angelo’s freezing for example.  So I took a listen to Schubert Beatles from the New York Festival of Song.  Broadly speaking, it pairs Schubert Lieder with Beatles’ songs on a similar theme; Yesterday and Im Frühling for example.  The Schubert is mostly presented pretty straight (except for guitar accompaniment on Du bist die Ruh).  The Beatles songs are arranged, by Steven Beier, for various combinations of piano, violin, bass and guitar.  The principal singer is baritone Theo Hoffman with tenor Andrew Owens and soprano Julia Bullock joining on some tracks. Continue reading →

Talis est ordo deorum

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The latest Opera Vision Youtube recording to catch my attention is a recording from L’opéra nationale de Paris of Spontini’s La Vestale.  Productions of La Vestale are rare and most Opera Vision streams come from considerably less prestigious houses so this is particularly welcome.  I reviewed a Palazetto Bru-Zane audio recording of this work in 2023 and I’m not going to repeat what I wrote about the performance history and the plot.  Here I shall concentrate on the Paris performance.

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Barbarella, Prinzessin von Judea

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Götz Friedrich’s 1974 film of Strauss’ Salome is a bit of an oddity. It’s a studio film rather than a video recording of a live performance. This allows the casting of singers who might not be able to manage the role in the opera house. In this case, crucially, the light lyric soprano Teresa Stratas sings the title role which she most certainly never did on stage. Continue reading →