Posted DCist Goes to the Opera: Götterdämmerung to DCist
Conductor Philippe Auguin In 2006, when Washington National Opera opened its American Ring Cycle, few could have imagined that it would end as it did on Saturday night, with a concert performance of Götterdämmerung. After very promising productions of Das Rheingold and Die Walküre in 2006 and 2007, financial considerations delayed the staging of Siegfried by one season, to last spring, when it ended up with a troubled casting and special-effects woes. The collapse...
Posted Classical Music Agenda to DCist
Pianist François-Frédéric Guy will play all thirty-two Beethoven piano sonatas at La Maison Française Free concerts are the headliner again this week, followed by a few concerts, of far too many on the schedule, that will require some money. >> If you have the Veterans' Day holiday off, the Zephyrus Ensemble performs a program of music by Couperin, Rebel, and Rameau on Wednesday at lunchtime (November 11, 12:10 p.m.) at the National Gallery of...
Posted Classical Music Agenda to DCist
Apollo's Fire (photo by Roger Mastroianni) At the top of the agenda this week are two concerts of rarely heard Baroque music, very different from one another but both worth hearing. Many other options, including some excellent free concerts, come later. >> The ensemble often thought to be the best American early music group, Cleveland-based Apollo's Fire, comes to Dumbarton Oaks next weekend (November 8 and 9). Jeannette Sorel's group will present a program...
Posted DCist Goes to the Opera: Ariadne auf Naxos to DCist
(L to R) Iréne Theorin (Ariadne), Lyubov Petrova (Zerbinetta), Nathan Herfindahl, Corey Evan Rotz, Greg Fedderly, and Grigory Soloviov, in Ariadne auf Naxos, Washington National Opera (photo by Karin Cooper -- see more pictures) Washington National Opera's new production of Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos puts me in a bit of a quandary. It has a score and libretto of particular beauty and is produced rarely enough -- the last time WNO mounted it...