Here, I post my reviews and document my love of opera. I hope you enjoy it. Please feel free to comment on any of my posts or contact me if you wish to.
Have a nice stay!
David Buchler
All tagged Martyn Brabbins
Puccini’s ‘disaster’ Madam Butterfly premiered at La Scala Milan in February 1904 and was so badly received that it wasn’t until the summer of 1904 that a second version was more successful. Thereafter there were more revisions until the 1907 fifth revision, which became today’s ‘standard version’.
In 1958, Benjamin Britten was asked to write a work for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral – the old one had been bombed and destroyed in 1940 and hundreds of people had died. Britten decided that this work would commemorate the dead of both World Wars and his text combines the traditional Latin Mass for the Dead, with fairly dour poems by Wilfred Owen. After its premiere in 1962, Shostakovich regarded Britten’s War Requiem as ‘The greatest work of the 20th century’ and indeed it was universally hailed as a masterpiece.
For those opera lovers expecting a standard fayre Salome, this production is not for you.
Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro was premiered in Vienna in 1786. It’s a 4 Act opera buffa, with the libretto written by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was written several years after the plot of the Barber of Seville and recounts a single day of madness in the palace of Count Almaviva near Seville Spain.
Alfred Hitchcock’s film Marnie, starring Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery, was lightly based on the original book by Winston Graham. Hitchcock’s film ending was more dramatic perhaps than the books. The Composer, Nico Muhly, decides to stick more closely to the original book version, with skilful subtlety that is so prevalent in its musical score.
