Cathy Berberian News
American mezzo-soprano and composer
Commemorations 2025 (Birth: Cathy Berberian)
- mezzo-soprano
- United States of America
- linguist, composer, opera singer, translator
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2024-03-28
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2023-12-31 16:56:00
Since I am busy at work on my new book project, a two-volume study of the complete operas of Mozart in their eighteenth-century political and intellectual context, it seems fitting to have heard more music by Mozart than by any other composer this year. (For 'rules' on counting, please see my previous post.) Beyond my top four, Mozart, Wagner, Beethoven, and Strauss, I heard a good range of music from Alkan to Zimmermann and beyond.19 Mozart 12 Wagner 8 Beethoven, Strauss 7 Brahms, Schumann 6 Bach 5 Schubert, Byrd 4 Mahler, Prokofiev 3 Benjamin, Chopin, Ligeti, Liszt, Ravel 2 Berg, Bizet, Debussy, Dvořák, Handel, Haydn, Henze, Knussen, Puccini, Schoenberg 1 Alkan, Dieter Ammann, CPE Bach, Johann Christoph Bach, JCF Bach, Bartók, Beethoven, Berberian, Berio, Boismortier, Boulez, Busoni, Cage, Chausson, Cherubini, Unsuk Chin, Coleridge-Taylor, Crumb, Duparc, Elgar, Fauré, Francesco Filidei, Grisey, Saed Haddad, Hartmann, Hindemith, Holliger, Humperdinck, Ibert, Janáček, Korngold, […]
2022-11-15 15:25:21
Tragic carpet ride
Diva November on Chris’s Cache continues with a half dozen of my favorite singers performing solo concert works you’ve likely never heard them in before: Janet Baker, Cecilia Bartoli, Cathy Berberian, Bernarda Fink, Elina Garanca and Jessye Norman in music by Haydn, Monteverdi, Schoenberg, Wagner, Porpora and Beethoven.
2022-08-05 07:02:00
Vox in Bestia: Laura Catrani uses solo voice to explore Dante's animals with music from three contemporary Italian composers
Vox in Bestia: Gli animali della divina commedia - Fabrizio de Rossi Re, Matteo Franceschini, Alessandro Solbiati; Laura Catrani; StradivariusReviewed 1/8/2022 (★★★)Italian soprano Laura Catrani explores the beasts Dante's Divine Comedy via music written for her solo voice by three contemporary Italian composers, to dazzling, virtuosic and challenging effectLuciano Berio's Sequenza III, written in 1965 for soprano Cathy Berberian, helped define a whole genre of unaccompanied vocal work that used the voice's many other expressive modes besides singing. Berberian would create her own response to this in 1966 with Stripsody, an equally virtuoso work but one that merged virtuosic onomatopoeic sounds with ideas from comic strips.As a young student at the Conservatoire in Milan, soprano Laura Catrani studied Berio's Sequenza III and it soon became her piece de resistance [see her performance on YouTube] and she has continued to explore and expand the solo voice repertoire. Her Vox in Femina project from 2010 brought together some […]
2022-02-09 08:15:35
Orchestra of the Swan celebrates the centenary of Walton's Façade on SOMM
[…] you bring out the dramatic element, but a work of art is strong enough to take different readings. It has to be said that Façade is difficult, and I have heard a number of bad performances, actors can find getting the rhythms precise rather difficult whereas singers sometimes struggle with projecting the actual text, and some of the faster numbers are stunning tongue twisters. The best live performance I ever heard featured two well-established singers, Cathy Berberian and Robert Tear. As the work opens we can enjoy the chamber lightness and élan from the players. And throughout there is a sense of this being a chamber work for voices and instruments, rather than having the instruments as accompaniment. The faster movements do certainly have a brilliance to them, though there is also a sense of adhering to the notated rhythms; then again, if the reciters didn't do that, I would […]
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- timeline: Composers (North America). Lyrical singers (North America). Performers (North America).
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