Xavier Sabata News
Catalan opera singer (countertenor) and actor
- countertenor
- opera
- Spain
- opera singer, stage actor
social networks
Last update
2024-04-23
Refresh
2024-02-02 11:48:00
From forgotten arias in a pasticcio based on Balzac's Sarrasine to a forgotten instrument: Göttingen International Handel Festival announces the 2024 programme under George Petrou
George Petrou (Photo: Alciro Theodoro Da Silva)The Göttingen International Handel Festival dates right back to the 1920s and though styles have changed the festival has always been notable for new ideas and new thinking about 18th century music. This year's festival under artistic director George Petrou has just been announced. Running from 9 to 20 May 2024 under the title Kaleidescope, the festival features not only music by Handel and his contemporaries, but modern reflections too, as Petrou wants the programme to bridge the gap between the 18th and 21st centuries, revealing the gap between Handel's music and the pressing issues of our time.The opera staging this year focuses not on one of Handel's operas but on arias discarded by the composer, usually for dramaturgical reasons. George Petrou has fashioned a pasticcio using these arias with a plot based on Balzac's novella, Sarrasine about the sculptor Sarrasine's love for a singer, Zambinella, regarding […]
2023-12-01 10:37:00
Monteverdi's first opera, the historically informed Ring Cycle continues, Bruckner's 200th birthday, composer Sven Helbig live - Dresden's 47th music festival
Wagner: Das Rheingold - Derek Welton, Kent Nagano, Mauro Peter, Daniel Schmutzhard, Concerto Köln & Dresdner Festspielorchester - Dresden Music Festival 2023The 47th Dresden Music Festival runs from 9 May to 9 June 2024 under the title Horizons, presenting 60 events in 21 venues in and around Dresden. Things kick off in fine style with a concert performance of Wagner's Die Walküre with Kent Nagano conducting the combined forces of two period instrument ensembles, the Dresdner Festspielorchester and Concerto Köln, a continuation of the festival's exploration of an historically informed Ring Cycle that began last year with Des Rheingold [see my review]. Further historically informed performances include soprano Janine de Bique and Concerto Köln in arias by Handel, Graun, Broschi, Telemann and Vinci, Haydn's The Seasons with Jordi Savall and La Capella Nacional de Catalunya and Le Concert des Nations, Mark Minkowski and the Dresdner Festspielorchester in Wagner, Mendelssohn and excerpts from Offenbach's rare grand opera Die Rheinnixen. The ensemble […]
2022-04-11 14:59:35
Victor de Sabata, part II, 2022
This Week in Classical Music: April 11, 2022. Conductors, continued. Last week we started with five famous conductors that were born that week: the Frenchman Pierre Monteux, the German Herbert von Karajan, the British Adrian Boult, the Hungarian-American Antal Doráti, and the Italian Victor de Sabata. We spent much time with de Sabata, following his career till the end of WWII, and we did so because this wonderful conductor isn’t that well known in the US. So, here’s a bit more on Sabata. His previous association with Mussolini didn’t affect Sabata’s international standing, even though in 1950 he was briefly detained in the US under the soon-to-be abolished McCarran Act (his concert at Carnegie Hall ran on schedule and to great acclaim – the recording of the excerpts from Tristan un Isolde which we presented the last week came from that concert). Sabata’s base was La Scala, with which he […]
2022-04-04 14:22:26
Victor de Sabata, part I, 2022
This Week in Classical Music: April 4, 2022. Conductors. Five famous conductors were born this week: the Frenchman Pierre Monteux on April 4th of 1875, the German Herbert von Karajan, on April 5th of 1908, the British Adrian Boult on April 8th of 1889, the Hungarian-American Antal Doráti on April 9th of 1906, and the Italian Victor de Sabata on April 10th of 1892. Before we delve into their careers, let us make a non-musical comment: conductors seem to live a long life! Of this group, Boult lived the longest, almost 94 years, de Sabata – the shortest, 75 years. On average, they lived 84 years. Do you know what the life expectancy at birth was around the time when our conductors were born? An astonishingly short 41 years! One could reasonably respond that at that time the child mortality rate was very high, and once one made it past […]
or
- timeline: Lyrical singers (Europe).
- Indexes (by alphabetical order): S...