It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a figure skater in possession of an Olympics program, must be in want of a “Carmen.” Mirroring its ubiquity in opera houses season after season, it’s hard to think of a Winter Olympics in the last 50 years that hasn’t included at least one singles competitor or pair […]
Author Archives: Olivia Giovetti
Posted inStuff I’ve Been Hearing
We Are All Ghosts
Ashley Bathgate & Kate Moore: “Stories for Ocean Shells” (Cantaloupe) Genova & Dimitrov Piano Duo: “Amy Beach: Complete Works for Piano Duo” (CPO) Anna von Hausswolff: “All Thoughts Fly” (Southern Lord) Kali Malone: “Pipe Inversions (for Kimberger III)” (Important Records) There’s a building near the Tiergarten in Berlin, just behind a section of the Zoological […]
Posted inStuff I’ve Been Hearing
Roadrunners
Martin Achrainer, Maki Namekawa: “Philip Glass: Songs” (Orange Mountain Music) Concerto Italiano, Rinaldo Alessandrini: “Daylight: Stories of Songs, Dances and Loves” (Naïve) Roderick Williams, Roger Vignoles: “Mirages: The Art of French Song” (Champs Hill Records) There comes a point when, driving down a long stretch of highway, you get hit with a disorienting feeling of […]
Posted inStuff I’ve Been Hearing
Movement in the Shadows
Sabine Devieilhe, Raphaël Pichon, Pygmalion: “Bach & Handel” (Erato) Sean Friar, NOW Ensemble: “Before and After” (New Amsterdam) Anthony Roth Costanzo, Justin Vivian Bond: “Only an Octave Apart” (Decca) All easygoing years are alike; each exhausting year is exhausting in its own way. For 2022, I can place my breaking point at West Elm Caleb. […]
Posted inStuff I’ve Been Hearing
Natural Instincts
Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Thomas Dausgaard: “Mendelssohn Symphonies 1 & 3” (BIS) The Philadelphia Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin: “Florence Price: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 3” (Deutsche Grammophon) Orchestre Métropolitain de Montréal, Yannick Nézet-Séguin: “Sibelius 3” (ATMA Classique) Yu Kosuge: “Four Elements: Water, Fire, Wind, and Earth” (Orchid Classics) Sarah Kirkland Snider, Gallicantus: “Mass for the Endangered” (New […]
Posted inPlaylist
A Maria Ewing Playlist
Two months ago, almost to the day, actress Rebecca Hall saw her directorial debut, “Passing,” premiere on Netflix. It was a personal project for Hall, whose mother—the soprano Maria Ewing—had a family history that mirrored the plot of the 1929 novel on which Hall based her film. In fact, Hall learned more about that family […]
Posted inStuff I’ve Been Hearing
Vintage Prada and Snow
Lise Davidsen, Leif Ove Andsnes: “Grieg” (Decca) Christian Tetzlaff, Lars Vogt: “Beethoven: Sonatas, Op. 30” (Ondine) Adam Tendler, Jenny Lin: “Liszt: Harmonies poétiques et religieuses” (Steinway) A line from Phoebe Stuckes that has (for lack of a better word) stuck with me in the turnover of a new year: “I want to be stinking drunk […]
Posted inRankings & Roundups
Every Classical Singer’s Christmas Album, Ranked
I love Christmas: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever, about that. The register of my joy at this time of the year is secured by the glühwein, the television specials, the tree markets, and the carols. I love Christmas like Kanye loves Kanye. Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of […]
Posted inEssay
Emotional Anatomies
In his forthcoming book, The Impossible Art, composer Matthew Aucoin likens his early immersion in opera not to the pageantry of going to a live performance, but rather to the solitude of reading a book. “Operas, like the young-adult fiction I was reading at the time, felt to me like interior adventures rather than extravagant […]
Posted inPlaylist
A “Faust” Playlist
“The more the Faust myth changes, the more it endures,” writes Peter Werres in his introduction to Lives of Faust. “It is our myth, and we must go on confronting it.” Since first appearing in a chapbook in the late 1500s, the story of a man who sells his soul to the devil in exchange […]