Julia’s Variety

Julia Varady’s career is so varied that it is impossible to speak of one’s encounter with her artistry. One could speak of Varady, the Mozart soprano. I guess most people discovered her in Böhm’s recordings of Idomeneo and Clemenza di Tito, in which her crystalline yet flexible soprano was impossible to overlook. Although her neverending [...]

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Apologies and eulogies

Let me start with the apologies – it is not the I am overbusy, but I am actually doing 100 things at the same time right now. That could be my excuse not to answer some e-mails I have received – but they are high on my “to do [too]” list!
Now the eulogies, which are [...]

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Post scripta

Those have been busy days and although I try to keep posting, I still couldn’t find enough time to write about everything I wanted to write about. So here are some bits of different stuff:
- Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited. I have often written about my apreciation for Anderson’s movies. This is a director who [...]

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Who can resist a bargain?

It is fashionable to say bad things about Kathleen Battle and I would rather face the tomatos than throw one of them at her. In spite of her tantrums, her video and audio recordings preserve what is essential about her – her seductive soprano leggiero always beautifully employed in Mozart and Handel. Finding Andrew Davis’s [...]

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More than worth the price

I owe my love to vocal music to one singer – Margaret Price. And my gratitude for her is neverending. It is very difficult for me not to buy a disc where she is featured, even in a minor part. She is the kind of singer who treats every note as if the whole score [...]

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Chilling out in Chile

I have just arrived from Santiago, a city I had never visited before. The whole idea was to take a look at the Teatro Municipal, their opera house, which was presenting Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. As the Chileans are keen on repeating, Santiago is not a touristic place but if you have two days before visiting [...]

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A Magic Flute from the South

The Teatro Municipal’s music director Jan Latham-König has conducted many a Wagner and Strauss opera in Santiago – and trusting him Die Zauberflöte seemed to be a choice for heavy Mozart playing, as in the days in which Harnoncourt was just a baby. That preconceived notion was soon dispelled in the first bars of the [...]

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