The Hammock Papers: opera

15 March 2022

Händel, Giulio Cesare in Egitto, HWV17

Giovanni Antonini leads Il Giardino Armonico with ...

Giulio Cesare: Andreas Scholl, countertenor
Cleopatra: Cecilia Bartoli, mezzo-soprano
Cornelia: Anne Sofie von Otter, mezzo-soprano
Sesto: Philippe Jaroussky, countertenor
Tolomeo: Christophe Dumaux, countertenor
Achilla: Ruben Drole, bass-baritone
Nirena: Jochen Kowalski, countertenor
Curio: Peter Kálmán, bass-baritone

09 October 2021

Happy Birthday, Verdi

Guiseppe Verdi was born on this day in 1813.

George Solyi conducts the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and Vienna State Opera Chorus in a performance of Falstaff ...

13 August 2020

Premiered.

Richard Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung premiered on this date in 1876.

Watch from his stand as Richard Farnes conducts the entirety of Der Ring des Nibelungen ...

Bruno Lussato's documentary, In the Eye of the Ring ...

22 December 2019

Happy Birthday, Puccini

Giacomo Puccini was born on this date in 1858.

Luciano Pavarotti and Fiamma Izzo d'Amico perform "O soave fanciulla," from Act 1 of La Bohème ...

10 October 2018

Happy birthday, Verdi.

Giuseppe Verdi was born on this day in 1813.

Oh, blessed a thousand times the peasant who is born, eats, and dies without anybody bothering about his affairs.

Giuseppe Verdi

Rigoletto ...

03 August 2018

22 December 2017

Happy birthday, Puccini.

Giacomo Puccini was born on this day in 1858.

La Bohème ...

07 August 2017

Mozart, The Marriage of Figaro, K. 492

Claire Watson and Reri Grist perform Canzonetta Sull'aria ...

30 September 2016

Happy birthday, Die Zauberflöte.

Mozart's opera, Die Zauberflöte, premiered on this day in 1791.

The Vienna Philharmonic performs under the direction of Riccardo Muti ...

10 June 2016

Mozart, The Abduction from the Seraglio (K. 384)

The Vienna Philharmonic performs the Overture, under the direction of Fabio Luisi ...

13 March 2016

Wagner, Tristan und Isolde

Sounding more clearly,

wafting around me --

Are these waves of soft airs?

Are these billows of delightful fragrances?

How they swell, how they sough around me, shall I breathe?

Shall I listen? Shall I drink, immerse?

Sweetly in fragrances melt away?

In the billowing torrent, in the resonating sound,

All -- in the wafting Universe of the World --

Breathe, drown --

Be engulfed --

Unconscious --
Supreme delight!

Waltraud Meier performs the "Liebestod" ...

27 January 2016

The greatest composer who ever lived, Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was born on this day in 1756.

What a delight this is! All this inventing, this producing, takes place in a pleasing, lively dream. It is a mistake to think that the practice of my art has become easy to me. I assure you, dear friend, no one has given so much care to the study of composition as I. There is scarcely a famous master in music whose works I have not frequently and diligently studied. Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

The Magic Flute

The Magic Flute, for children ...

BARRY HINES

"That's why it makes me mad when I take her out and I'll hear somebody say, 'Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk. I could shout at 'em; it's not a pet, Sir, hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me, right. And that's why it's great.Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk.' I could shout at 'em. It's not a pet, Sir. Hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained, that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me right. And that's why it's great." (A Kestrel for a Knave)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

WALT WHITMAN

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL