In an episode from Mad Men (another excellent piece of art dating from 2007), Roger Sterling says it is particularly American to want a “tragedy with a happy ending.” Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice might ...

The composers of earlier centuries would have a good laugh if they could see the reverence we accord to historical fidelity. In their day they would happily serve up earlier works afresh, chopping and ...

Gluck, one of the great musical reformers of his day, sought to create a fully integrated music drama, free of excess, that told the Orpheus legend in the most intense and economical way possible. The ...

NEW YORK — For a trip to hell and back, the Metropolitan Opera’s season-closing revival of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s “Orfeo ed Euridice” is journey full of pleasures. The “beautiful simplicity” that ...

Gluck, one of the great musical reformers of his day, sought to create a fully integrated music drama, free of excess, that told the Orpheus legend in the most intense and economical way possible. The ...

This is the first version of Gluck’s opera, composed for Vienna in 1762, complete on one CD: not quite penny plain, as David Bates has included the ‘Dance of the Blessed Spirits’ from the Paris ...

It is clear from his introductory note in the booklet that the moving spirit behind this recording is Jakub Józef Orliński: he was responsible for the casting, and he describes himself as producing ...

It’s business as usual again at Blackwater Valley Opera Festival. Well, not quite. I haven’t been there since 2019, and there have been changes and improvements—a new, much less complicated entry ...