Verdi Celebrated at Caramoor

Charles T. Downey, Angela Meade sizzles in Verdi’s “Vêpres” at Caramoor (The Classical Review, July 7)

Verdi, Les vêpres siciliennes, J. Brumaire, J. Bonhomme, BBC Concert Orchestra, M. Rossi (Opera Rara)

Don’t look now, but it’s time for another annoying composer anniversary. Worse, the Verdi bicentenary this year is the most irritating kind of composer anniversary, requiring us to commemorate a composer whose operas are already quite familiar, even too much so. Will Crutchfield’s ingenious solution, for his summer of Verdi on the Bel Canto at Caramoor series, is to examine the Italian composer’s French works. This approach has the double advantage of avoiding any of the chestnuts in the Verdi canon, while actually drawing attention to some quite neglected works. [Continue reading]

Verdi, Les vêpres siciliennes
Libretto by Eugène Scribe and Charles Duveyrier
Orchestra of St. Luke's, Will Crutchfield (conductor)
Caramoor

SEE ALSO:
Zachary Woolfe, An Italian in Paris: How a New Stage Lifted Verdi (New York Times, July 8)

John Yohalem, Les Vêpres de Westchester (Parterre.com, July 7)

Verdi’s ‘missing link’ opera ‘Les vepres siciliennes’ getting bicentennial lift (Associated Press, July 5)

Nick Clark, Turmoil at the Royal Opera House as choreographer pulls out of Giuseppe Verdi's Les Vêpres Siciliennes (The Independent, June 7)