Over the years, as the cost of producing CDs has fallen, more and more amateur music organizations find the means to release their own albums. This is good for morale and for publicity as well as being a fundraiser, but is usually purchased only by families and friends of the organization. Unfortunately, most of these […]
Elizabeth Kahn
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Classical Music Gridlock
On Sunday, Nov. 12, the Mallarmé Chamber Players did what they do best, reflecting their original mission statement: They presented concerts of new works and rarely heard older works. Their large pool of excellent musicians makes it possible to select the absolute best forces to suit the style of the works programmed. The program was […]
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Divine Diva
It is not often that your high expectations for the visit of a world-famous artist are fully realized. Opera-star soprano Renée Fleming swept–to accurately describe her gown–into Duke University on Nov. 1 and left us gasping in her wake. With a program spanning nearly 300 years of vocal music, she amply demonstrated why she is […]
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Before the fall
If there was ever an upbeat piece of music it is Franz Joseph Haydn’s Creation. Performers and listeners alike simply cannot fail to be happy in its presence. This product of the Enlightenment recounts the first verses of Genesis before Adam and Eve screwed things up for the rest of us. Its composer was once […]
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Singing nuns
Don’t automatically turn your nose up at opera written for a school. Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas produced one of the all-time Baroque hit arias, and the work has persisted in the repertory for nearly 300 years. Between October 5 and 8, the Opera Theatre of Meredith College produced the world premiere of Felice, a one-act […]
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Well-kept secrets
It was with good reason that bass Thomas Woodman, as the villainous governor Pizarro in Beethoven’s opera Fidelio, jumped back a few feet when Dinah Bryant, as Fidelio/Leonore, cried out Tôd’t erst sein Weib! (First kill his wife). Bryant packs quite a wallop with an enormous voice that belies her diminutive frame. In fact, strong, […]