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Opéra Magazine's top-rated recordings for September, October and November 2025

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I was still on holiday in Greece when the latest two issues of France's Opéra Magazine arrived, so I found them in the pile of post waiting for me when I got home a couple of weeks ago. The first was marked ‘Septembre 2025’ as normal. The second, marked ‘Octobre-Novembre 2025’, announced out of the blue, in its editorial, that ‘In order to provide you with more in-depth articles, more substantial investigations and richer information, we will now be publishing every two months.’ A cheeky bit of spin, I think, from a magazine that’s recently changed hands and, so I understand, since then lost or fired most of its staff. Their ‘coup de coeur’ - i.e. their top pick - in September, with one of their special ‘Diamond’ awards, was Dido and Aeneas with Joyce DiDonato and Michael Spyres under Emelyanchev, dubbed a new ‘reference’ and ‘set to be seen as a landmark recording.’ It doesn't happen often, but their top pick in the October-November, again with one of their ‘Diamonds’, is a ...
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Verdi - Aida, at the Paris Opera Bastille

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ONP-Bastille, Wednesday October 22 2025 Conductor: Dmitry Matvienko. Production: Shirin Neshat. Sets: Christian Schmidt. Costumes: Tatyana van Walsum. Lighting: Felice Ross. Choreography: Dustin Kline. Aida: Ewa Płonka. Radames: Gregory Kunde. Amneris: Judit Kutasi. Amonasro: Roman Burdenko. Ramfis: Alexander Köpeczi. Il Re: Krzysztof Bączyk. Un messaggero: Manase Latu. Sacerdotessa: Margarita Polonskaya. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris. Photos (featuring first cast): Bernd Uhlig/ONP When the Paris Opera staged Olivier Py’s production of Aida in 2013, it was their first since 1968, in one that dated back to 1939. Since then, they’ve made up for their omission. Py’s (to me, not as bad as people said) made it through just two seasons, until 2016. Lotte de Beer’s , with its luxury cast, in 2021, which I found quite entertaining though thousands didn’t, apparently succumbed to the pandemic. Now, in 2025, we have a revised ‘edition’, as she herself puts it, of Shirin Ne...
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Mussorgsky and Shostakovich in concert with La Monnaie at the Bozar in Brussels

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La Monnaie at Bozar, Brussels, Sunday October 19 2025 Conductor: Dmitry Matvienko. Mezzo-soprano: Olesya Petrova. La Monnaie Symphony Orchestra. Photos: credits not found Mussorgsky: A Night on the Bare Mountain , orch. Rimsky-Korsakov. Mussorgsky: Songs and Dances of Death , orch. Shostakovich. Shostakovich: Symphony N°5.  In the last few years, La Monnaie has got into the habit of including a concert in its Sunday matinee subscription series - probably, as times are hard, to save money. But now that Alain Altinoglu has hoisted the house orchestra to unanticipated heights, these concerts have actually become something of an event: quite often, they turn out to be memorable, well worth the trip to Brussels. Sunday's programme of Mussorgsky and Shostakovich involved two names new to me. Timur Zangiev, who conducted Tsar Saltan at La Monnaie in 2023 , had to cancel ‘owing to unforeseen circumstances'. (Visa issues, I heard, though that seems odd when he's been allowed in bef...
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Summer Break

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  The opera season is over and I'm off to Greece. Next post: October 2025.
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Opéra Magazine's 'pick of the month' recordings for June, July and August 2025

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Once again, I simply forgot to post anything about June's 'pick of the month' in France's monthly Opéra Magazine . So here are their favourites for June, July and August. In June, they chose the Palazzetto Bru Zane’s release, in one of its usual, lavish CD books with the usual, thorough documentation, of Lalo’s Le Roi d’Ys . It features Nicolas Courjal, Kate Aldrich, Cyrille Dubois, Jérôme Boutillier, Christian Helmer, the Hungarian National Choir and Phil., all under Vashegyi, who ‘gives the most convincing reading that could be, the most varied in atmosphere, the most dramatically coherent. He is served by six soloists selected with the greatest care.’  With a little judicious clicking, you can find all the tracks in a playlist on YouTube . Their choice in their July-August double issue is Warner’s 79-CD box of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s complete Lieder and song recordings, celebrating his 100th birthday. There are no surprises: all of the recordings have appeared b...
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Offenbach - Les Brigands, at the Paris Opera's Palais Garnier

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ONP Garnier, Thursday June 26 2025 Conductor: Michele Spotti. Production: Barrie Kosky. Sets: Rufus Didwiszus. Costumes: Victoria Behr. Lighting: Ulrich Eh. Choreography: Otto Pichler. Falsacappa: Marcel Beekman. Fiorella: Marie Perbost. Fragoletto: Antoinette Dennefeld. Le Baron de Campo-Tasso: Yann Beuron. Le Chef des carabiniers: Laurent Naouri. Le Duc de Mantoue: Mathias Vidal. Le Comte de Gloria-Cassis: Philippe Talbot. La Princesse de Grenade: Eugénie Joneau. Carmagnola: Leonardo Cortellazzi. Domino: Éric Huchet. Barbavano: Franck Leguérinel. Pietro: Rodolphe Briand. Zerlina: Héloïse Poulet. Fiametta: Clara Guillon. Bianca: Maria Warenberg. La Marquise: Doris Lamprecht. La Duchesse: Helene Schneiderman. Le Précepteur: Luis-Felipe Sousa. Cicinella: Marine Chagnon. Adolphe de Valladolid: Seray Pinar. Antonio: Sandrine Sarroche. Sangrietta/Pipa: Manon Barthélémy. Tortilla: Francesca Lo Bue. Burratina: Cécile L’Heureux. Castagnetta/Pipetta: Corinne Martin. Pizzaiolo: Victorien Bonnet...
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Ross Fiddes, Karin de Novellis - Closing Time appears on YouTube

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In November 2023, I posted about a fascinating, touching project  that grew out of the personal experiences of London-based writer and performer Karin de Novellis, who looked after her husband, a dementia-sufferer, until his death. During lockdown, Karin wrote a collection of poems, called Closing Time at the Kings Head , reflecting on everyday situations and some of the feelings she and her husband experienced while living with dementia. Australian composer Ross Fiddes transformed the poems into a staged song cycle for soprano, baritone, narrator and piano, which premiered in September 2023 at Christ Church Cathedral, Newcastle, New South Wales. According to the programme notes, the staged performance aims to show 'how, in spite of the challenges, a care-partnership can embrace understanding, compassion and love, making the journey easier and better for all concerned. Fiddes’ music inhabits the words in such a way that the listener cannot help but be drawn into this moving and pow...
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