31 October 2016

gods & monsters & a sorceress

Some local artists are raising funds for projects that sound worth supporting:

Locally sourced tenor Nicholas Phan is running an IndiGoGo campaign for his latest solo CD, Gods & Monsters, in which he and pianist Myra Huang perform German lieder (by Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Wolf, and Mahler) that center on myths, legends, and fairy tales, involving gods, monsters, witches, and "other fantastical creatures." Phan's other solo albums have been sterling and this looks like a wonderful program. You can find out more, check out the offered premiums, and contribute if you are so minded, here. The campaign ends in a few days.

Curious about what else was being performed at the opera houses in the days of Monteverdi? Ars Minerva, which is led by soprano Céline Ricci, is the place to find out. The youngest company performing the oldest operas, Ars Minerva has announced their third revival of a long-forgotten work from the giddy days of seventeenth-century Venetian opera: La Circe, attributed to Pietro Andrea Ziani with a libretto by Cristoforo Ivanovich, about the enchantress celebrated by Homer and Ovid. I attended the company's first two productions (La Cleopatra by Castrovillari and The Amazons in the Fortunate Isles by Pallavicino), and both were completely entertaining and delightful and extremely well done on a limited budget. If you'd like to help out their work – and reviving seventeenth-century Venetian operas is God's own work, make no mistake – you may find out more and donate here.

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