Tito 230 (part 3)

Yep, the series is merrily going along. The latest installment linked below follows the action from Vitellia doing her snarky best to congratulate Servilia for her good luck to the end of Act I.

I’ve quite been enjoying this weekly exercise in rediscovering an old fave. It’s doing a good job at pulling me back into the opera fold 🙂

5 years of opera, innit?

Yes, it’s that time of the year again when we harvest what we sow. You may have noticed I’ve been rather quiet this month but the backstage has had some activity recently, with yours truly busy tinkering at this little gift which I hope everyone who reads the blog will enjoy 🙂 and if you don’t… well, you can skip to the 12:55 and listen to Eterni dei, in a version I’m sure you will recognise.

Ep 3: True Crime Tito

Without further ado, here’s episode 3 of the opera. innit? podcast, from which I drifted away a couple of years ago due to it taking too long to produce. But I like to hear myself talk too much to actually give up, even in the face of laziness (which I admit is one of my – very few 😉 – weaknesses) and competition from pressing “real life” activities.

So, yea, that’s where you get after years of thinking about Tito too much and talking about it too little (although, thanks to you, dear reader – and often more than once, opera buddy – I’ve talked about Tito more than I thought I ever would 5 years ago).

edit 17/10/18: sounds like Vesuvius may have erupted later than we’ve thought for hundreds of years… rather after 17 October 79AD than on 24 August 79AD…

The 224th Tito Day with lots of Parto ma tu ben mio

Decisions, decisions…

Here it is, the Tito Day of 2015.

To celebrate the 1791 premiere of La clemenza di Tito in Prague, I uploaded the second episode of my podcast. This episode is dedicated to Pato, ma tu ben mio. Instead of too much talk I thought I’d let the music speak and guide the listener just a bit via the key Partos I navigated on the way to discovering my love for this opera.

The Strauss ladies who sang both the ladies and the young men

Whilst researching opera podcasts, I found a number of interesting things. Today I’d like to give a shoutout to the The Operatic PastCast, which, though about the (g)olden days of opera, has some very interesting material that has managed to capture even my contemporary-skewed attention.

This couple of episodes has Lotte Lehmann and the wickedly funny Maria Jeritza discuss (and occasionally disagree about!) Richard Strauss and his operatic work in which they starred and were conducted by him (mostly Ariadne and Die Frau ohne Schatten and a bit about Der Rosenkavalier):

Part I:

Part II:

There’s also self mocking diva talk and on top of it a glimpse at the old school taping process, with the producer coming through once or twice.