The 2021 GRAMMY® Award Nominations were announced today and Reference Recordings releases appeared on four nominations! 2021 GRAMMY® Nominations for RR releases: Best Opera Recording Carlisle Floyd: Prince Of Players — William Boggs, conductor; Keith Phares & Kate Royal; Blanton Alspaugh, producer (Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra; Florentine Opera Chorus) Best Contemporary Classical Composition Carlisle Floyd: Prince Of Players — Carlisle Floyd, composer (William Boggs, Kate Royal, Keith Phares, Florentine Opera Chorus & Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra) Producer of the Year, Classical…
Fanfare Magazine’s latest issue features a review of the Florentine Opera’s world premiere recording of Carlisle Floyd: Prince of Players: “The performance is excellent. As Kynaston, baritone Keith Phares sings well, articulates the text clearly, and is very touching in a role that requires a wide dramatic range. Kynaston has a bar fight, two love scenes (one with each gender), and scenes where he portrays a Shakespeare character. Dramatically, Phares seems thoroughly inside the role.…
Opera News reviews the Florentine Opera Company’s world premiere recording of Carlisle Floyd’s Prince of Players: “[Keith] Phares shows impressive control over his falsetto, and switches seamlessly between registers. … When Peg finally declares her feelings for Kynaston, it’s a powerful outpouring of feeling, kicking the proceedings to a higher level. It’s the centerpiece passage of the opera, and splendidly sung by [Kate] Royal… The supporting cast is consistently strong, including Alexander Dobson as Betterton,…
MusicWeb International has a second review for the Florentine Opera Company’s world premiere recording of Carlisle Floyd’s Prince of Players: “Realism is triumphant on the stage… In the role of Peg Kate Royal is exceptional, having already shown her interest in the music of Carlisle Floyd. Here she produces a beautiful sound while ably portraying the conflicts faced by her character. Keith Phares is a stalwart of new and recent American operas and his portrayal…
The Summer 2020 issue of Opera Canada features a major recommendation of Florentine Opera’s world premiere recording of Carlisle Floyd’s Prince of Players: “Floyd’s score is in line with the style he’s used for opera throughout his career. it’s colourful and atmospheric with considerable melodic invention and a judicious use of dissonance. … it all works well with the story and the over- all impression is of a very well crafted piece, musically and dramatically.…
Jeff Kaliss has a fantastic spotlight, feature, and review in San Francisco Classical Voice for the Florentine Opera’s world premiere recording of Carlisle Floyd: Prince of Players: “Don’t ever suppose that Carlisle Floyd can’t learn and showcase new tricks, just because he’s the veteran dean of living American composers. Hearing the newly released recording (on San Francisco’s Reference Recordings) of his latest opera, completed in 2016 (when Floyd was 90), will divest you of any such assumption.…
Opera Today reviews the Florentine Opera Company’s World Premiere recording of Carlisle Floyd’s Prince of Players: “gender and performance are at the heart of the art form that we call opera. If in the 21st century we are having conversations about gender and identity, then – from castrati to en travesti, from Cherubino to Cantonese opera, from Baba the Turk to Octavian – opera has relished gender fluidity since the art form was born. Floyd’s Prince of Players is…
The ArtsFuse‘s Ralph Locke reviews The Florentine Opera’s recording of Carlisle Floyd’s Prince of Players: An Opera in Two Acts: “Ninety-six minutes is short for a two-act opera on a serious subject, but it feels just right in Carlisle Floyd’s thirteenth and latest opera, Prince of Players. The plot zips along, clearly delineated in the sung text and stage directions. … Even better, the composer and the generally fine singing cast sharply differentiate the characters in…
Opera News released their Top 10 Opera Recordings of 2016, and coming in at #8 was the Florentine Opera and Milwaukee Symphony recording of Carlisle Floyd’s Wuthering Heights! “It contains some beautiful music that deserves to be heard, as evidenced by this world-premiere recording.” —Rebecca Paller Florentine Opera Company Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra Joseph Mechavich, conductor The Florentine Opera Company® brings American opera composer Carlisle Floyd’s operatic masterpiece, based on the classic English novel by Emily…
“…Cathy’s ghostly offstage voice in the Prologue soon had me hooked, Heathcliff’s passionate, florid response utterly in keeping with the novel’s spirit.… Georgia Jarman and Kelly Markgraf as the doomed couple are terrific, Markgraf’s testosterone-rich baritone a stark contrast to Vale Rideout’s insipid Edgar Linton. Chad Shelton’s Hindley is suitably brutish. Diction is clear, the English accents pretty decent. Repeated listenings reveal a myriad of instrumental details, like the rude trombone glissandi during Joseph’s tedious…
The Florentine Opera Company’s Carlisle Floyd: Wuthering Heights receives a new review in the November/December 2016 issue of American Record Guide: “…there is a lot of interesting music, enough to make this an enjoyable theatrical experience…The performance is quite good. George Jarman and Kelly Markgraf make a very good Cathy and Heathcliff, Jarman with her clear, secure soprano and Markgraf with his rich, wide-ranging baritone. … The veteran Suzanne Mentzer makes a wonderful Nelly, and…
Fanfare Magazine’s James Altena sees Carlisle Floyd as a leading voice of American Opera and welcomes Wuthering Heights into his collection: “Here is a composer who writes in an accessible but never simplistic or retrograde tonal vocabulary; has a sound grasp of what makes operas work dramatically in terms of subject matter, plotting, and pacing; and crafts compelling music that vividly illustrates his texts (Floyd writes his own librettos) while yet placing them in expressive,…
The Florentine Opera Company and Milwaukee Symphony’s new recording of Carlisle Floyd’s Wuthering Heights gets four stars from BBC Music Magazine in their October 2016 Issue: “In this studio recording following a concert performance by Florentine Opera of Milwaukee, Kelly Markgraf and Georgia Jarman make a powerful impression as the ill-fated couple, and Chad Shelton’s incisive Hindley and Heather Buck’s sweet Isabella also stand out amidst a strong cast. … Under opera specialist Joseph Mechavich,…
The Milwaukee Symphony and Florentine Opera Company get a four-star review from Opera Now! “Carlisle Floyd, now 90 years old, is keen for his complete operatic output to be recorded in his lifetime. So Florentine Opera (Milwaukee) has done him proud with Wuthering Heights… Kelly Markgraf makes a suitably dominant Heathciff, Georgia Jarman a vibrant Cathy, Suzanne Mentzer a stalwart Nelly.” —Francis Mizzu, Opera Now See the full review in Opera Now‘s Digital Edition Reference…
Audiophile Audition names the Florentine Opera Company’s Wuthering Heights recording their Multichannel Disc of the Month in a five-star review: “Floyd, now 90 and still writing operas (!), served as artistic advisor for this Florentine Opera premiere recording, made in January 2015 at the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts, in Brookfield, Wisconsin. It is superb in every way, from Reference’s magnificent sonic capture to the excellence of all members of the cast. Florentine…
Bruckner: Symphony No. 7; Bates: Resurrexit
Mark Donahue & John Newton, engineers; Mark Donahue, mastering engineer (Manfred Honeck & Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra)