Archive for Florentine Opera Company – Page 2
MusicWeb International Rave for Carlisle Floyd: Wuthering Heights!
MusicWeb International offers an in-depth rave review for the Florentine Opera Company’s recording of Carlisle Floyd: Wuthering Heights: “Floyd’s opera is both spectral and emotionally intense; there’s nothing of the musical about it. The writing has about it a florid brilliance entirely in keeping with the themes of love in vain, betrayal and striving for the unattainable. It is by no means a chamber opera and the emotions are played out on a grand scale…
Celebrate Emily Brontë’s 198th Birthday!
Join us in celebrating Emily Brontë’s 198th birthday on July 30th by entering a Wuthering Heights giveaway hosted by Naxos of America! The giveaway runs from today through August 1 at 11:59pm CST and winners receive a copy of the recording as well as the audiobook version of Wuthering Heights courtesy of Naxos Audiobooks! Reference Recordings Amazon iTunes ArkivMusic
Wuthering Heights Is Carlisle Floyd At His Prime
Planet Hugill celebrates Carlisle Floyd’s Wuthering Heights “on disc at last.” “This new recording from Reference Recordings finally brings Carlisle Floyd’s 1958 opera Wuthering Heights to disc. … Floyd’s music is intense and dramatic, in a form of continuous arioso as the libretto is more poetic prose than poetry, with individual speeches standing out aria-like, including the one which gave rise to the piece in the first place. … The recording was made at a…
HRAudio Gives Five Stars To Wuthering Heights!
“For much of the work Floyd writes in an expressive parlando style that allows the words to be clearly heard even when the voices are competing with large orchestral forces. The dark brooding orchestral score is, even allowing for the tragic nature of the story, mellifluous and often lushly romantic in the style of Puccini and Samuel Barber as, for example, in Edgar’s aria “Then marry me Cathy and make me whole again” (Act 2…
Carlisle Floyd’s “Wuthering Heights” is Now Available!
Our First Ever Opera Release! Florentine Opera Company Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra Joseph Mechavich, conductor Buy It Today! Reference Recordings Amazon iTunes ArkivMusic The Florentine Opera Company® brings American opera composer Carlisle Floyd’s operatic masterpiece, based on the classic English novel by Emily Brontë, to life. Floyd’s score takes you to the heart of Catherine and Heathcliffe’s devastating love story. Carlisle Floyd’s canon of operas is amongst the most performed by any living American opera composer,…
What Critics Have Said about Carlisle Floyd’s Wuthering Heights
A “throwback” 1993 review from a performance of Carlisle Floyd’s Wuthering Heights in The Christian Science Monitor: “American composer Carlisle Floyd has wrapped music admirably around the Bronte story. He gives the drama added intensity with a score that is timed to the characters’ moments of passion, scorn, and rage. The music is stark and brooding, but for a contemporary piece (it was commissioned by the Santa Fe Opera in 1958), it is multilayered enough…
A Note from Florentine Opera Director William Florescu
William Florescu, Florentine Opera General Director This is a unique and exciting Florentine Opera recording. Carlisle Floyd’s Wuthering Heights, an unjustly neglected American gem, made its Florentine debut in this world premiere recording. This performance marked the premiere for a full-length Florentine Opera concert production on the Harris Theater Stage of the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts. We had the honor of welcoming Carlisle Floyd to guide this exceptional creative team and shape…
Carlisle Floyd’s Wuthering Heights a “Powerful Representation”
“Wuthering Heights is one of the few operas by Carlisle Floyd that isn’t based on an explicitly American story. Emily Brontë’s novel is set in Yorkshire, amid the moors that give the tale its famous atmosphere. But whether it’s English gothic or Southern (American) gothic, Floyd has a way with stories drenched in melodrama and mysticism. … But the real star here is conductor Joseph Mechavich, who guided the orchestra and voices through Floyd’s often…
TheaterByte Reviews Wuthering Heights!
Lawrence Devoe reviews the upcoming Florentine Opera recording of Carlisle Floyd’s Wuthering Heights: An Opera In Three Acts: “Maestro Joseph Mechavich leads his Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and the choral forces of the Florentine Opera Company, one of America’s oldest such vocal organizations, in a precedent setting performance that will make listeners unfamiliar with this work sit up and take notice. Composer Floyd writes beautiful vocal lines and the cast led by stunning soprano Jarman takes…
Meet The Voices of Wuthering Heights
Lockwood: Aaron Short, tenor Hindley Earnshaw: Chad Shelton, tenor Joseph: Frank Kelley, tenor Catherine: Georgia Jarman, soprano Isabela Linton: Heather Buck, soprano Heathcliff: Kelley Markgraf, baritone Mr. Earnshaw: Matthew Burns, bass-baritone Nelly: Susanne Mentzer, mezzo-soprano Edgar Linton: Vale Rideout, tenor Carlisle Floyd: Wuthering Heights Florentine Opera Company Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra Joseph Mechavich, conductor Pre-Order Now!
The Evolution of Wuthering Heights
Carlisle Floyd discusses the evolution of his Wuthering Heights Opera with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “‘Phyllis Curtin, who later did Catherine in the original production and was in the ‘Susannah’ premiere as well, came to me and asked me to write an aria for her, a request I was happy to accept,’ Floyd said, explaining that this was in the mid-1950s and that she was working on a Town Hall recital program and wanted a…
First Listen! Florentine Opera Company Present’s Carlisle Floyd’s “Wuthering Heights”
Excerpts from The Florentine Opera Company’s World Premiere Recording of Carlisle Floyd’s “Wuthering Heights” an Opera In Three Acts: Our First Ever Opera Release! Florentine Opera Company Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra Joseph Mechavich, conductor Pre-Order Now! The Florentine Opera Company® brings American opera composer Carlisle Floyd’s operatic masterpiece, based on the classic English novel by Emily Brontë, to life. Floyd’s score takes you to the heart of Catherine and Heathcliffe’s devastating love story. Carlisle Floyd’s canon…