John Adams set out to write an oratorio about the Nativity of Christ; but as he worked on it, El Nino became a more dramatic piece than he intended, flowering into a staged opera in which the oratorio's free-flowing singer's identity becomes an effective statement of a mystical point. Dawn Upshaw and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson--singing a mixture of biblical texts and Spanish/Mexican ...
With Willard White in the title role, this very well-sung production of Falstaff from the Aix-en-Provence festival, set in the 1950s, makes for a radical yet plausibly alternative view to the traditional setting in "Merrie England". By casting Jamaican-born baritone White in the title role, director Herbert Wernicke has emphasised Falstaff's role as an outsider, spurned by the community on ...