Just in: Joyce DiDonato to sing at Bayreuth
mainThe alternative baroque festival has just laid out its summer offerings.
Top highight: Diva Joyce singing Monteverdi, Händel, Gluck, Hasse, Cesti and Dowland.
Not loud enough, we guess, to disturb the fools on the Green Hill.
Almost gave me a heart attack with that headline…
Guess anyone who enjoys Wagner and Gesamtkunstwerk is labelled a ‘fool’ on this site, and yet Norman Lebrecht constantly attempts to push lesser composers onto the rest of us.
I don’t think Norman Lebrecht is a reflexive anti-Wagnerian. Probably a (strained) reference to the Beatles song “The Fool on the Hill.”
https://youtu.be/wsRatIMUSu8
This may come as a shock, but some of us enjoy “lesser” composers like Monteverdi and Handel more than Wagner. Di Donato’s programme looks promising
I did not actually intend that comment to concern the other composers listed – Monteverdi is great!
So is Handel, but not always.
I love Wagner’s operas but Handel is no way a lesser composer. Far from it. Listen to DiDonato in the new Agrippina recording, for example.
Not loud enough, we guess, to disturb the belchers on the Green Hill (!) – By the way, one doesn’t need to shout on the stage of the Green Hill – at least, neither Nilsson or Windgassen had to 😉
Don’t jump the gun: Bayreuth 2020 ends on 30 August (a few days before DiDonato’s recital) with Beethoven XI. and the singers have not yet been announced…
Beethoven XI?
A headline illustrating the importance of prepositions in English
Even more the importance of knowing that there is more than one sort of music at Bayreuth.
‘fools on the green hill’ is gratuitous and beneath any level of thoughtful comment.
It might appeal to the legendary German sense of humour.