During the dog days of summer, when the industry professionals were all on holiday and little new seemed to be on offer, I sweated it out looking for a version of Verdi’s opera Nabucco that would prove really satisfying. There were the established five-star mega-productions, of course — the La Scala version conducted by Muti and with Bruson in the title role, or the spectacular Met rendition under Levine, with Juan Pons as Nabucco and Samuel Ramey as Zaccaria — with Va, pensiero (or Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves) actually encored! But I was looking for something more recent, and perhaps with a different kind of feeling.
I looked first at a production from Turin’s gigantic open-air arena. It has the veteran Leo Nucci singing with great force in the title role, Maria Guleghina a stunning Abigaille, and Daniel Oren as conductor bringing out a loud sonority for the massive speakers. But it all seemed too much of a good thing for me. The outdoor venue made demands on the performers that didn’t give them much room for subtlety, and thus this beautiful opera only displayed one part of its distinctive character.
And then I found it. In many ways it was the ideal production and came from the ancient Italian city of Piacenza and its small opera house. It was as if I’d been inspecting the antiquities all day, had had an early dinner with too much Italian red wine, and stumbled into the opera house without knowing what was on. There were certainly no famous names involved, but I felt I had found gold.
Surprisingly, the conductor was the same as had been in charge in Verona, Daniel Oren, but the effects he coaxed from the local orchestra were quite different, and extraordinary. There was a delicacy and a clarity that were quite riveting, and though he bounced up and down in a sort of self-parody from time to time, it was always at moments when this seemed quite appropriate.
Ambrogio Maestri sang the role of Nabucco (Italian for Nebuchadnezzar) and it would probably be impossible to find someone who more convincingly looked the part — oppressive, brutal, but with a certain magic about him nonetheless. Abigaille was Andrea Gruber, also powerfully impressive and with golden make-up. And Carlo Striuli made a strong High Priest.
The production features a few novel techniques, but not many. Abigaille descends from above for her first entrance, and two adjustable platforms allow elements of the chorus to confront each other from 2m up at either side of the stage.
But basically this is a heartfelt and invariably well sung Nabucco. The faces of the chorus in close-up — in Va, pensiero, for instance — are sheer joy, and a guarantee of sincerity and commitment. The audience is extremely enthusiastic, and the smiling faces of the principal singers at the curtain calls make it clear that they too believed this had been a stupendous performance.
Claudio Abbado’s cycle of Mahler’s symphonies is becoming legendary. They were recorded with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, a lineup he handpicked for the festivals and subsequent recordings. The 5th Symphony has been popular ever since the Mahler revival got underway in the 1960s, and not only for its lovingly-crafted Adagietto. Richard Strauss wrote to Mahler congratulating him, and you can’t get much higher praise than that.
This stunning Abbado rendition of the fifth has now been re-issued in the Discovering Masterpieces of Classical Music series from Euroarts. The complete performance comes with a half-hour of explanation and appreciation from the music scholar Jeremy Barham. This is very informative and perceptive; other material from a female speaker unfortunately has more of the feeling of PR about it. But this item is worth having for the performance alone.
Lastly, another DVD about the wonderful Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela. It isn’t actually about the orchestra itself, which is made up of the best talents from a system involving hundreds of thousands, but about the system itself — hence the title El Sistema (The System). In essence Jose Antonio Abreu, whose idea it was, advocates taking children from gang-dominated slums, teaching them each a musical instrument, and then organizing them into ad-hoc orchestras. The result — young boys with missing teeth comparing trombones and trumpets — brings tears to the eyes.
And why shouldn’t this system be transplanted to every nation on Earth? Venezuelan socialism isn’t in any way a prerequisite. This fine DVD’s subtitle Music to Change Life just about says it all.
The Lee (李) family migrated to Taiwan in trickles many decades ago. Born in Myanmar, they are ethnically Chinese and their first language is Yunnanese, from China’s Yunnan Province. Today, they run a cozy little restaurant in Taipei’s student stomping ground, near National Taiwan University (NTU), serving up a daily pre-selected menu that pays homage to their blended Yunnan-Burmese heritage, where lemongrass and curry leaves sit beside century egg and pickled woodear mushrooms. Wu Yun (巫雲) is more akin to a family home that has set up tables and chairs and welcomed strangers to cozy up and share a meal
Dec. 8 to Dec. 14 Chang-Lee Te-ho (張李德和) had her father’s words etched into stone as her personal motto: “Even as a woman, you should master at least one art.” She went on to excel in seven — classical poetry, lyrical poetry, calligraphy, painting, music, chess and embroidery — and was also a respected educator, charity organizer and provincial assemblywoman. Among her many monikers was “Poetry Mother” (詩媽). While her father Lee Chao-yuan’s (李昭元) phrasing reflected the social norms of the 1890s, it was relatively progressive for the time. He personally taught Chang-Lee the Chinese classics until she entered public
Last week writer Wei Lingling (魏玲靈) unloaded a remarkably conventional pro-China column in the Wall Street Journal (“From Bush’s Rebuke to Trump’s Whisper: Navigating a Geopolitical Flashpoint,” Dec 2, 2025). Wei alleged that in a phone call, US President Donald Trump advised Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi not to provoke the People’s Republic of China (PRC) over Taiwan. Wei’s claim was categorically denied by Japanese government sources. Trump’s call to Takaichi, Wei said, was just like the moment in 2003 when former US president George Bush stood next to former Chinese premier Wen Jia-bao (溫家寶) and criticized former president Chen
President William Lai (賴清德) has proposed a NT$1.25 trillion (US$40 billion) special eight-year budget that intends to bolster Taiwan’s national defense, with a “T-Dome” plan to create “an unassailable Taiwan, safeguarded by innovation and technology” as its centerpiece. This is an interesting test for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), and how they handle it will likely provide some answers as to where the party currently stands. Naturally, the Lai administration and his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) are for it, as are the Americans. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is not. The interests and agendas of those three are clear, but
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