Ladies and gentlemen, we have come to this. The phenomenal Bel Canto diva, Jessica Pratt, has made her role debut as Adina, as she is joined by her Nemorino, the stylishly fabulous, Pavol Breslik. In addition to them, they are joined by other awesome Italianate singers, the virile low comic baritone, Signore Paolo Bordogna as Belcore, the charismatic comic baritone, Signore Roberto di Candia as Il Dottore Dulcamara, and the stellar rising young light lyric soprano, Señorita Mercedes Gancedo as Giannetta. How does this extraordinary, noble, masterful, and grand troupe of megastars fare? Find out in this review and let me know your opinions as well.
Articles by Antoni Matteo Garcia
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From Palermo, Naples is a veritable cavalcade of veteran and young opera stars embodying their iconic characters in Rossini’s final grand opera he composed. Enjoy the review and let me know your opinions as well.
Le Grand Monsieur Gerald Finley strikes again as the ever-iconic Swiss hero, William Tell, and he is joined by a veritable cavalcade of superstars, young and young at heart, amidst a somber, gloomy, yet controversial production in the hallowed halls of London, England’s Royal Opera House. Enjoy the review and let me know your opinions as well.
We have a cavalcade of dramatic superstars ranging from the industry veterans of Nina Stemme, Anja Kampe, John Lundgren, Ain Anger, and Simon O’Neill respectively as Brünnhilde, Sieglinde, Wotan, Hunding, and Siegmund to continuously blossoming talents like Ekaterina Gubanova as an electrifying Fricka on the helm in this minimalistic production of Wagner’s Die Walküre. Enjoy the review and let me know your opinions as well.
A dark, gloomy, yet fabulously Elizabethan production backed up by some top-tier singing. Enjoy the review and let me know your opinions as well.
Violetta Valery searched for true love and self-sacrifice. Lucia Ashton and Juliette wanted to be together with her one true loves, Edgardo Ravenswood and Roméo. Antonia yearned to sing on the world’s greatest stages. Mimí lived a life of purity among the Bohemians. Marguerite had her sexual awakening through Faust, who in turn was influenced by Mephistopheles the Devil. Out of all these romantic ladies, Thais, who lived in a lap of luxury amongst the nobles, was in search of spirituality, purity, and deep love. Enjoy the review and let me know your opinions as well.
Two days ago, the fabulous, lovely, and awesome Bel Canto specialist, La Grande Madama Elena Mosuc, celebrated her very special day. I consider this album review to my personal birthday gift to her. Enjoy the review and let me know your opinions as well.
In the span of a day, I reached 544 subscribers. That is fifteen more awesome people, who subscribed to my channel and hopefully enjoyed the content I have to offer and for that, I thank you all and I wish you well in your lives. Usually, I would be all happy and enthusiastic that I reached 100 more subscribers to my channel, but I thought this “update” or lack thereof will suffice due to everything that happened. I know that the change in the whole YouTube Partnership Program where nowadays one has to meet 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time put me at a point where I was almost depressed, but I had this to remind myself. I should be extremely for all of the reviewer friends and the friends in general, who are passionate about the same stuff as I am, whether it be opera, anime, music, cartoons, or movies. On top of that, my main goal was neither fortune nor fame, even though these two sound exciting and wonderful, I cannot keep my hopes high nor be consumed and engulfed by fame too much, it was just finding the joy in sharing what I love to my viewers because if I didn’t start my career as a vlogger who makes reviews from opera to anime, I would not be here for all of the singers, voice actors, and actors who put in a lot of effort to the works they did, which range from excellent to mediocre to awful. For all that was and is worth, I am grateful, delighted, and blessed to know that there are people who enjoy the work I do, see the effort I put in despite the screw-ups, and seem to encourage me every single time and that’s something precious. Along the way, I even gathered tips and tricks from reviewer friends to true professionals in terms of how I should improve the overall quality of my video reviews. I know that the possibility for me to be a YouTube Partner, as well as posting my content on Steemit, all while balancing my academics, which by the way I received an average of B+ with the German equivalent being 2+ in the first part of the qualification phase, my acting career, as I am going to be performing Werther once again between Spring and Summer and between those seasons I have a new film role, and giving myself time to go to Behind the Voice Actors to obtain new and original roles for my own personal pride and joy, is for me to avoid doing a boring 9 to 5 job in something that I deeply loathe, believe me, there was one time I was an assistant in washing the glasses in a hotel far from Berlin and although I was paid rather well I knew this was something I was not going to do for a long time, or, even worse and Heaven forbid, move back to my parents’ place without anything to look forward to and I have been doing my damnedest to avoid that ever since I moved to Berlin at 20 years old. I know I was thinking about starting my own YouTube channel in my late teens after watching some rant videos with the main topic being what was wrong with Disney Channel, Cartoon Network, and Disney Channel. Even before all that, I was on YouTube to watch cartoons, anime, opera singers singing different arias, and classical music pieces. Yes, my priorities were still centered around school and my prospective career as an actor, voice actor, and singer, but there was something on the back of my mind that told me, “Hey! Try your luck on YouTube.” I was invited by a former schoolmate to like his sister’s video of her singing for a contest and that was how I started being a YouTuber, yet I did not know what I was going to do. Like I said, at first I was an aspiring actor looking for gigs until I decided to do music-related reviews, while also putting in anime, cartoons, and movies in the mix. I enjoyed what I did and I still am to this day. In spite of all the crap going on, I have to keep my chin up and keep on going with the video blog-style reviews because the only thing worse than failing is throwing in the towel, sitting around complaining about the current situation, and doing nothing at all. Yes, my YouTube Partnership will run the risk of being lost. I know I might not hit 1,000 subscribers and several views in the span of 30 days. However, despite all of this, I need to be there for you, my dear viewers, because through your boundless support, you gave me the inspiration to keep going on. I know some of you are not going to stick around for me, but that’s life we all come and go. My YouTube Partnership might end up going in smoke, but my passion, determination, and will to keep pushing on will never die! I want to wrap this by thanking all of my 544 subscribers who have kept up with me for quite some time. I also want to thank the many reviewers and video-bloggers who have not only done their damnedest to make such amazing pieces of work but I have also considered them more than my friends but my extended family including Evan Burris Trout, William T Jones, Tony Whatley II aka The Black Critic Guy, Taylor Wyatt aka Whyboy, James McLoughlin aka Jambareeqi, Logan Ridenbaugh aka Hewy Toonmore, Eli Stone aka Cartoon Hero, Brandon Nichols aka Hardcore Kid, Chris Lee Moore aka Rowdy C, Mike Jeavons, Megan Wessels aka The FanFic Critic, Rachel LS Charman aka EyeofSol, Christine Tsuzaki aka The Asian Critic Chick, Dani Bollenbacher aka The Animated Heroine, Rowna Sutin aka cantorandopera and her husband, Stewart Sutin, James Daniel Walsh, Patricia Miranda, Ross Faries, Adriano Bordoni aka Madhog,…
I know I am still rather perturbed in light of what developments have been happening on YouTube. In spite of that, I want to use this opportunity to invite you all to subscribe to my channel and take a gander at the content I have to offer. I know I have been using this plug for countless of times but it has to be done because this is a reminder that just because my channel only has 529 subscribers does not mean I am going to wallow in self-pity. I do not just do these vlog-style reviews of operas, concerts, musicals, ballet, anime, cartoons, and movies for kicks-and-giggles. I put in a lot of effort, research, heart, encouragement, and of course, I take my career as an online reviewer very seriously. It has been my mission to not only voice out my opinions via this platform and do so in a way that does not make me come off as mean-spirited nor pushy nor pretentious but to also create genuine, healthy, and long-lasting relationships with my fellow actors, voice actors, singers and musicians of several genres, animators, creators, filmmakers, artists, and reviewers. Through my reviews and through loads and loads of inspiration from many of some fabulous reviewers, who I am glad to call my friends, I felt like I fulfilled making some well-meaning relationships, be it on Manic Expression, Team Night Saturn, Channel Awesome, Steemit, and many other platforms. I don’t want to bore you too much with a history lesson but I essentially started off as an aspiring actor wanting to be noticed for my craft, as it is the 21st century and some casting directors will end up searching for a video of someone doing a monologue in spite of the fact that the camera quality may not be amazing. It was not until the night before my 21st birthday did I decide to release my first vlog-style review of Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia at the Deutsche Oper Berlin starring Edita Gruberova and Pavol Breslik. From this point forward, this was my experimental phase, as I made more vlog-style reviews. I did not want to confine myself to reviewing music, so I made my first anime vlog regarding Space Dandy when I had a stopover in Washington Dulles. I even branched myself out into doing movie reviews, as that was what a lot of my reviewer friends were doing. Whilst making these reviews, I was initially hesitant on becoming a YouTube partner because I did not want to whore myself out and I was rather hesitant. However, that all came to a head in June 2014 when I finally said, yes I will be a YouTube partner. I did not receive my first YouTube payment of 71 Euros until June 2016, as it took me two years to achieve that, which was far from easy as I was still branching out and of course my schedule in my old acting school did not really make it possible for me to watch certain operas and concerts, as several days were intended for rehearsal. The next payment I ended up getting took me 1 year and it was 74 Euros. These days I am really lucky to use Steemit for my overall revenue to increase, as I have a pretty strong following on that particular site and I do enjoy posting my stuff there as I do get something great in return, whether it be payments or people who are genuinely supportive of my content. Speaking of followings, whilst I may not have the most significant amount of followers ever, I was glad to know some of my favorite opera singers and some fellow opera fans recognized my work. Anna Prohaska, whose concert I saw in Salzburg in the summer of 2014, automatically recognized me as the guy with the vlogs. She even remarked that my work was informative and people can learn a lot. One of my opera singer and opera fan friends recognized me through a review I did of, I believe, The Magic Flute in the Deutsche Oper Berlin. I even made a lot of great friends with a lot of the opera singers of the Deutsche Oper Berlin and I cherish each of them for being such down-to-earth and amazing people. This all got to the point where the Deutsche Oper Berlin even subscribed to my YouTube channel, which was one of the best moments I had so far, as I did make a lot of my reviews based on the Deutsche Oper Berlin’s productions. I even met the likes of Evelin Novak, Katharina Kammerloher, Pavol Breslik, Diana Damrau, Thomas Hampson, Waltraud Meier, Cheryl Studer, Adrianne Pieczonka and Evelyn Herlitzius. I even achieved my biggest dream of seeing Elena Mosuc perform the role of Violetta Valery from La Traviata, of course, at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and she herself loved my review of her performance in one of her signature roles. During my time in Pesaro last summer, some of my friends who performed in Rossini’s Il Viaggio a Reims were so thankful that I not only came to see that production but also make a review of it. Some of them even remarked my review as interesting and thoughtful, so much so that the conductor, Michele Spotti himself, gave me his business card once he recognized me. Through all of these happenings, they were all blessings because I knew deep down that this was what I wanted and I achieved it because I kept soldiering on and I was not going to go up in smoke any time soon. Mind you, I have become so familiar with a lot of operatic topics from the popular works to the rarer works to the many singers of the past and present to even the Fach system, which categorizes vocal types and each of them has their own traits. I was all but thirteen years old when I became familiar with the Fach system, fifteen…
Let us see how such an iconic tenore di grazia and a rising, young lyric soprano embody this iconic Shakespearean couple in this production, which is essentially an amalgamation of pop and pomp, with their insurmountable vocal chemistry and magic. Enjoy the review and let me know your opinions as well.