"The most interesting work, fittingly, came from Theodora Hanslowe as Anita, the Navarraise. Hanslowe's voice has darkened since the days when she sang Rossini and Handel at the Met, acquiring an appropriately veristic heft. Though stationary for most of the performance, she was physically committed throughout - so much so that one could forgive her the diva-esque flamboyance, in the work's last moments, of wandering around the stage deliriously. Of all the evening's elements, Hanslowe's performance was the one that most persuasively argued for the viability of Massenet's opera."

In 1981, Martin Pearlman conducted the ensemble now known as Boston Baroque in the Boston period instrument premiere of the mighty Mass in B Minor by J.S. Bach--at that time, it was only the second such performance to be known in the country. In the Boston Globe, music critic Richard Dyer praised the performance, calling it "...A major reassessment of how this music can sound, and an extension of our vocabulary of feeling as we listen to it." Now Pearlman and his professional ensemble bring the...