CLASSICAL MUSIC THEATER REVIEWS

On March 20, 2021, San Francisco Opera presented a free stream of Richard Wagner’s opera Siegfried as part of Francesca Zambello’s 2017-2018 American Ring. Forest projections set the mood for Runnicles and Zambello’s nature-friendly, quasi-impressionistic rendering of the opera. Lighting Desi...

Purcell was the greatest English composer until the arrival of Elgar....

It begins with the mezzo-soprano, the wonderful Elizabeth Campbell....

On Friday evening March 12, 2021, Houston Grand Opera presented Live from The Cullen: Jack Swanson and Richard Bado in a wide-ranging recital of music by Robert Schumann, Leonard Bernstein, Roger Quilter, Kurt Weill, Franz Liszt, and Gioachino Rossini. Swanson can hold his audience spellbound with ...

On March 11, 2021, Santa Fe Opera presented an online benefit concert for its renowned apprentice programs. Singing the concert were former apprentices mezzo-soprano Emily Fons, tenor Jack Swanson, and baritone Will Liverman. Fons sings an aria from The Haunted Manor, Liverman sings an aria from Pag...

On Sunday afternoon March 7, 2021, The Boulder Opera Company of Colorado presented Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro to audiences in the theater and online. Stage Director Michael Travis Risner set the time in the present. He provided the necessities required by the story and allowed the cast to pr...

On Saturday, March 6, 2021, San Francisco Opera did a wonderful thing. The company put the opening opera of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelungen online, free to  the world of opera lovers and the universe of the curious. Anyone with access to the Internet can see the entire Ring on weekends in March, ...

Los Angeles Opera’s digital short film, Death, is Nadia Hallgren’s nine-minute creative take on Paul Laurence Dunbar’s turn-of-the 20th century poem, entitled Death. Two crows in seemingly choreographed flight introduce scenes with myriad black birds circling the edge of a leafless forest....

On February 14, 2021, Valentine’s Day, Pittsburgh Festival Opera presented seven singers in a romantic concert entitled Some Enchanted Evening.  James Lesniak and Robert Frankenberg provided thoughtful and supportive piano accompaniment and Festival Opera Board members added charming love stories...

Love was in the air as Columbus was finally reunited for the first time with a live (albeit socially-distant-mask-wearing) symphony orchestra performance featuring an intimate Valentine's Day concert with celebrated vocalists Jessica Hendy and Scott Coulter, accompanist John Boswell, and conductor S...

On January 28, 2021, Los Angeles Opera streamed a newly filmed version of Roxie Perkins and Ellen Reid’s Pulitzer Prize-winning opera  p r i s m. An operatic tapestry, p r i s m tells of the psychological dreams, desires and struggles of Bibi, a sexual assault survivor....

Soldier Songs is a filmed opera that tells about the life and memories of a returning soldier. Composer and librettist David T. Little says this concept took shape when Johnathan McCullough approached Little with an idea for a production of the opera involving an Airstream. When the pandemic happene...

On Saturday evening, December 19, 2020,  Arizona Opera premiered its third  Studio Spotlight Series Concert online at no charge. The first part of the program featured tenor Bille Bruley, soprano Kaitlyn Johnson, and bass-baritone Brandon Morales singing opera arias. The second part was a performa...

the two tenors take on the roles of sparring tenors who clearly get along musically and, by all accounts, personally as well...

A connoisseur's bravos replaced by honkin' horns and flashin' headlights? Puccini's La bohème staged in a parking lot? Such is opera performance in an age of COVID-19. A sold-out fleet of 450 cars contained opera-starved San Diegans who showed their appreciation of the performance in ways never ima...

Releasing a CD of vocal works entirely made up of 20th and 21st century composers is a brave and bold effort on his part....

Under the benign gaze of Saturn, Jupiter, and a bright half -moon, a small ensemble of instrumentalists from the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra performed their final concert of three under the stars at the Morris Museum in Morristown NJ on Saturday, October 24....

2020 has not exactly been a stellar year for…very much at all. One casualty has been live classical music. While some people have barely noticed its absence, there are still many, many people who have, and much to their relief the long dry spell seems to be abating......

The word legendary can be used loosely, but as Brian Ganz demonstrates in a tribute concert to his long-time teacher and world-famous pianist Leon Fleisher, in this case not only is the description deserving but can be applied in many different spheres....

Grand Rapids Symphony presents Romeo and Juliet, the first of three new shows in the 2020 Season.  Pathwaves presented by SpartanNash, is the Symphonya??s reimagined 2020-2021 artistic seasons.  For the 2020 part of the season they are sharing the gift of music with the West Michigan community thr...

Baritone Lucas Meachem and his wife, pianist Irina Meachem, sang an aria-filled recital on to open the Merola Opera Program Recital Series September 27, 2020. The Meachems opened the recital with the aria a?oeBella siccome un angeloa?? (a?oeBeautiful as an Angela??) from Donizettia??s Don Pasquale. ...

Accentuating agony across three erasa?? worth of works, Paavo Järvi conducted the Philharmonia Orchestra unsettlingly in both good and bad ways....

On Monday, August 10, 2020, I listened to tenor Russell Thomas and collaborative pianist Kyung-mi Kima??s a?oeLiving Room Recitala?? for Los Angeles Opera. He opened with Franz Schuberta??s a??An die Musik' ('To Musica??) Thomas and Kim gloried in the songa??s sweeping melody as the pianoa??s stron...

BWW Review: HERSHEY FELDER'S BEETHOVEN LIVE STREAM at Florence, Italy...

Seattle Opera's innovative 'Songs of Summer' recital series has been bringing some of the company's most valued singers to an electronic stage...