Review: THE BARBER OF SEVILLE at Mccaw Hall
by Erica Miner - May 05, 2024
Without a doubt the highlight of, and a perfect ending to, the company’s season...
Review: LA BOHÈME at MN Opera
by Joe Sarafolean - May 05, 2024
What did our critic think of LA BOHÈME at MN Opera?...
Review: SAN DIEGO OPERA'S MADAMA BUTTERFLY at San Diego Civic Center
by Ron Bierman - May 03, 2024
Puccini’s Madama Butterfly is one of the most popular operas ever written. It has a wonderfully lyrical score, familiar arias and a story that remains compelling even after often heard. San Diego Opera’s most recent production played to a full house on opening night, and under the direction of Jose ...
Review: Dizzying Night at the Met with Grigorian's Splendiferous BUTTERFLY in House Debut
by Richard Sasanow - April 28, 2024
Those of us who keep an eye on the comings and goings of singers at major opera houses around the world, have known that Friday’s debutant, Lithuanian soprano Asmik Grigorian, was going to be one to watch. And it was. No worries about whether her voice would translate from Europe’s smaller houses to...
Review: John Adams's EL NINO Finally Arrives at the Met After World Travels
by Richard Sasanow - April 24, 2024
Back in December, I saw the chamber version of John Adams’s EL NINO—dubbed EL NINO: NATIVITY RECONSIDERED—at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Pared down to its essence, it was wonderful, starred two of the singers who made their debuts in the premiere at the Met, soprano Julia Bullock and bass-...
Review: TURANDOT at Belk Theater
by Perry Tannenbaum - April 22, 2024
Yes, a grand opera was inserted at Belk Theater as the clock or calendar was winding down! Around the world, Callas, Nilsson, and Sutherland are among the divas who have graced the powerhouse role of TURANDOT, and Franco Zeffirelli's production at the Met is as revered for its stateliness and splend...
Review: LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR, Royal Opera House
by Alexander Cohen - April 22, 2024
Nadine Sierra’s enthralling central performance helms this nerve-jangling revival....
Review: Separated at Birth? Boulanger's VILLE MORTE and Debussy's PELLEAS Fall Similarly on the Ear
by Richard Sasanow - April 20, 2024
It’s easy to understand why Neal Goren, founder and artistic director of Catapult Opera, was immediately taken with LA VILLE MORTE. (His program notes say, “Upon receiving the piano-vocal score, I found myself sighing in ecstasy…”) First, the name Nadia Boulanger is magic in 20th century music—in mu...
Review: Lighter Side of the Fall of the Weimar Republic, in Death of Classical's TIERGARTEN?
by Richard Sasanow - April 20, 2024
I wouldn’t say that Andrew Ousley’s TIERGARTEN cabaret draws parallels between Weimar Germany—from World War I, leading up to the Nazification of the country and finally World War II—and the current political climate in the US. But you could. After all, who doesn’t love a little escapist fiddling wh...
Review: SHORTS – A FESTIVAL OF POCKET OPERAS at Artscape Arena Offers Bite-Sized Operatic Treats
by Jaime Uranovsky - April 14, 2024
While there are three mini-operas within the SHORTS programme, this reviews centres around two of them: LA VOIX HUMANE and THE IMPRESARIO.
Over the last couple of years, I have been lucky enough to attend various operas staged in Cape Town. They are magnificent: grand and opulent....
Review: Blanchard-Lemmons' FIRE SHUT UP Makes Another Splash at the Met
by Richard Sasanow - April 11, 2024
It was tough separating the opera from the event when FIRE SHUT UP IN MY BONES opened the first post-Covid pandemic season at the Met. Back then, in September 2021, FIRE made history as the first opera by a Black composer, Terence Blanchard with his librettist Kasi Lemmons (based on the book by Char...
Review: Heartbeat's Bio-Version EUGENE ONEGIN Dazzles under Director/Designer Dustin Wills
by Richard Sasanow - April 07, 2024
If you cross the traditional EUGENE ONEGIN by Tchaikovsky (great even when overfilled with drama and, yes, music music music, with Konstantin Shilovsky’s co-libretto) with a touch of Ken Russell’s 1971 “The Music Lovers” (the overwrought bio-pic of Tchaikovsky with Richard Chamberlin and Glenda Jack...
Review: CARMEN, Royal Opera House
by Gary Naylor - April 06, 2024
An old favourite brings the passion and the pain with beautiful singing and convincing acting...
Review: Fine Singing Makes RONDINE Easy to Swallow under Scappucci
by Richard Sasanow - March 30, 2024
The first night of the Met’s revival of Puccini’s LA RONDINE (THE SWALLOW) was filled with surprises of one sort or another, under the baton of that smart conductor, Speranza Scappucci. She knows her way around Puccini and deserves to be heard more frequently at the house. The production had glamour...
Review: DUKE BLUEBEARD'S CASTLE, London Coliseum
by Gary Naylor - March 22, 2024
English National Opera closes its troubled, but successful, 2023-24 season with Bartok's curious compelling slice of psychodrama beautifully played by its orchestra...
Review: Met's Laffont Competition Unleashes New Artists on Grateful Audience
by Richard Sasanow - March 21, 2024
No matter how many “star” performances the Met manages to muster in the course of a season, there’s nothing quite as exciting as the Laffont Grand Finals Concert—formerly known as the Met’s National Auditions Finals—which took place this past Sunday afternoon for its 70th season, when we got to hear...
Review: THE BARBER OF SEVILLE, Wilton's Music Hall
by Franco Milazzo - March 18, 2024
In the week when an Arts Council England report lambasted the current state of opera and questioned its relevance to wider society, Charles Court Opera’s The Barber Of Seville stands as a stern rebuff to those who consider this art form to be dated and irrelevant....
Review: JENŮFA, London Coliseum
by Franco Milazzo - March 15, 2024
Opera is not short of stories where women are violated and abandoned by the men in their lives but Leoš Janáček’s Jenůfa is an especially cruel tale....
Review: Yahoo for Ermonela Jaho! at Palau de la Musica Tribute to Victoria de los Angeles
by Richard Sasanow - March 13, 2024
It’s hard to compete with a dazzling concert hall like Barcelona’s Palau de la Musica Catalana—designed by Lluís Domènech i Montaner, one of Antonio Gaudi’s contemporaries in the modernista style. Or, with the famed Catalan (yes, not Spanish) diva Victoria de los Angeles, a Met favorite, whose cente...
Review: SONGBIRD at Kennedy Center
by Roger Catlin - March 12, 2024
There’s an awful lot of death in opera, Timothy O’Leary, the general director of Washington National Opera, lamented on a recent opening night. And those plentiful tragedies are also often further burdened with overbearing scores, turgid storylines, super-large casts and strident if not shrill perfo...
Review: Sierra, Bernheim Soar in the Met's ROMEO ET JULIETTE
by Richard Sasanow - March 10, 2024
While I’ve admired soprano Nadine Sierra’s before, she seemed to reach a whole new level with her glorious turn as Juliette in the season’s first performance of Gounod’s ROMEO ET JULIETTE at the Met the other night. She was vivid and a delight to watch as she inhabited the teenaged heroine of the pi...
Review: Lively ORFEO in Concert at Barcelona's Liceu Opera from Maestro Rene Jacobs
by Richard Sasanow - March 07, 2024
Composers can’t seem to keep away from the Orpheus story. Why not? It’s a juicy one, drawing on the Greek myth about a man who tries to use the power of music to rescue his beloved wife from Hades....
Review: ROMEO ET JULIETTE at Arizona Opera
by Herbert Paine - March 05, 2024
Arizona Opera's revival of Charles Gounod’s ROMEO ET JULIETTE is, by all measures, a triumph of staging and performance. Following its performances in Phoenix, the production moves to the Temple of Music and Art in Tucson AZ (March 9th and 10th)....
Review: Another BALLO, Another Peculiar Reinvention, at Barcelona's Liceu, under Riccardo Frizza
by Richard Sasanow - March 04, 2024
UN BALLO IN MASCHERA—A MASKED BALL—certainly makes for a juicy opera, on paper at least. It has a plot filled with passion, jealousy and conspiracies, and a score by Giuseppe Verdi that has some of his most memorable music, including a great duet, plus unforgettable arias for soprano, tenor and bari...