OPERA THEATER REVIEWS

Talk about ‘spoiler alerts,’ there was a big one for me early in the opera, EURYDICE, by Matthew Aucoin to a libretto that he and Sarah Ruhl fashioned from her play of the same name, which had its Met premiere last night. Eurydice tells Orpheus “Don’t look at me,” which to me mirrored the ...

Some curious directorial choices fail to blunt the force of Wagner's musical donner und blitzen as the gods bicker and bully and the mortals bleed ...

In Rossi's L'ORFEO at Juilliard, but director Birnbaum explores the idea that “destiny happens to you whether you like it or not, and no matter how much humans try to have control over their environment and future.” Or, as the popular expression goes, “Man makes plans and God laughs.”...

Every time I head to a performance of Puccini’s LA BOHEME, I can’t help but think of Bette Davis’s famous line from “All About Eve”: “I detest cheap sentiment.” But then I actually get there and, more likely than not, I feel genuinely moved, swept away by the mood that the composer and...

There are so many things to like about the season’s revival of Gershwin’s PORGY & BESS, which was new in the 2019-2020 season, before Covid became the “song” that no one wanted to hear. PORGY on the other hand, is the music that everybody can take a liking to, with its fluid combination of...

For the first time in almost seven years, the Metropolitan Opera has revived Wagner's DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NURNBERG.  Considered by many to be Wagner's masterpiece, today's matinee performance gave credence to that opinion.  The production is that of Otto Schenk with scenery by Gunther Schneider-...

Oh, sure, give us Missy Mazzoli, Nico Muhly, Laura Kaminsky, Kevin Puts, Terence Blanchard, Paul Moravec, Huang Ruo and all the other fabulous composers at work today. But let’s talk about Rossini--and it’s hard for anyone who attended the concert the other night at New York’s 92nd Street Y no...

The imposing mezzo soprano Stephanie Blythe is known for her roles in Wagner, Verdi and Stravinsky. Why would she begin a Balboa Theatre recital for the San Diego Opera with Johnny Mercer’s 'Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive?” Here’s what she said in a recent interview, “I’ve been a great fan ...

What a romantic night! Well, this show is considered the first German Romantic opera after all. This piece at the Wroclaw Opera House is easy to watch, even for people not used to the (German) opera. In my opinion it's more of a musical and I'm a huge fan of from this approach!...

Nobody goes to see the Met’s TURANDOT for subtlety and, from that standpoint, the audience got what it paid for at the opera’s first performance of the season. That is, except, perhaps from soprano Christine Goerke in the title role, who gave a finely nuanced performance when the production didn...

The opening lines of Jonas Kaufmann’s lieder concert at Carnegie Hall Saturday night, weren’t exactly ones that fill the heart with joy: “My songs are filled with poison—why shouldn’t that be true? Into my budding manhood, you poured your poison through.” But to have Kaufmann back in New...

Irrational Theatre resurrect a long neglected work from the early days of the celebrated composer and find plenty of parallels with 20th century comedy and 21st century politics....

The Lady or the Tiger? In this case, both are Mussorgsky’s BORIS GODUNOV—just different versions of it. Which is the preferred one? (Or, more properly, “the preferred one of several,” including one that the composer’s friend, Rimsky Korsakov, fiddled with after his death.) The Met chose Mu...

It’s been a long 18 months since the last opera on the Met’s stage. The Terence Blanchard-Kasi Lemmons FIRE SHUT UP IN MY BONES roared into Lincoln Center to let the audience know what it has been missing....

For one of the most popular operas in the traditional repertoire--ABC in the opera world means AIDA, BOHEME and CARMEN--the work by Bizet has had to have more lives than the proverbial cat to get there. The version, now called THE THREEPENNY CARMEN, by the Atlanta Opera’s General and Artistic Dire...

Though the Met’s season doesn’t technically start till the end of the month, the company started off with a pair of what French chefs might call “amuses bouches”—sort of tastebud teasers. The first was Mahler’s Second, which was done in the open air; the second was its first inside the h...

Rigoletto delves deep into the human psyche to ask questions both through its subject matter and its melding of music and voices...

The Grimeborn Festival presents two short operas concerning love failing to land as required, leading to tragic consequences...

Lyric Opera of Chicago announced that registration is now open for audiences to secure a free link to screen its new, original film production of Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, made at the Lyric Opera House. Audiences can now secure a free, on-demand viewing of this verismo production. More information...

​​​​What can I say, Tosca was so great I really don't know where to start. Set design, lights, costumes and actors were so perfect together that watching the show was like stepping into hot chocolate, a phenomenal pleasure for all the senses directed with a virtuosity by Michael Gieleta....

What was a makes-you-jump BOOM!! doing in Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue? Had someone mistakenly lit an 1812 Overture cannon? Were we under attack?! Oh wait! It was just a bass drum resonating through the San Diego Symphony’s spectacular new state-of-the-art sound system at the Rady Shell. And so, ...

British stage director Netia Jones put her singular stamp on a production of Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream seen at the Santa Fe Opera on August 4, 2021. Performed in the opera house, it was simulcast to the lower parking lot where hundreds of patrons watched from the safety of th...

There are a number of parallels between the two operas I saw in Santa Fe (NM) this past weekend: The Benjamin Britten/Peter Pears treatment of Shakespeare’s A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM and the world premiere of the John Corigliano/Mark Adamo THE LORD OF CRIES. The first was, for me at least, an al...

Every once in a while, a show comes along that takes you completely by surprise. For me, this recently happened with Des Moines Metro Opera's one-night-only performance of FELLOW TRAVELERS at Hoyt Sherman Place....

Pink, voguing, drag, stiletto heels, opera, seeing that list, you may feel that opera seems out of place, but you couldn't be more wrong. On July 10, Des Moines Metro Opera (DMMO) took all those and melded them together as they opened the company's premiere production of 'Platée.' While many compan...