OPERA THEATER REVIEWS

Lincoln Center Theater’s new Kenny Leon production of Gian Carlo Menotti’s AMAHL AND THE NIGHT VISITORS, presented in association with the Metropolitan Opera, is hardly “A Charlie Brown Christmas” or “The Nutcracker.” Yet it manages to give us faith, hope and charity at a time we could a...

The Royal Opera House’s Turandot has now been running so long it feels less like a revival and more like a listed structure. You don’t attend it so much as pass through it, like a familiar corridor or a particularly grand roundabout. With close to 300 performances under its belt and two runs in ...

As the houselights dim at the Metropolitan Opera, the Julie Taymor–directed The Magic Flute transports viewers into a buoyant and kaleidoscopic fairy-tale dreamworld. This abridged, English-language production is a visually sumptuous version of Mozart's singspiel bathed in bold primary colors, sha...

Musically impressive with real high points, the drama does not quite hold together...

When I read that the Met, in the program notes for James Robinson’s production of PORGY AND BESS, called it “a supremely American operatic masterpiece” I couldn’t help but think of Stephen Sondheim’s answer (perhaps apocryphal) when he was asked whether SWEENEY TODD was an opera or a music...

We still don’t know what Kurt Cobain did in the days before his suicide in 1994. Gus Van Sant offered one hallucinatory guess in Last Days, refashioned into opera by Oliver Leith and now revived at the Royal Ballet And Opera....

Performed with exquisite control by the Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble, the hour-long concert of DAVID LANG'S THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL PASSION becomes something far larger than the sum of its parts....

For those of us who like verismo opera—combining the raw emotions of everyday people with historical splendor—but have heard one too many BOHEMEs, TOSCAs, TURANDOTs and BUTTERFLYs in this lifetime, noting Giordano’s ANDREA CHENIER in the Met’s repertoire for this season seemed like a godsend...

Here are all the hallmarks of any good Shakespearean comedy: love polygons, gender trouble and a shipwreck to get things going. However, in Handel’s Partenope there is one crucial difference: everyone here is self-aware....

For all those operagoers tired of classics set in rodeos, Las Vegas or on a space station (Paris has a BOHEME of that ilk), Otto Schenk’s production for ARABELLA, with stage design by Gunther Schneider Siemssen, dating back to 1983, will be a relief. It features a return to “old Vienna,” inclu...

Gina Galati’s delightful Winter Opera company has opened its season with a revival of a rarely seen Gilbert and Sullivan show—The Sorcerer.   It premiered in 1877, the first of the grandly popular series of light operas by G & S in which the authors had total control over casting and staging....

A confession. It’s a guilty pleasure of mine to read the death notices on Wikipedia - I am my mother’s son after all and, without the columns of classifieds in the Liverpool Echo, where else is there to look?...

San Diego Opera opened its 2025-26 season on a Halloween night with an appropriately disturbing opera about a murderous clown. Its unsavory plot hasn’t kept Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci from becoming one of opera’s most popular creations. The reasons for its success? A can’t-wait-for-it t...

Some of the audience at the chamber concert at the Frick Collection Museum—that jewel-box museum of art from the Renaissance to the end of the 19th century on New York’s Upper East Side—had fought its way there through the runners of the NYC Marathon. What they found was definitely worth the e...

It’s hard for a soprano to get a break in Donizetti’s LA FILLE DU REGIMENT, which I caught up with at the Met on Friday evening. Not that Marie—the role of the title, sung at the Met by Erin Morley—doesn’t have some gorgeous music and shenanigans to show off her musical and comic chops in ...

Charles Gounod took Shakespeare’s tale of the star-crossed lovers and adapted it to create the 1867 opera, Roméo et Juliette, with an overture and Shakespeare’s explanatory prologue, delivered by the chorus, followed by a five-act opera, with a libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré. ...

What did our critic think of PORGY AND BESS at Houston Grand Opera? As Houston performing arts ventures grow for the 2025-26 season, Houston Grand Opera surpasses them all with a thrilling 50th anniversary production of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. S...

Sir Peter Hall's iconic production of Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream has achieved legendary status since its premiere in 1981. In 2025, it has lost none of its magic, with the Glyndebourne audience still wide-eyed at the visual feast on stage....

PucciniAs the nights draw in, it seems highly appropriate to return to Glyndebourne for the start of its Autumn season and the chilly streets of Puccini’s La bohème. Floris Visser’s production, beautifully revived by Rachael Hewer, has the spectre of death ever-present. In this case, quite li...

New things at Union Avenue Opera!  This wonderful company is extending it’s 31st season with an evening of two one-act operas. ...

Technically unsurpassed, but is there a chill where its soul should be?...

How did the martyrs—those Christians and otherwise who have been put to death or endured great suffering defending their beliefs, principles, or causes—meet their ends? As told through Douglas AA Balliett’s MARTYRS & RELICS, which played a handful of performances this week as its world premier...

If you liked Evita at the Palladium, you'll like Carmen at the Coliseum...

Both director and designer have slightly too many ideas about what the show could be, and what is left is unresolved potential....

Sometimes great singing can save a bad production. It happened with the Met’s previous attempt at Bellini’s LA SONNAMBULA, which had been DOA at its premiere, despite a star, cast but rose like a phoenix when it was revived with other stars a year later. This time around, in the misguided, often...