OPERA THEATER REVIEWS

Numi Opera began its inaugural season with Alexander Zemlinsky's almost forgotten Der Zwerg (The Dwarf), a piece once condemned by the Nazi Third Reich. In Los Angeles, the dark and cavernous ground floor of the Theatre at Ace Hotel was more than half full for the matinee performance on Sunday, June...

The spectacularly musical, touchingly dramatic, surprisingly funny and profoundly moving chamber opera, AS ONE, by Laura Kaminsky, Kimberly Reed and Mark Campbell, made its long-overdue return to New York on Thursday, in a production by Matt Gray as part of New York City Opera's spring season....

We haven't seen a lot of Smetana's The Bartered Bride in the UK recently. Bohemia's best-loved opera is rapidly becoming one of the repertoire's best-kept secrets, which is a shame because it's an enchanting comedy, whose colourful, folk-filled score might be propelled by exotic polka rhythms, but w...

Opera Theatre of St. Louis has opened its 44th festival season. This is St. Louis' prized centerpiece of opera, with a world-wide reputation. It is famous for its superb productions. The company's home is the beautiful and comfortable 763-seat Browning Theatre at Webster University. Gourmet picnic s...

George Bizet--best known, of course, for CARMEN--wrote another opera that has become increasingly (and justifiably) popular in recent years, LES PECHEURS DE PERLES, better known in the English-speaking world as THE PEARL FISHERS. George Bizet--best known, of course, for CARMEN--wrote another opera t...

When I was a child, my father took me to a series of outdoor concerts at a park near our home.  One of the programs featured excerpts from Bizet's opera CARMEN. This was one of my first exposures to opera and since then I have become a major devotee.  I have since joined the Patron Program at the ...

It's easy to see why 'Tosca' is one of the most popular works in opera.Its very musical style, broken free from the strict opera house rules before it, allows it to breathe. Singers are not urgently singing every moment. The supertitles person can take a break as it goes dark from time to time. Stil...

Now onstage through Mother's Day (Sunday, May 12) in a much anticipated and gleefully subversive production from Nashville Opera, The Cradle Will Rock remains hard to define: It could be described as a work of art whose meaning, its very raison d'etre, can be bent to suit any conceivable justificati...

Opening on the past Saturday night at the Ordway Center, MN Opera staged a magnificent production of Giuseppe Verdi's 1853 Opera La Traviata. Verdi's breathtaking love and death opera accompanied by Francesco Maria Piave's libretto was adapted after Alexander Dumas' 'Lady of the Camellias' or 'La Da...

The closing of the Monte-Carlo Opera season of 2018-2019 could not have ended better than with the new production of Verdi's Otello. And Monaco knew it: under the keen direction of Daniele Callegari and based on the play by Shakespeare, the opera was completely sold-out....

Tristan and Isolde is a show that has no spectacular or theatrical value, however it does have a certain value if considered from a very closed conceptual vision perspective that has nothing to do with the wonderful richness of the story....

This play contains two pieces: Card Game and The Rite of Spring. Both are amazing, both are composed by Igor Stravinsky and both were not understood during its premieres. ...

You'd never know that the Met's production of Francis Poulenc's DIALOGUES DES CARMELITES is over 40 years old, except for a few giveaways. There are no dancing nuns, no nudity, no screeching train whistle as the women go to their deaths (a la SWEENEY TODD). This fictionalized version of the story of...

The cast features a good many of Adelaide's favourite singers....

The line between Broadway-type musical theatre and opera becomes finer by the year--though I dare say that TOOTSIE is unlikely to be showing up at the Met any time soon. But the Kurt Weill-Ira Gershwin-Moss Hart LADY IN THE DARK might have morphed in a slightly different, better piece of music theat...

In a minimalist setting, Benjamin Britten's 20th-century reflections on Herman Melville's novel are deftly captured musically and visually....

Shakespeare and opera are an intuitive combination. Adding star crossed lovers to the mix is also a logical choice; a memory erasing pandemic in a post-apocalyptic society, though, is a plot element not commonly found with the others. Such comprises the basis for the plot of the Santa Fe Opera's tou...

It is always a jubilant evening when I get to see the Des Moines Symphony, and their most recent concert was no different. I had the pleasure of attending the Saturday evening performance of 'Simon Sings Porgy and Bess' and was treated to an evening of stunning music. One thing I appreciate about th...

Stupendous singing from a group of students battled old professionals who didn't dare reward risks....

Isango Ensemble's SS Mendi: Dancing the Death Drill is a sad lament for needlessly lost lives and a celebration of the cultures from which the men had sprung. And it's ever so emotional....

Isango Ensemble bring their unique storytelling skills to show us the life of a Somali boy, alone and running away to a place that barely differs from the hell he leaves behind....

On Sunday April 14 Pacific Opera Project (POP) presented Giacomo Puccini's 1904 opera, Madama Butterfly, in Japanese and English in Los Angeles's Little Tokyo. The company also live-streamed it online. Did anyone ever think an American Navy officer would speak to a young Japanese lady in Italian? l'...

Bruno Ravella sparks new magic into David McVicar's production, refreshing the feel of the piece whilst ensuring its original spark is retained. Although the fifth revival of McVicar's take on the classic, Ravella ensures that the original text is delivered to ensure the story is allowed to speak fo...

Helen of Troy didn't launch a thousand ships but was a put-upon sexual victim and Marilyn Monroe--born Norma Jeane Baker, of the title--was a cloud in the shape of a woman. It was also a “disaster to be a girl” in those days before #MeToo, with powerful men (whether Menelaus or Arthur Miller) ho...

“Audacious” can mean daring--and Belgian director Ivo van Hove certainly fits that description for his approaches to Arthur Miller's A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE and THE CRUCIBLE and numerous other theatre pieces. But when it came to Leos Janacek's DIARY OF ONE WHO DISAPPEARED, van Hove's work (with t...