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BWW Review: LA FILLE DU REGIMENT at Winter Opera St. Louis
Winter Opera St. Louis continues its 13th season with a most charming production of Gaetano Donizetti's comic La fille du regiment (The Daughter of the Regiment)....
BWW Review: Gustavo Dudamel Leads DAS LIED with the NY Philharmonic at Geffen Hall
Maestro Gustavo Dudamel, who usually leads the LA Philharmonic, took a busman's holiday to NY for a brace of performances with his orchestra's East Coast counterpart, the New York Philharmonic. His reputation as a master on the podium is not overrated: I can't think of a more understated, yet fully...
BWW Reviews: Once Again, PROTOTYPE Shows What 'Opera-Theatre-Now' Means to Musical Life in New York
This year's edition of PROTOTYPE, which refers to itself as 'Opera-Theatre-Now,' has come and gone. You never know what to expect, for better or for worse: Try guessing what's going to be 'the next big thing' at your own peril, even if it has played somewhere else first, for they things might not be...
BWW Review: WHEN THERE ARE NINE at KC Lyric Opera
'And Still We Dream' song cycle carries most of the weight of this rather thin production....
BWW Overview: The People, the Places, the Operas that Spelled Pleasure in 2019
I admit this is an absolutely personal, totally one-sided view of what gave one man opera thrills last year and what I will look back on with delight. Some are old works, some are new, some are individual performers, some are ensembles, some are complete productions, some are merely the highlight of...
BWW Review: Met Audiences Learn to Love WOZZECK in Kentridge Production, with Mattei, Led by Nezet-Seguin
A funny thing happened the other night at the Met when the curtain came down on William Kentridge's stunning new production of Alban Berg's cruel and devastating WOZZECK. The audience didn't rush from their seats to escape into the night. They stayed and cheered for an opera with a reputation for be...
BWW Review: ORLANDO: A Revolutionary, Radical New Opera Blends Art With Activism at Vienna State Opera
Orlando was a deeply engaging, intriguing and thought-provoking exploration whose pondering, messages, striking soundscapes and visuals reverberated and lingered long after the curtain had closed. It is a highly ambitious undertaking but Neuwirth and her colleagues were up for the challenge. What is...
BWW Review: A Silver Rose, Golden Voices and a Platinum Conductor Mark This Season's ROSENKAVALIER at the Met
For a composer so well known for his dramatic operas--SALOME and ELEKTRA the most famous of them--Richard Strauss's most popular work remains the more comic DER ROSENKAVALIER, which just made its season debut under the scintillating baton of Sir Simon Rattle, with a bevy of first-rate singers....
BWW Review: LA TRAVIATA, Royal Opera House
Richard Eyre's production gets yet another run out 25 years on, but it's so beautiful and brilliantly sung, no further justification is required....
BWW Review: ANDREA BOCELLI at Capital One Arena
As a reviewer you hear lots of advance hype about a particular show or performer before having your own experience. Much of the time the hype doesn't live up to the end product. Selling over 90 million recordings opera singer Andrea Bocelli was definitely one of those performers who I had heard a lo...
BWW Review: SAN DIEGO OPERA'S AMAZING NIGHT at At The Balboa Theatre
The San Diego Opera's first Detour Series performance this season was 'One Amazing Night' with Soprano Ailyn Pérez, tenor Joshua Guerrero and accompanist Abdiel Vázquez. All are outstanding young award winners with impressive resumes. The first half featured operatic arias, enjoyable and worth the...
BWW Review: Pacific Opera Project Presents A Cleverly Modern La bohème AKA “The Hipsters”
In the fifth incarnation of POP's trademark production, a new batch of hand-crafted, vegan, organically-sourced hipsters take the stage for what is quickly becoming an annual Los Angeles holiday tradition. In it, Puccini's 19th Century Parisian garret becomes a present-day Highland Park loft apartme...
BWW Review: Heartbeat Opera's Take on Weber's FREISCHUTZ Hits the Mark
Since it's highly unlikely that the Met will take on Carl Maria von Weber's DIE FREISCHUTZ (frequently translated as THE MARKSMAN) anytime soon--or even in the lifetime of any baby born this year--we should be grateful to Heartbeat Opera for bringing it to New York audiences through December 15, in ...
BWW Review: OTELLO , Royal Opera House
Two years on, Otello is revived in all its austere majesty, albeit a majesty that can be demanding to watch across a three hours running time....
BWW Review: Tchaikovsky's QUEEN Reigns and a Star is Born at the Met
I know it takes a leap of faith for the Met to schedule something outside the ABC operas--AIDA, BOHEME, CARMEN plus a TOSCA, TURANDOT and a few others--and go for something a little more off the beaten track. Tchaikovsky's QUEEN OF SPADES certainly falls into that category, even though it isn't exac...
BWW Review: THE ASTOUNDING ASTANA BALLET at The Saban Theatre
November 22, 2019
Astonishing in their choice of repertoire, their innovative choreography, their elaborate and colorfully creative costuming and their commanding performance of the choreography.
Don't let this first photo confuse you. This Company is so many things, and the picture represents b...
Photos/Reviews: THE QUEEN OF SPADES at the Metropolitan Opera, New York
Get a first look and check out reviews for the Met Opera's The Queen of Spades! Tchaikovsky's eerie thriller of imperial Russia has its first performances at the Met since 2011. Tenor Yusif Eyvazov is Hermann, the fanatical gambler whose obsession with a powerful secret drives him to madness. Sopran...
BWW Review: COSI FAN TUTTE Meets GREASE At The Juilliard School
Of numerous operaphiles I have encountered, there is a fair amount of partisanship when it comes to COSI FAN TUTTE by Mozart. People either love it or dislike it. I believe the plot is partially to blame; an aging bachelor challenges two younger friends to test their fiancees' devotion and sup...
BWW Review: MANON LESCAUT at War Memorial Opera House
On November 24, 2019, San Francisco Opera presented Giacomo Puccini's third opera, MANON LESCAUT with two spectacularly large-voiced singers, Liana Haroutounian and Brian Jagde. In a most forthright manner, Director Olivier Tambosi told the story of Renato Des Grieux' unrequited love for Manon, the ...
BWW Review: DEATH IN VENICE, Royal Opera House
David McVicar's compelling new production of Benjamin Britten's last opera is an extraordinary tour-de-force that takes you inside a troubled mind and leaves you as ill-at-ease as you might expect, but strangely uplifted too, the beauty present in even a dying world underlined and celebrated....
BWW Review: TRAVIATA at Opera WROCLAW - Feel The Breath Of The Universe
Have you ever wandered why two cheesecakes based on one recipe are slightly different? Even tough you use the same flour, sugar and cheese the taste is not the same. Sometimes it's better, sometimes it's worse. But if you take great ingredients like Traviata, big budget, good voices, Grazyna Szapolo...
BWW Review: It's TRISTAN Interruptus Again, with Goerke and Gould in Act II of the Wagner Epic
When New Yorkers last saw a concert performance of Act II of Wagner's TRISTAN UND ISOLDE--in the spring of 2018 with the Boston Symphony under Nelsons--a major singer was trying on one of the title characters for size. That was tenor Jonas Kaufmann. This time, it was Isolde who was ready for her clo...
BWW Review: Bring on the Jugglers, Philip Glass's AKHNATEN Finally Arrives at the Met
It has taken 35 years for Philip Glass's AKHNATEN to get to the Met, since its premiere at the Staatsoper in Stuttgart in 1984. If you're an acolyte of Glass, Phelim McDermott's production, designed by Tom Pye, made it well worth the wait; if you're not, there's enough going on to keep you occupied ...
BWW Review: FELLOW TRAVELERS at Boston Lyric Opera
When I first saw Boston Lyric Opera's promotional images for Fellow Travelers, a new opera by Greg Pierce and Gregory Spears, in a production that premiered at Minnesota Opera, I was incredibly wary. Photos of conventionally attractive white men in their boxers clinging to each other in a fit of pas...
BWW Review: Austin Opera Dazzles With RIGOLETTO
Austin Opera's latest effort, Verdi's, RIGOLETTO dazzles in every way. They absolutely outdid themselves this time....
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