OPERA THEATER REVIEWS

While the cast for the season's revival of Mozart's LA CLEMENZA DI TITO looked good on paper, it didn't even hint at how good the singing was going to be at the Met this week. From top—tenor Matthew Polenzani, elegant and vibrant in the title role (“Se all'impero”), and the great mezzo Joyce D...

San Diego Opera is the 13th company since 2011 to cast mezzo-soprano Ginger Costa-Jackson in the title role of Bizet's Carmen. Her voice, sultry looks, and sensuous flamenco dancing are perfect for the role. She even manages castanets in perfect rhythm without missing a step. The considerable powers...

Judging by the number of small opera companies in New York alone--see the 2019 New York Opera Fest that starts performances next month--there's no shortage of up and coming opera singers trying to make their way on the scene. But there's no showcase like the Finals Concert of the Metropolitan Opera'...

Juan Diego Flórez gave an orchestral recital which failed to display his superlative assets....

Berenice is something of a forgotten delight, its tortuous plotting more than offset by its splendid arias and delightful characters, with plenty of contemporary resonance on hand if you need it....

There's lots to enjoy in the Met's revival of DIE WALKURE, the second part of Richard Wagner's great tetralogy, DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN, better known simply as Wagner's Ring Cycle, which had its first performance of the season on Monday night--all five hours of it!--under the pulsating control of Ph...

Since my days as a pothead are long gone (LOL)—did anyone ever watch 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY without a little help from a friend?--I came to the Boston Symphony's (BSO) concert at Carnegie Hall the other night more interested in hearing the excerpts from Richard Strauss's CAPRICCIO, including Renee ...

Not since a memorable La traviata in 2008 have superstars Anna Netrebko and Jonas Kaufmann appeared together at the Royal Opera House. Small wonder, then, that their pairing as fate-thwarted lovers Leonora and Don Alvaro in Verdi's sprawling tragedy La Forza del Destino sent the Royal Opera House bo...

This past weekend at the Ordway Center, MN Opera unveiled their World Premiere The Fix in tribute to the All-American sport and spirt of baseball. The story created through the company's New Works Initiative by Eric Simonson, who wrote the libretto and also directed the production, was accompanied b...

Few works have inspired such a long-lasting legacy as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust. The Faustian bargain has become a common expression for metaphorically selling one's soul in order to obtain their goals. Of course, the metaphor is much less metaphorical in von Goethe's work and, subsequently...

17 Skylight artists. Seven Danceworks dancers. 25 Chant Claire Chamber Choir members, plus four Chant Claire guest artists. Six percussionists. Two pianists. One conductor. One visionary artistic team. One stage. It all adds up to Skylight's exhilarating Carmina Burana, an experience dubbed ''total ...

Can opera be a medium for social commentary and change? I've been thinking about this lately--or, more accurately, yet again--since attending a preview of the new Jeanne Tesori-Tazewell Thompson opera, BLUE, which was part of the Guggenheim Museum's fascinating Works & Process series. The performanc...

Mezzo soprano Frederica von Stade starred in the San Diego Opera's staging of Three Decembers. One of several works written with her in mind by her close friend Jake Heggie, it' s a chamber opera for three singers and 11 musicians. In a recent Interview Von Stade said, 'I've done three productions, ...

Gone are the days when the opera is treated like an old-world passion and a cultural event where people are required to dress to the nines. The arrival of National Artists Guillermo Tolentino and Felipe Padilla de Leon's “Noli Me Tangere, The Opera” for the nth time in Manila was welcomed mostly...

Washington National Opera's (WNO) Eugene Onegin is exquisite! The entire evening soars like a dream with pitch-perfect performances led by the immaculate Anna Nechaeva as Tatiana....

Winter Opera has opened a sumptuous production of Norma, Vincenzo Bellini's bel canto masterpiece from 1831....

If Robert Lepage's production of Wagner's Ring Cycle (formally, DER RING DAS NIBELUNGEN) had worked as smoothly when it opened in 2010 as it did at this season's marvelous premiere of its prologue, DAS RHEINGOLD, on Saturday afternoon, there probably still would have been complaints--not about its f...

The Crypt Sessions, which take place in the stone chamber beneath the Church of the Intercession on West 155th Street in Manhattan, might conjure up visions of horror, though it bears no relation to HBO's long-running anthology, “Tales from the Crypt.” Add that the center of attraction for the r...

On March 3, 2019, Pacific Opera Project (POP) presented its more-than-a-little-bit-zany version of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's THE MAGIC FLUTE (DIE ZAUBERFLÖTE) at Los Angeles's El Portal Theatre. POP Director and Designer Josh Shaw and Baritone E. Scott Levin premiered a new English version of Emanu...

Will anyone else but Ambrogio Maestri bring the same dynamism to Robert Carsen's 1950's take on Verdi's masterpiece, FALSTAFF? Time will tell. But the return of the wonderful production, with the great Met orchestra under conductor Richard Farnes and an all-around terrific cast, brought a little sun...

Composer, conductor and pianist Andre Previn has died at the age of 89 on February 28. Previn was composer of the opera versions of Tennessee Williams's A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE and Noel Coward's BRIEF ENCOUNTER, dozens of orchestral works, film scores, jazz works and the score for Tom Stoppard's ...

For the first time in history, Ariodante has stepped on the Monte-Carlo Opera stage, bewildering and enchanting the Monegasque audience in this 3+ hour opera by Handel. Following the success of the Salzberg Festival production (under the keen eye of Christof Loy), the opera is set in the captivating...

The Royal Opera House revives its 2016 Cosi with all the mischievous wit and splendid music of Mozart and Da Ponte - but also lets us in on the game within the game - and the price that's paid...

Purcell's DIDO AND AENEAS, written in about 1689 with a libretto by Nahum Tate, doesn't exist in a final version approved by the composer but, well, never mind. In the care of the more-than-budding artists of the Juilliard415 historical music ensemble and singers from Juilliard's Marcus Institute fo...

State Opera is presenting the semi-opera, or dramatick opera, King Arthur,...