OPERA THEATER REVIEWS

What did our critic think of OPERA À LA CARTE'S PRODUCTION OF OFFENBACH'S ORPHEUS IN THE UNDERWORLD at St. Peter's Episcopal Church Of Del Mar? With even large companies struggling to survive, why did soprano and voice teacher Abla Hamza decide to found Opera À La Carte? Her goals were laudable. ...

Héctor Armienta’s operatic reimagining of ZORRO is a richly textured work that fuses bravado and romance into a timely meditation on liberty. This tale of dual identity and defiance receives the full operatic treatment (performed in both English and Spanish) in Arizona Opera’s 2025-26 season op...

It’s over 40 years since English National Opera staged Rossini's Cinderella (La Cenerentola) and they open their 2025-26 season with a vibrant new production of the sparkling comedy. After the rocky time the company has had in recent times, it is great to see them having such fun on stage....

Mozart’s DON GIOVANNI was one of my first operas and remains among my favorites, despite its misogyny and the difficulty in putting together the kind of cast that can do justice to the string of show-stoppers in the score. The season's premiere of the opera had much to admire....

Anyone familiar with Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prizer-winning THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY must be a bit bewildered at how a 700-page novel could be turned into a 3-hour opera. Or, for that matter, how a superhero named “The Escapist” could be sharing a stage this week with Puccin...

The forces behind the Met’s latest try at bringing a different (sic: younger) audience to the house, THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY, joined forces at the Guggenheim’s Works & Process series last week to introduce the new work to a receptive crowd. It’s the story of two Jewish cousin...

If you come to opera via film musicals and, later, stage shows, Tosca is amongst the most accessible. The story of the lovers and the evil apparatchik is told at a furious pace, trauma after trauma piling up as the emotional heft becomes all but unbearable. There’s no standing about for twenty min...

A thought-provoking reworking of Mozart's popular opera....

Mozart's beloved comedy The Marriage of Figaro opened Glyndebourne's very first Festival in 1934 and is the renowned opera house's most performed work. No sooner has the production closed in Sussex, it reappeared in London at the BBC Proms for a super semi-staged version....

In the 35 years I've been going to Opera Holland Park, I've never been disappointed by the music, performances and sheer joy of being in the open air with accompanying local sound effects. The odd resident peacock squawking, planes soaring overhead, shouts from children kicking a football and dogs b...

The ever popular and hardy perennial of the operatic canon, composer Georges Bizet’s Carmen, was given a unique yet solid interpretation by the Wolf Trap Opera under the direction of John de los Santos. (Originally directed by Anne Bogart, according to the program). This opera is so well-known (an...

Kelly Slawson brings a dazzlingly powerful, beautiful voice to the title role.   It’s an unforgettable triumph in a real tour de force....

Maestro Karen Kamensek opened the Lincoln Center Festival Orchestra’s concert at Geffen Hall—“Paris to Patagonia”—with some interesting introductory remarks that almost sounded like an audition for the Philharmonic’s storied Young People’s Concerts. While fascinating in their own way, ...

This is a great opportunity to hear the breadth of Beethoven’s work performed in a novel way, and the drama does have its flashes of brilliance. In order to preserve these fleeting moments of conviction, though, Beethoven: I Shall Hear in Heaven needs to move away from tired biographical tropes an...

Though Bedrich Smetana’s DALIBOR—seen this week at Bard SummmerStage in a wonderful production by Jean-Romain Vesperini, with an ingenious set design by Bruno de Lavenere, a fine cast and the American Symphony Orchestra in impeccable form under Leon Botstein—was reputedly the composer’s favo...

“Timeless Transformations” is a key theme of the Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center’s season at Geffen Hall this year (itself transformed from Avery Fisher Hall and, earlier, Philharmonic Hall). It certainly ran rampant last weekend, as British conductor Dame Jane Glover led the orchestral m...

A powerful double-bill. 'Josephine' is a stunning mini-biography of a great star; 'Pagliacci' is an overpoweringly passionate step into verismo opera....

I must admit that I was a little disappointed when I read that this season’s offerings from Will Crutchfield’s Teatro Nuovo featured a couple of familiar titles: Verdi’s MACBETH and Bellini’s LA SONNAMBULA, particularly the former, which one doesn’t think of in the domain of bel canto, the...

Jennifer France gives everything in a role demanding bel canto singing and bloody revenge...

Now on its third revival, Rodula Gaitanou's heart-stopping version of Verdi's tragic La Traviata is as affecting as ever. Opening with courtesan Violetta gasping for air, it never lets up its hold on the senses....

Adapted from Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, director Richard Jones’s glorious Falstaff makes a welcome return to Glyndebourne, losing none of its charm or deft comedy. It is playful, witty and a pure delight....

Forget Arcadian landscapes and Corinthian columns. Oliver Mears’s new production of Handel’s Semele remoulds Greek myth to a 20th century manor house where mortals are servants of Gods who lounge around in velvet ball gowns. Semele is a maid plucked from service by master of the house, a cigaret...

You could be forgiven for thinking that there isn’t much more to be said about Le nozze di Figaro, the most performed opera in Glyndebourne’s history. However, Mozart’s classic role subversion comedy is deceptive in its simplicity: beneath the farce and improbable plot twists is a complex web ...

A thoughtfully selected double bill making up the operetta segment of Opera Holland Park’s summer season shows the genre at its technical best, but also illuminates its troubling shortcomings....

The recent New York premiere of Yuval Sharon’s production of THE COMET/POPPEA at Lincoln Center kicked off the summer’s 5-week residency of the American Modern Opera Company (cheekily known as AMOC, after its penchant for taking a somewhat wild and crazy approach to the art form)....