OPERA THEATER REVIEWS

The Union Avenue Opera has opened a delightful production of H nsel und Gretel by Engelbert Humperdinck. You'll never hear this work performed by a more glorious collection of voices....

The Union Avenue Opera is so good at fulfilling our expectations - our expectations of really fine traditional opera. But once in a while they enjoy surprising us, jerking us out of that normal path. For instance, with 'Trouble in Tahiti' several years ago the orchestra was a jazz trio. Now this spl...

George Frideric Handel composed the opera seria, ALCINA, for a 1735 premiere at London's Covent Garden. Handel's anonymous librettist based his text on Riccardo Broschi's 1728 book for L'ISOLA DI ALCINA. Three years following its 1735 run, ALCINA was revived but after that it fell dormant until the...

The Golden Cockerel was Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's last opera. He wrote it in 1905 as a satire on the Russian government of the time. As with many political satires, the libretto that Vladimir Belsky based on Pushkin's poem THE TALE OF THE GOLDEN COCKEREL can still make some points over one hundred y...

For such a highly renowned opera such as Madama Butterfly numerous productions have been presented in the past century all around the world, and rightfully so, but with the new exquisite Israeli-Italian production, under the innovative and fresh direction of Keita Asari, it's clear that there's alwa...

ACI, GALATEA E POLIFEMO (ACIS, GALATEA AND POLYPHEMUS)--which just opened a short run at Brooklyn's National Sawdust venue, ending on July 20, with star countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo--may be the most obscure Handel opera that you think you know but don't. (And it's not an opera, either, for tha...

Chemistry in an opera performance is a funny thing. It's not always easy to explain why it's there, but you know when it isn't. But when it works, it works—and, boy, the Caramoor Festival's concert staging of Bellini's IL PIRATA on Saturday was on fire, with Angela Meade as the star soprano and Wi...

Union Avenue Opera mounts a delightful production of 'Albert Herring,' Benjamin Britten's only comic opera....

If you hear of a repeat season, book early....

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, there lived a place called Broadway, where you could find still find bills of one-act plays that, more often than not, offered titillation into then-current sexual practices and innovations. Zoom forward 40 years or so and opera has finally caught up with...

The Opera Theater of St. Louis has opened the fourth and last production of it's forty-second festival season. It's Mozart's final opera, La clemenza di Tito, or (as it's billed for this English-language performance) simply Titus. Everything about this production - from its glorious voices and orche...

For three decades, the In Series has been presenting intimate, small scale works - what it calls 'pocket operas' on a variety of stages in the city....

Russia seems to be everywhere these days. Conductor and violinist, Vladimir Spivakov and the Moscow Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra performed to an enthusiastic crowd at the Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto, Ontario. The evening was presented by Show One Productions, the same company that recently brought us ...

The American premiere of The Trial has opened at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis. This is a very major event in opera. Franz Kafka's nightmare tale of Joseph K, trapped in an enigmatic trial for his life, has fascinated readers since it appeared in 1925. Composer Philip Glass read the novel as a yout...

Just after hearing the wonderfully well sung, semi-staged DAS RHEINGOLD at the NY Philharmonic, under departing Music Director Alan Gilbert, I saw the current Broadway revival of THE LITTLE FOXES. It seemed Richard Wagner's gods and Lillian Hellman's Hubbards had lots in common: The small-minded, s...

What a show! Opera Theatre of St. Louis has opened The Grapes of Wrath, a work by Ricky Ian Gordon and Michael Korie. I have never in my life been more emotionally moved by an opera than by this glorious production....

There's lots going on in the world of opera in New York City, as shown by the gamut of offerings under the umbrella of the ongoing New York OperaFest, co-organized by the New York Opera Alliance and Opera America. In the last week, the New Opera NYC gave us a cockeyed look at Rimsky-Korsakov's LE CO...

You've never seen a more boho Boheme. Against the Grain Theatre (AtG) presents Puccini's LA BOHÈME in a real Toronto dive bar, The Tranzac Club. AtG is doing something incredible in the world of opera right now - they're growing. When opera houses around the world are reporting declines in ticket s...

Don Giovanni at the Metropolitan opera is divine.I had the wonderful opportunity to experience Don Giovanni at the Metropolitan Opera (Lincoln Center NYC) this week. Well, the Met did it again! With a perfect, minimalist set, great costumes, creative choreography, and the perfect cast, this is an en...

It had a great score but an unmanageable book. So the director had it reshaped, cut and done in a creative environmental production that sent the singers scampering throughout the audience. No, I'm not talking about Hal Prince's famous reinvention of Leonard Bernstein's CANDIDE, but On Site Opera's ...

I first heard tenor Roberto Alagna in the days when he was being touted as “The 4th Tenor”—chutzpah that only a record company could come up with, placing him in the hallowed company of Carreras, Domingo and Pavarotti. Fast forward more than 20 years and he's still here. As Cyrano, the soldier...

Harry Bicket and the English Concert returned for its just-about-annual Handel-fest at Carnegie Hall with a concert performance of the well-loved ARIODANTE by Handel, starring the even better-loved mezzo Joyce DiDonato. The result was some awfully fine singing--particularly from DiDonato in fine dra...

Baritone Joseph Lattanzi and mezzo Laura Krumm didn't originate at the roles of Jack and Jackie Kennedy when JFK--the new opera by David T. Little and Royce Vavrek--premiered in Fort Worth a year ago. But they certainly owned them in the excerpts presented in the most daring of the four excellent wo...

From the moment the orchestra plays its first note, the production is pure magic. The Canadian Opera Company (COC) ends their 2016-2017 season with a bang, with Puccini's TOSCA. Gorgeous music, grand sets and gripping performances coexist seamlessly in Paul Curran's production of one of opera's most...

The audience was there to be thrilled on Tuesday, when the Met's new Music Director, Yannick Nezet-Seguin, took on Wagner's DER FLIEGENDE HOLLANDER (THE FLYING DUTCHMAN) and they weren't disappointed. It was a musically glorious performance with the Met orchestra in peak form under its new maestro, ...