OPERA THEATER REVIEWS

In the third installment of the Washington National Opera's mammoth staging of Richard Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung at the Kennedy Center, a new Brunnhilde awakens, Fafner's dragon turns out to be more of a monster truck, and the titular star of the work, Siegfried, turns out to be much more of...

I wonder whether James Levine imagined that Mozart's DIE ENFUHRUNG AUS DEM SERAIL (THE ABDUCTION FROM THE SERAGLIO) would be his swan song as Music Director of the Metropolitan Opera. I think he might have chosen better....

Ten years of planning and $10 million in production costs couldn't prevent the Washington National Opera from pleasing all the gods in its ambitious staging of all four operas in Richard Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung....

In 2006, then Washington National Opera Artistic Director Placido Domingo announced that the Opera would take on their first complete cycle of Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung). In the subsequent years, the opera produced the first three of the four-some, but not in...

Under the direction of Lee Blakeley at Lyric Opera (who originally staged this production for Paris's Theatre du Chatelet in 2014), Rodgers and Hammerstein's classic musical THE KING AND I is heightened to the lavish and beautiful spectacle it deserves. This story of British school teacher Anna Leon...

An absurdist mash-up of the lives of great Ashcan artist Edward Hopper and the infamous gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, HOPPER'S WIFE--by composer Stewart Wallace and librettist Michael Korie--had its belated New York premiere last weekend by New York City Opera, in a clever production by Andreas Mit...

A heavenly aura flooded through the regal New York City Center this past Thursday night at the MasterVoices premiere of Henry Purcell & Nahum Tate's baroque opera, Dido and Aeneas. With a full orchestra, the MasterVoices choir, and the Doug Varone and Dancers company, this unique production created ...

The Met's new production of Richard Strauss's ELEKTRA is something to behold, with Vincent Huguet recreating the original by the late Patrice Chereau from France's Aix-en-Provence Festival. Starring the glorious Nina Stemme in the title role--and backed by the stellar performances of Waltraud Meier ...

Lyric Opera brings great singers together for memorable production of Bizet's Carmen...

I am enormously thrilled that Strathmore took this one on. It's not the kind of event the largely classical venue usually presents and I hope to see more risk-taking in the future. The pieces offer up stories that need to be heard, and there's no denying the music and performers are first rate....

Earth Day has come and gone in 2016, but symphonic orchestra audiences in New York have lots to remember from this year's celebration, with performances of Mahler's DAS LIED VON DER ERDE (SONG OF THE EARTH). In less than a week, we had two different versions of the piece, with differing pluses and m...

A review of Robert Carsen's direction of 'Les Fetes Venitiennes,' as performed by Les Arts Florissants and L'Opera Comique at BAM....

Andre Campra's 1710 opera-ballet, LES FETES VENETIENNES, with William Christie and Les Arts Florissants made its New York debut at BAM last week in an utterly charming production by Robert Carsen. Unfortunately, watching this lighter-than-air piece seemed like making a complete meal out of amuses-bo...

Gateway Opera is like a five-star tapas restaurant; it continues to delight its patrons with superbly delicious bite-sized offerings of that succulent dish-opera....

Figaro! Figaro! Figaro! It's hard not to sing his name over and over again as the barber did effortlessly in Pittsburgh Opera's production. Having produced the show twelve times in its history, Pittsburgh Opera delivered a captivating twist on the Rossini classic, The Barber of Seville....

As Charlie “Bird” Parker, the great jazz saxophonist, who is the central character in CHARLIE PARKER'S YARDBIRD--the opera that had its New York premiere last week at the famed Apollo Theatre in Harlem--Lawrence Brownlee wonderfully embraced the classical and bebop sides of the score....

“The Tudor Trilogy” --putting together Donizetti's ANNA BOLENA, MARIA STUARDA and ROBERTO DEVEREUX--was fabricated to light Beverly Sills' fire as “America's Queen of Opera” at the old New York City Opera. This season, soprano Sondra Radvanovsky was charged with bringing the trio of operas t...

Vittorio Grigolo's fans were out in force last week when he took on the star-tenor role of Nemorino in Donizetti's L'ELISIR D'AMORE (THE ELIXIR OF LOVE) at the Met and it seemed like they'd taken a potion of their own....

In THE ORPHIC MOMENT, a “dramatic cantata,” composer-librettist-conductor-poet (phew!) Matthew Aucoin takes an 18th century masterwork, Gluck's ORFEO ED EURYDICE—one of numerous operas based on the Orpheus legend--and knocks it on its ear....

MADAMA BUTTERFLY was never my favorite Puccini until the current production conceived by Anthony Minghella. Before, Butterfly always seemed too submissive, Pinkerton too brutish and their child, well, too cute. Now—particularly with the current cast, headed by the magnificent Kristine Opolais as t...

Once again the exciting young Gateway Opera company shows us that you don't need a massive budget to create wonderful opera....

Point/counterpoint: As if to set off its trio of Elizabethan tragedies by Donizetti, the Met is presenting two of the master's comedies. First up: DON PASQUALE, and it was a pip. (The other is L'ELISIR D'AMORE.) Too bad the Met underestimated its appeal, because it had a truncated run of only five p...

It was indeed an auspicious occasion at Chapman University on Saturday night where over a thousand guests gathered for the much-anticipated official opening of the Marybelle and Sebastian P. Musco Center for the Arts. The black tie event featured a concert performance by luminaries of the opera worl...

THE LAST NIGHT OF THE PROMS delights Anglophiles with a recreation of the relaxed closing concert of the British summer season....

Elixir enjoys great success in updated version...