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Review: THE MAGIC FLUTE at Her Majesty's Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre
A thought-provoking reworking of Mozart's popular opera....
Review: BBC PROMS: THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO FROM GLYNDEBOURNE, Royal Albert Hall
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....
Review: SEMELE, Starring Hilary Cronin, Opera Holland Park
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...
Review: CARMEN at Wolf Trap
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...
Review: SALOME at Union Avenue Opera
Kelly Slawson brings a dazzlingly powerful, beautiful voice to the title role. It’s an unforgettable triumph in a real tour de force....
Review: Lincoln Center’s Festival Orchestra Concert Covered the Globe, from Paris to Patagonia
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, ...
Review: BEETHOVEN: I SHALL HEAR IN HEAVEN, Opera Holland Park
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...
Review: DALIBOR is Smashing Smetana at Bard’s SummerScape under Botstein
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...
Review: Lincoln Center’s Festival Orchestra Concert Is Mostly Mozart under Maestro Glover
“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...
Review: 'JOSEPHINE' & 'PAGLIACCI' at Union Avenue Opera
A powerful double-bill. 'Josephine' is a stunning mini-biography of a great star; 'Pagliacci' is an overpoweringly passionate step into verismo opera....
Review: Out Damned Spot—But Hello to Teatro Nuovo’s Unusual MACBETH!
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...
Review: LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR, Opera Holland Park
Jennifer France gives everything in a role demanding bel canto singing and bloody revenge...
Review: LA TRAVIATA, Opera Holland Park
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....
Review: FALSTAFF, Glyndebourne Festival
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....
Review: SEMELE, Royal Ballet And Opera
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...
Review: LE NOZZE DI FIGARO, Glyndebourne Festival
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 ...
Review: TRIAL BY JURY/A MATTER OF MISCONDUCT!, Opera Holland Park
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....
Review: Old Meets New at Lincoln Center, Mixing George Lewis and Monteverdi in THE COMET/POPPEA
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)....
Review: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM at Opera Theatre Of Saint Louis
Opera Theatre of St. Louis draws us into a truly enchanted forest. In staging Benjamin Britten’s 'A Midsummer Night’s Dream' they create a marvelous amalgam of strange and gorgeous music, superlative voices, and design and directorial genius. And they are unerringly true to Shakespeare’s i...
Review: MAZEPPA, Grange Park Opera
Even ardent opera fans may struggle to recall the story or the score for Mazeppa. Based on a poem by Pushkin, Tchaikovsky's opera has been unjustly overshadowed by his Eugene Onegin. Last staged at the London Coliseum in 1984, Grange Park Opera have landed a coup by engaging the English National O...
Review: Puccini’s TRITTICO Storms the Bastille, Giving Asmik Grigorian Three Times the Showcase
One of the operas at the top of my list for next season at the Met is the Deborah Warner staging of Tchaikovsky’s EUGENE ONEGIN that brings back soprano Asmik Grigorian for the first time since her 2024 debut in MADAMA BUTTERFLY.
Not that there’s anything wrong with Puccini, the major composer ...
Review: DON PASQUALE at Opera Theatre of St. Louis
Susanne Burgess sings Norina, the quintessential bel canto soprano role. She’s astonishing! She defines that vocal style....
Review: SAUL, Glyndebourne Festival
Just how much fun can you have at an oratorio about a Old Testament tale of jealousy, madness and death? Well, quite a lot as it happens at the return of Barry Kosky's remarkable production of Handel's Saul. This staging is opera at its most theatrical, with severed heads, a breast-feeding witch, a ...
Review: MADAMA BUTTERFLY, Grange Park Opera
Grange Park Opera has opened its new season with a crowd-pleaser. Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly remains problematic, with its story of a Japanese teenage geisha, impregnated and cruelly abandoned by an American lieutenant. However, it is still wildly popular, mainly due to its ravishing score....
Review: ITCH, Opera Holland Park
Opera Holland Park has never shied away from audacious programming, and with Jonathan Dove’s Itch, it plunges boldly into radioactive territory—literally. Originally seen here in 2023 and based on Simon Mayo’s YA novel about a teenage element hunter who stumbles upon a potentially world-alteri...
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