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BWW Review: THE ELIXIR OF LOVE at Lyric Opera Of Kansas City
Elixir enjoys great success in updated version...
BWW Review: An Opera Grows in Brooklyn, Part II - Regina Opera Looks at LUCIA
On the surface, LoftOpera and Regina Opera couldn't be more different--the former turning away hipsters in East Williamsburg (call it Bushwick), the latter providing a matinees-only environment for a family audience. But these two Brooklyn institutions do have one important thing in common: They res...
BWW Review: An Opera Grows in Brooklyn, Part I - LoftOpera Takes on TOSCA
On the surface, LoftOpera and Regina Opera couldn't be more different--the former turning away hipsters in East Williamsburg (call it Bushwick), the latter providing a matinees-only environment for a family audience. But these two Brooklyn institutions do have one important thing in common: They res...
BWW Review: Captivating REQUIEM from Brahms, New York Philharmonic and New York Choral Artists
Brahms wasn't having a midlife crisis when he composed his masterwork, EIN DEUTSCHES REQUIEM (A GERMAN REQUIEM), his meditation on death. In fact, he was only 33 when he started writing it in 1866 and had written sections of the opening as early as 1861. His reasons for taking on the piece are uncle...
BWW Review: Furlanetto Shows Mastery in San Diego Concert
One of San Diego Opera's most cherished stage luminaries...
BWW Review: Winter Opera's IL TROVATORE Goes In High Melodrama
High passion and sheer unrestrained melodrama overflow in Verdi's 'Il Trovatore,' the current offering by Winter Opera St. Louis. And the voices are glorious! Once again Winter Opera has assembled a sterling group of singers. Caruso once said that all it takes for a successful performance of 'Trovat...
BWW Review: Diva Netrebko Casts Spell at Metropolitan Opera Recital
Anna Netrebko came out on stage in a shimmering white and silver gown with matching headband, looking like an Art Deco goddess in a poster by Alfonso Mucha. It's a look that suited her--not only because the Russian soprano has Bellini's NORMA on her Met schedule in the not-too-distant future, but be...
BWW Review: Lyric Opera's ROMEO AND JULIET Presents a Grand-scale, Classic Interpretation of Shakespeare's Eternal Love Story
Under the direction of Bartlett Sher (whose work is currently represented on Broadway with Lincoln Center Theater's revival of The King and I, Charles Gounod's 1867 French opera ROMEO AND JULIET comes to opulent, dramatic life--with the quality and grandiosity that characterize Lyric Opera's product...
BWW Review: High Art in Small Places, Part II - Von Stade's Bountiful Trip to EGYPT at American Songbook
Lincoln Center's American Songbook series doesn't usually cross the road to opera-land, but I'm glad it did, when it presented the Ricky Ian Gordon-Leonard Foglia chamber opera A COFFIN IN EGYPT with mezzo extraordinaire Frederica von Stade last week. Performed in Jazz at Lincoln Center's tiny Appel...
BWW Review: High Art in Small Places, Part I - A Deliciously Baroque LA CALISTO from Juilliard Opera
Grand opera--lavish in scale, setting and voices--certainly has its place, but, oh, the joys of hearing Cavalli and Faustini's bawdy, early baroque charmer LA CALISTO in a theatre with fewer than 100 seats! The Juilliard Opera production not only proved a great showcase for the singers, dancers and ...
BWW Review: Kaufmann's Out, Alagna's In with Opolais in Met's New Film-Noir MANON LESCAUT
Take one part “Casablanca,” a taste of Bernstein's CANDIDE, some Alfred Hitchcock and you get Sir Richard Eyre's film noir concept for the Met's new MANON LESCAUT, now set in France in the 1940s, complete with Nazis. Tack on that behind-the-scenes drama of “Roberto Alagna to the rescue”--wh...
BWW Review: Manipulation, Scheming And Deception Get In The Way Of Love in LUISA MILLER
Giuseppe Verdi's LUISA MILLER exposes the intrigue, in its darkest form, that threatens the purest of love....
BWW Review: Spectacular Sleepwalking in Bellini's SONNAMBULA at Juilliard Opera
It's a shame that Bellini wasn't Donizetti--because the story of LA SONNAMBULA seems to be begging for the full comic treatment and could have been a great companion to L'ELISIR D'AMORE. (I'm not sure how Maria Callas would have felt about changes in one of her great roles.) As it stands, performing...
BWW Review: An ALT-ernative View of Opera for the 21st Century
Opera for the 21st century is more than setting RUSALKA in a whorehouse, populating RIGOLETTO with a cast of apes or sending MARIA STUARDA to a maximum security prison. It must start with a different vocabulary for the words and music--one that still appeals to traditional audiences while also being...
BWW Review: Washington National Opera Takes On A Bit of Broadway With LOST IN THE STARS
Although the production doesn't quite soar, LOST IN THE STARS is a welcome addition to the WNO season simply because it's not performed very frequently - at least in comparison to other more familiar works that transcend the opera-musical divide....
BWW Review: Chabrier's EDUCATION Makes for a Charming but 'Incomplete' Evening from Opera Lafayette
There's a great Scottish word that came to mind while I was watching Emmanuel Chabrier's one-act French operetta, UNE EDUCATION MANQUEE (AN INCOMPLETE EDUCATION), this past weekend by Washington, DC's Opera Lafayette at the French Institute-Alliance Francaise in New York. It's “twee,” which roug...
BWW Review: Radvanovsky Tears Up the Stage in MARIA STUARDA at the Met
With MARIA STUARDA at the Met, we're back for the second installment of Donizetti's so-called Tudor Trilogy, with ANNA BOLENA (Anne Boleyn) already off to the gallows and ROBERTO DEVEREUX (with Bette Davis and Errol Flynn, it was “Elizabeth and Essex”) still to come. It's the first time the Met ...
BWW Review: Drawing On The Comedy Of 1920's Silent Films THE BARBER OF SEVILLE Is A Lighthearted Opera Filled With Familiar Music
Opera Australia's THE BARBER OF SEVILLE is presented with the wonderful slapstick physical humor of the early movies as the comic tale unfolds....
BWW Review: COSI FAN TUTTE Shines at Winter Opera!
Gina Galati and her Winter Opera continue to bless St. Louis with exemplary productions! They've just opened 'Cosi fan tutte,' and it's a superb presentation of this popular Mozart work....
BWW Review: All Puccini, All the Time at the Met with LA BOHEME and TURANDOT
Sometimes, the Metropolitan Opera seems like an endless Puccini festival. It's particularly apparent this season, when top dogs LA BOHEME, TOSCA and MADAMA BUTTERFLY are joined by TURANDOT and MANON LESCAUT, which are not second drawer, though certainly less popular than the first three. (Let's see ...
BWW Review: Bizet's THE PEARLFISHERS Is Given A New Interpretation for Opera Australia's 2016 Summer Season
Director Michael Gow's staging of Georges Bizet's THE PEARLFISHERS brings the story of love, friendship and jealously into Colonial India....
BWW Review: PROTOTYPE vs. CITY OPERA - The King is Not Dead. Long Live a Different King.
It seems ironic--to me at least--that New York's venerable City Opera would be returning to life at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater, just as the “Prototype: Opera/Theatre/Now” festival was finishing up its run at alternative venues in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Prototype “unleashed a powerf...
BWW Review: THE MAGIC FLUTE Returns To Charm And Delight at Sydney Opera House, Joan Sutherland Theatre
THE MAGIC FLUTE Returns To Charm And Delight at Sydney Opera House...
BWW Review: PERLES of Wonder from Damrau and Polenzani at the Met
One more BOHEME? Yet another TOSCA? How about BARBIERE redux? Sometimes the standard repertoire of opera companies seems too standard. That's why it was good to hear that the Met was mounting Bizet's LES PECHEURS DE PERLES for the first time in a century, as a showcase for one of its top divas, Dia...
BWW Review: BETTER GODS Soars at the Kennedy Center
The Washington National Opera has always been a champion for young artists, both on stage and off. The WNO's American Opera Initiative's premier production of Better Gods is a testimony to that. Composed with ethnical truth by Luna Pearl Woolf, Better Gods is a stirring portrait of a determined Quee...
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