The latest reviews and critic recommendations from Opera.
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.
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.
For its fifth year, Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour and Opera Australia have delivered another stunning production with TURANDOT, confirming its position as one of the world's greatest outdoor operas.
MADAMA BUTTERFLY was never my favorite Puccini until the current production conceived by Anthony Minghella.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Brahms wasn't having a midlife crisis when he composed his masterwork, EIN DEUTSCHES REQUIEM (A GERMAN REQUIEM), his meditation on death.
One of San Diego Opera's most cherished stage luminaries
High passion and sheer unrestrained melodrama overflow in Verdi's 'Il Trovatore,' the current offering by Winter Opera St.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
Giuseppe Verdi's LUISA MILLER exposes the intrigue, in its darkest form, that threatens the purest of love.
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.
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.
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.
