OPERA THEATER REVIEWS

The Queen of Puddings production of Ana Sokolovic's short opera made its US premiere at Opera Philadelphia with the assistance of FringeArts and a raucous reception...

Maybe next time around, the Metropolitan Opera's General Manager Peter Gelb will hire film director Quentin Tarantino to do a production of Puccini's TOSCA. With its sordid story, self-involved diva and torture-happy, sex-crazed police chief--based on a Sarah Bernhardt vehicle by Victorien Sardou--t...

The Production Company rounded off its 2013 season last night with Gilbert and Sullivan's classic operetta The Pirates of Penzance. There was, however, little reference to the classic that was first performed in 1879. There have been many adaptations of the original, with this production centering o...

It's not everyday that you watch the interconnectivity of two separate people communicating via Internet chat room. Let alone, how about five people's conversations over several weeks with an entire chorus of “chaters” behind them. It adds up to quite the stack of transcripts. The idea, while...

Giuseppe Verdi's 1871 opera AIDA is a worldwide phenomenon. It has been adapted into several films, Elton John and Tim Rice adapted it into a Broadway musical with the same title, and, as of 2007, New York City's Metropolitan Opera has given over 1,100 performances of the opera, making it their seco...

After a triumph in Mozart's COSI FAN TUTTE at the Met, James Levine made it two in a row, as he returned with the MET Orchestra and soloist Joyce DiDonato to Carnegie Hall early this week for a concert of far-reaching styles and depth....

The Metropolitan Opera may have chosen soprano Anna Netrebko to add star-power to its new season's opening production of Tchaikovsky's EUGENE ONEGIN, but she was upstaged, figuratively speaking at least, by the thrilling performance of Polish tenor Piotr Beczala, as the poet Lenski....

Giuseppe Verdi's opera, filled with powerful emotions, has not been seen in Adelaide for over forty years, and this stupendous production leaves one wondering why that is so....

It's not often that singers make their debuts on Broadway and then make a splash at the opera, but that's what happened when Paulo Szot--a Tony winner for “South Pacific”--opened in the Met's production of the Shostakovich opera THE NOSE in 2010. The exciting, intoxicating production by the Sout...

Bellini's “Norma” opened at the Metropolitan Opera last Monday night to a full audience giving resounding praise to the leading lady, soprano Sondra Radvanovsky. Ms. Radvanovsky's performance of the title role was incredibly expressive and most articulately nuanced. Her inaugural American perf...

When it comes to classic opera, Giuseppe Verdi is one of the most prominent composers. LA TRAVIATA is based La dame aux Camelias, a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils, and had its world premiere on March 6, 1853. Guiseppe Verdi was displeased that the authorities at La Fenice insis...

Opera Philadelphia stages NABUCCO with 19th Century sets, and some 19th Century Italian political intrigue...

Not many opera performances start with a standing ovation before a single note is sung, but the season's first COSI FAN TUTTE on September 24 was one of those rare occasions. It marked the return of conductor James Levine after a two-year absence, leading the performance from a motorized chair at a ...

A magnificent revolution arrived when the curtain opened at the Skylight Music Theatre on Friday night. The first night Artistic Director Viswa Subbaraman christened his magical season as the Stage and Music Director for his premiere production in Ludwig van Beethoven's Fidelio....

With a story that is somehow poignant despite its scatological language, ANNA NICOLE's heroine is nicer than Berg's LULU, less lucky than TRAVIATA's Violetta and more cunning than MANON's Manon (though maybe not MANON LESCAUT's). Whatever she is, Anna Nicole Smith is definitely a full-fledged ope...

Two-thirds into the bicentennial year of both Richard Wagner and Giuseppe Verdi, the recordings marking the occasions keep coming. Even in a crowded field, recent disks from two of today's major singers, Russian soprano Anna Netrebko and German tenor Jonas Kaufmann, are both treats--making strong ca...

State Opera of South Australia started their main stage programme for the year with a powerful production of Salome, with a libretto by Richard Strauss based on Hedwig Lachmann's German translation of Oscar Wilde's play. Richard Strauss, of course, also wrote the score of the opera...

It's a slippery slope--when an orchestra commemorates the career of a famous singer, featuring other, less well-known artists. That's exactly what the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment did last Thursday at Mostly Mozart in Alice Tully Hall. In an all-Handel concert, the group remembered its long...

From its earliest days, Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival has included opera among its offerings, although I recall no production being quite so acclaimed as Iván Fischer's DON GIOVANNI of two seasons ago. With so much to live up to, the director-conductor's vision of Mozart's LE NOZZE DI FIG...

I grew up on 'The Mikado,' and in the past year or two I've begun to slowly educate myself on Gilbert and Sullivan via Lamplighters Music Theatre, which does one or two full staged Gilbert and Sullivan operettas each year. For the first time, Saturday night, the company treated me to what seemed a f...

Dressed all in white, singing like angels and dancing like the devil, the 13 performers of "Gertrude Stein's Saints" are young, energetic, talented, and, let's face it, hot enough to be cast in Glee. What's most remarkable about this ensemble, all of them drama students at Carnegie Mellon Universit...

Is Lincoln Center planning to change its summertime schedule from “Mostly Mozart” to “Basically Beethoven”? If so, they couldn't have picked a better concert to put the point across than the opening program of this year's Festival. Heard on Wednesday evening, July 31, the performance was led...

When last heard on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera, mezzo Isabel Leonard and soprano Erin Morley were a couple of nuns on their way to the guillotine in LES DIALOGUES DES CARMELITES. This time around, the two women--along with tenor Stephen Costello--kicked off the Met's Summer Recital Series at...