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Review: Davidsen Goes Out with a Bang in Beethoven’s FIDELIO Under Malkki
Political prisoner is rescued from dungeon by his faithful wife, only to find that she’s pregnant!
Shocking! Not really: Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen, who’s shown herself indispensable in roles from Tchaikovsky’s QUEEN OF SPADES to Strauss’s ARIADNE AUF NAXOS starts her maternity leave a...
Review: INNOCENCE – ADELAIDE FESTIVAL 2025 at Adelaide Festival Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre
This will be talked about for a long time to come....
Review: Heggie-Scheer MOBY-DICK Triumphs in New Foglia Production at the Met
MOBY-DICK--Herman Melville’s epic tale of obsession and man-versus-nature, succinctly adapted by composer Jake Heggie with Gene Scheer’s taut libretto--roared into the Met Monday night and begged only one question: What took so long for it to get here?...
Review: DIE ZAUBERFLOTE at Winter Opera
Winter Opera rounds out its 18th season with a splendid production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute). This is perhaps the most popular opera in the world, and it is an all-round challenge for any company—vocally and technically....
Review: IL TROVATORE, Royal Ballet And Opera
An animated revival of Adele Thomas’s 2023 production, Il Trovatore strays from realism and instead focuses on a symbolic reading of this dark and gritty opera. With macabre medieval costumes, eery effects and a brilliant cast, it’s an unnerving experience....
Review: MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS, London Coliseum
And so to the final new production of English National Opera’s season; Mary, Queen of Scots, directed by Stewart Laing and conducted by Joana Carneiro. Scottish composer Thea Musgrave’s opera was last heard in London at Sadler’s Wells back in 1980, after premiering in Edinburgh in 1977, with ...
Review: Julia Bullock’s PERSISTENT VOICE Is Stunning Combination of Past and Present
While opera-lovers wait eagerly for soprano Julia Bullock’s appearance in the latest John Adams lyric drama, ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA at the Met in May, Bullock continues to tantalize us with some other parts of her repertoire, from the Baroque (her recent program with the Orchestra of the Age of Enli...
Review: THE SNOWY DAY at Minnesota Opera
What did our critic think of THE SNOWY DAY at MN Opera?...
REVIEW: Heartbeat’s SALOME Raised the Audience’s Blood Pressure--and the Roof--at Irondale
The people at Heartbeat Opera--that dazzling reinvention-machine for taking works that you think you might have heard one time too often and making them compelling--must have had a crystal ball when they programmed Strauss’s SALOME long before the current, decadent regime took control in US politi...
BWW Review: Columbus Presents a Tour-de-FOURce Production of WEST SIDE STORY
In an unprecedented collaboration, the Columbus Symphony, BalletMet, Opera Columbus, and the Columbus Association for the Performing Arts (CAPA) have all joined forces to present West Side Story, the classic forbidden love story and rivalry between the Jets and the Sharks in a mesmerizing fusion of ...
Review: FESTEN, Royal Ballet And Opera
Mark-Anthony Turnage has a provocative habit of turning unconventional narratives into opera...
Review: Michael Hersch’s AND WE, EACH Challenges the Audience at Every Turn
Michael Hersch took no prisoners with his new opera, AND WE, EACH, a production of the Baltimore musical organization, Mind on Fire, which had its New York premiere on February 6 at National Sawdust in Williamsburg, Brooklyn....
Review: NEW WORKS COLLECTIVE at Opera Theatre Of Saint Louis
Opera Theatre of Saint Louis has a rich history in world premiers, often commissioning new works from significant composers and librettists. But it seeks to foster brand new talents too. Its New Works Collective is a three-year project wherein each year OTSL commits to developing and producing t...
Review: THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO, London Coliseum
Joe Hill-Gibbins’s new production of The Marriage of Figaro for English National Opera opened back in March 2020 for a single performance before Covid struck. Thankfully, nearly five years on it has been given a second life at the London Coliseum and it is a riotous delight from start to finish....
Review: Richards-Cote INJUSTICE Opera Gives Hope that Truth is Not BLIND
Anyone who’s spent enough time watching network TV knows an American criminal justice system that is built around simplistic stories of the good guys (hard-working prosecutors and police detectives) putting away the bad guys (“perps” of all stripes) with the help of brilliant DNA evidence that...
Review: MADAMA BUTTERFLY at Four Seasons Centre For The Performing Arts
The COC’s 2025 production of this masterpiece seamlessly blends performance practice tradition with a contemporary perspective on the story’s timeless themes....
Review: Will Philadelphia’s LOVER Stay Anonymous?
Even though there’s no shortage of contemporary opera around, we all still long for the rediscovery of a delightful operatic work from the archives, particularly a comedy, of which there is a short supply. Would Opera Philadelphia’s THE ANONYMOUS LOVER (L’AMANT ANONYME)--by Joseph Bologne, Che...
Review: AIDA, Royal Ballet and Opera
Robert Carsen's vision is as uncompromising as ever, but the world has changed in three short years...
Review: Going for Baroque with ENLIGHTENMENT and BULLOCK
The 17th and 18th centuries rode roughshod over the programming at the 92NY the other night, when that brilliant British baroque ensemble, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and superb guest soloist, soprano Julia Bullock, bathed the audience in the warmth of what itself acknowledged was a l...
Review: Prototype’s Gorgeous IN A GROVE by Cerrone and Fleischmann Arrives in New York
The New York premiere of the Christopher Cerrone/Stephanie Fleischmann opera IN A GROVE, in Mary Birnbaum’s simply beautiful—or beautifully simple—production triumphed at La Mama Experimental Theatre Club on Saturday as part of the Prototype Festival. It is inspired by Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s ...
Review: JENŮFA, Royal Ballet And Opera
It’s a mistake to dismiss Claus Guth’s production of Janacek’s Jenůfa as symbolically overwrought and interminably grey. Look closer and you’ll discover a duality to each beguiling appearance....
Review: Prototype’s EAT THE DOCUMENT Brings Back the Activism of the ‘70s
The lobby of the HERE Theatre in SoHo was buzzing after Saturday’s performance of the new opera EAT THE DOCUMENT—not just for the performance we’d just watched but for the memories of the age that the piece evoked for many in the audience. Based on the novel of the same name by Dana Spiotta, D...
Review: AIDA and the Temple of Doom Comes to the Met with Angel Blue
Someone at the Met should have been giving out flu shots (before RFK Junior makes them illegal), because something is obviously going around the cast of the new AIDA. They should have handed out a scorecard to help the audience keep track of who-was-who....
Review: MARIA, in Cinemas and Streaming
Angelina Jolie is compelling in a movie that concentrates on the misery to the exclusion of almost everything else in the diva's life...
Review: HANSEL AND GRETEL, Royal Ballet and Opera
Macabre and spectacular, this is Christmas fare as it once was and should still be, fully trusting its audience.
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