OPERA THEATER REVIEWS

The longstanding favourite is all very slick but, 37 years on, the production is showing its age...

What did our critic think of VOICE OF NATURE: THE ANTHROPOCENE at Symphony Hall? With her sold-out Celebrity Series of Boston performance this past Sunday at Symphony Hall, Renée Fleming offered a splendid reminder, although none is needed, of why she is widely considered to be the preeminent Ameri...

San Diego Opera’s most recent production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni is an example of how opera companies hope to attract younger audiences while coping with rising costs and smaller budgets. The pandemic hasn’t been kind to the arts. The National Endowment for the Arts has reported that stage pe...

The foray of the Met Orchestra under Music Director Yannick Nezet-Seguin into the concert hall the other night—Carnegie Hall to be specific, during its “Fall of the Weimar” series—was in some ways like a three-part meal that mixed the order of the courses. First came an appetizer (running le...

Music by José “Pepe” Martinez, Lyrics by José “Pepe” Martinez and Leonard Foglia, Book by Leonard Foglia, Orchestration by David Hanlon, CRUZAR offers a deeply moving and acutely transparent experience....

Opera’s most notorious ladies’ man has returned to The Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium. This time, Don Giovanni prowls the streets of 21st century Canada, flaunting red carpet-worthy attire and spamming women with flirty texts.  ...

Paul Ruder's opera, based on Margaret Atwood's celebrated novel, has, frighteningly, gained more relevance since its premiere in 2000...

Audra McDonald has (at least) four voices--Broadway, jazz, opera, blues--not to mention six Tonys. She brought them all (the voices, not the awards) to her two hour concert with the National Symphony Pops which repeats Wednesday evening, January 31. ...

What did our critic think of AMERICAN OPERA INITIATIVE: THREE 20-MINUTE OPERAS at Kennedy Center?...

Another year has come to an end for the Prototype Festival of new opera theatre-music theatre, under the banner of Beth Morrison Projects and HERE. For those of us who couldn’t make it to all the shows on display at various venues around town, it’s always something of a crapshoot: Which ones do ...

Kenneth MacMillan's Manon is a haunting exploration of desire and sexuality, contrasting pompous extravagance with the poverty of the masses....

Huang Ruo’s artistically bold, viscerally devastating ANGEL ISLAND had its local debut the other night at BAM’s Harvey Theatre on Brooklyn’s Fulton Street, produced by Beth Morrison Projects (BMP) and BAM. Its New York premiere is part of the annual Prototype Festival of opera theatre-music th...

The Royal Opera House’s new production of Elektra could do with an extra pinch of Saltburn-esque depravity....

Sometimes you hear a singer who embodies a role so completely that it’s hard to imagine her in anything else. That’s how I felt about the wonderful mezzo Aigul Akhmetshina, who’s singing the title role in the Met’s new production of Bizet’s CARMEN, which I saw at its second performance. He...

What did our critic think of OPERA ITALIA at Wroclaw Opera?...

The American Modern Opera Company (AMOC) continues showcasing a chamber version of John Adams's, EL NINO, beckoning back to Handel's MESSIAH, which played a few days ago at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. It showcased spectacular singing from Julia Bullock, Davone Tines, Antho...

Antony McDonald's production simply oozes glamour and matches perfectly the opera’s quintessentially Romantic music. Eerie forests cast in twilight, cluttered huts, and old-fashioned costumes mix and mingle to give audiences a feeling of watching something straight out of the 19th century....

Ten years ago, Washington National Opera (WNO) premiered a family opera about the events leading up to the birth of Jesus in a manger. This past weekend, The Lion, The Unicorn, and Me returned to Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater for four performances only. I reviewed the premiere, and it was as go...

Five opera singers are holding out for a hero...

What did our critic think of San Diego Opera Performs THE MIRACLE OF REMEMBERING at San Diego Civic Center?...

All that was missing were shouts of “food fight!” to turn last night’s performance of Richard Wagner’s TANNHAUSER—the first of the Met’s season—into a version of National Lampoon’s Night at the Opera, as climate activists interrupted the house debut of the great baritone Christian Ge...

Sensational staging and great music sung with such passion, but are changing mores transforming how we see the sad clown and his wicked revenge?...

Sometimes it doesn't take much to make a reviewer happy and have an excellent musical experience. Welsh Bass-Baritone superstar Sir Bryn Terfel with only two instrumentalists proved that in spades. Add to that the bonus of what seemed like NO, that’s right, ZERO amplification this past Sunday in ...

Just as the Met’s debut of Mexican composer Daniel Catan’s FLORENCIA EN EL AMAZONAS (FLORENCE IN THE AMAZON) began the other day, a member of the audience yelled out “Viva la ópera en español!” (“Long live opera in Spanish!”). And that was before a single note of the composer’s lyric...

It’s amazing how much emotion John Musto and Mark Campbell have been able to cram in the mere 75 minutes of LATER THE SAME EVENING, a one act opera, which has been on view this past week at Juilliard Opera at the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre, on West 65 Street, down the block from Lincoln Center’s Al...