Review: RAGTIME at Union Avenue Opera
by Steve Callahan
- August 22, 2023
When the musical Ragtime was produced for Broadway in 1998 it was a colossal, big-budget show. It cost some ten million dollars. What in the world were the folks at tiny little Union Avenue Opera thinking when they decided to include this show in their twenty-ninth season? Ragtime, the musical tr...
Review: DON PASQUALE at Union Avenue Opera
by Steve Callahan
- July 31, 2023
Scott Schoonover and his Union Avenue Opera have a long history (now twenty-nine years) of gathering remarkable operatic voices. Their current production of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale has voices that are astonishingly beautiful! It’s a work you should not miss! Two brilliant young stars—Christine L...
Review: THE TURN OF THE SCREW at Union Avenue Opera
by Benjamin Torbert
- July 10, 2023
“The Turn of the Screw,” a deft psychological exploration of the dimensions of horror and the human mind. UAO’s successful staging of the work appropriately raised more questions than it answered, about danger, fear, the limits of human perception, and a host of other commonplaces in horror....
Review: TREEMONISHA at Opera Theatre Of Saint Louis
by Steve Callahan
- May 23, 2023
Last Saturday Opera Theatre of St. Louis premiered a new adaptation of Scott Joplin’s legendary opera Treemonisha. It is a bright and worthy addition to our recent flurry of adoration of some of America’s major black composers; the Black Rep closed their stunningly fine evening of Eubie Blake’s mu...
Review: THE DESERT SONG at Winter Opera
by Steve Callahan
- March 07, 2023
A stellar cast brightens a Romberg favorite. Operetta, as a genre, arose in the 1850's and swelled into a widely beloved form of entertainment. In America its chief luminaries were Sigmund Romberg, Victor Herbert, and Rudolf Friml. From the 1920's to the '40's the modern musical gradually drove oper...