OPERA

by Gabby Ziccarelli - December 12, 2025

As the houselights dim at the Metropolitan Opera, the Julie Taymor–directed The Magic Flute transports viewers into a buoyant and kaleidoscopic fairy-tale dreamworld. This abridged, English-language production is a visually sumptuous version of Mozart's singspiel bathed in bold primary colors, shape...

by Gary Naylor - December 10, 2025

Musically impressive with real high points, the drama does not quite hold together...

by Richard Sasanow - December 07, 2025

When I read that the Met, in the program notes for James Robinson’s production of PORGY AND BESS, called it “a supremely American operatic masterpiece” I couldn’t help but think of Stephen Sondheim’s answer (perhaps apocryphal) when he was asked whether SWEENEY TODD was an opera or a musical: “If it...

by Alexander Cohen - December 08, 2025

We still don’t know what Kurt Cobain did in the days before his suicide in 1994. Gus Van Sant offered one hallucinatory guess in Last Days, refashioned into opera by Oliver Leith and now revived at the Royal Ballet And Opera....

by Gregory Fletcher - December 03, 2025

Performed with exquisite control by the Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble, the hour-long concert of DAVID LANG'S THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL PASSION becomes something far larger than the sum of its parts....

by Richard Sasanow - November 26, 2025

For those of us who like verismo opera—combining the raw emotions of everyday people with historical splendor—but have heard one too many BOHEMEs, TOSCAs, TURANDOTs and BUTTERFLYs in this lifetime, noting Giordano’s ANDREA CHENIER in the Met’s repertoire for this season seemed like a godsend. Not se...

by Clementine Scott - November 21, 2025

Here are all the hallmarks of any good Shakespearean comedy: love polygons, gender trouble and a shipwreck to get things going. However, in Handel’s Partenope there is one crucial difference: everyone here is self-aware....

by Richard Sasanow - November 12, 2025

For all those operagoers tired of classics set in rodeos, Las Vegas or on a space station (Paris has a BOHEME of that ilk), Otto Schenk’s production for ARABELLA, with stage design by Gunther Schneider Siemssen, dating back to 1983, will be a relief. It features a return to “old Vienna,” including a...

by Steve Callahan - November 11, 2025

Gina Galati’s delightful Winter Opera company has opened its season with a revival of a rarely seen Gilbert and Sullivan show—The Sorcerer.   It premiered in 1877, the first of the grandly popular series of light operas by G & S in which the authors had total control over casting and staging....

by Gary Naylor - November 06, 2025

A confession. It’s a guilty pleasure of mine to read the death notices on Wikipedia - I am my mother’s son after all and, without the columns of classifieds in the Liverpool Echo, where else is there to look?...