Opera Theater Reviews: Best Shows & Critic Recommendations Page 20

BWW Review: ADELAIDE FESTIVAL 2020: BREAKING THE WAVES at Adelaide Festival Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre
by Barry Lenny - March 14, 2020

Mazzoli's music is sensational....

BWW Review: THE BEL CANTO TRIO Kicks Off San Diego Opera's Detour Series in La Jolla
by Ron Bierman - March 07, 2020

The San Diego Opera's first Detour Series performance this season belonged to the new Bel Canto Trio, starring tenor Joshua Guerrero, soprano Julie Adams, and bass-baritone Nicholas Brownlee. All are outstanding young award winners with impressive voices and resumes. Music director and pianist Chris...

BWW Review: Girard's Disappointing New DUTCHMAN Drops Anchor at the Met
by Richard Sasanow - March 04, 2020

The Met had a wonderfully conducted performance of Wagner's DER FLIENGENDE HOLLANDER with a marvelous singer in the title role. Unfortunately, that was in 2017, when the Met's Music Director Yannick Nezet-Seguin was on the podium and Michael Volle was the forceful Hollander. This time around, when F...

BWW Review: Washington National Opera's SAMSON AND DELILAH at the Kennedy Center
by Roger Catlin - March 04, 2020

Bad haircuts can be tragic, but none more so than for Samson, the Biblical figure whose strength was sapped the moment his mullet was gone. The treacherous shearing by a revenge-seeking Delilah launched centuries of retelling, including Camille Saint-Saëns' opera 'Samson and Delilah' which the Washi...

BWW Review: DON GIOVANNI at Washington National Opera
by James McQuillen - March 02, 2020

Some unclear choices keep a beautifully-designed and often well-sung GIOVANNI from making the impact it intends to....

BWW Review: A Marvelous Oropesa is Definitely Not 'Lost' in Met's TRAVIATA
by Richard Sasanow - March 02, 2020

When I recently interviewed Lisette Ororpesa, just before her first Violetta at the Met, she told me that people are always asking her “Isn't TRAVIATA an opera for three different sopranos? One soprano per act?” and her answer is: “Yeah, if you want to look at it that way...' She proved that she did...

BWW Review: FIDELIO, Royal Opera House
by Alexandra Coghlan - March 02, 2020

On reflection, we should have been more suspicious. But when the curtain rose on a solid, period Fidelio complete with lowering prison walls and lank-haired French revolutionaries, a basket of freshly guillotined heads adding some grisly colour, it was easy to settle in for a breeches and muskets ro...

BWW Review: The Met Anoints Its New 'Fab Five' at National Council Auditions' GRAND FINALS CONCERT
by Richard Sasanow - March 02, 2020

Saturday night, I heard soprano Lisette Oropesa deliver an alternatingly delicious and desperately dramatic Violetta in Verdi's LA TRAVIATA at the Met. Less than a day later, she was the emcee at the GRAND FINALS CONCERT of the Met's National Council Auditions--where she was a winner herself in 2005...

Reviews: Going for Baroque – Orlinski's FACCE D'AMORE on Erato, Hallenberg with VENICE BAROQUE at Zankel
by Richard Sasanow - March 01, 2020

Someone once asked me, long ago, “Don't you ever get Baroque-d out?” The answer then--when instrumental music was more widely available than vocal--was a firm “no.” Today, when there's the music of Handel and his contemporaries everywhere, the answer remains the same, particularly when it's in the r...

Review: The MOTHER of All Operas, by Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson, Staged by Juilliard at that Other Met
by Richard Sasanow - February 15, 2020

With great success, Juilliard's Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts, including a notable alumna, Felicia Moore, as Susan B. Anthony, along with members of the New York Philharmonic under Daniela Candillari performed Louisa Proske's production of the Gertrude Stein-Virgil Thomson opera THE MOTHER OF US A...

CD Review: Live from Carnegie Hall, Moravec-Campbell SANCTUARY ROAD with Oratorio Society
by Richard Sasanow - February 10, 2020

I was delighted to hear that the Oratorio Society of New York's world premiere at Carnegie Hall of SANCTUARY ROAD (Naxos 8.559884)--a work for orchestra, chorus and a quintet of soloists--had been captured on disc. Not only is the story worth bringing to a broader audience, but the magic of the work...

BWW Review: San Diego Opera's Sly and Whimsical HANSEL AND GRETEL at the Civic Center
by Ron Bierman - February 10, 2020

Engelbert Humperdinck's HANSEL AND GRETEL opened Saturday to an audience that included several dozen children, who followed their attention from beginning to end with color, movement, and singing backed by lushly orchestrated music. Even a five year-old girl sitting in front of me on a raised seat k...

BWW Review: THE PAJAMA GAME at Opéra De Rennes
by Patrick Honoré - February 10, 2020

After the concert version of West Side Story and an extensive tour of the musical Bells Are Ringing, director Jean Lacornerie and musical director Gérard Lecointe have chosen to collaborate again, delivering to the French public a comparatively little known musical of the 50s, The Pajama Game, which...

BWW Review: DiDonato and McVicar's Take on Handel's AGRIPPINA Have the Met Audience in Their Grip
by Richard Sasanow - February 08, 2020

Welcome to the Met, AGRIPPINA: It's about time. Handel and his librettist, Vincent Grimani, knew that certain stories are timeless--like corruption in government--and this one has plenty of twists and turns...and even some belly laughs. It was the perfect piece for an ingenious director, Sir David M...

BWW Review: ALICE'S ADVENTURES UNDER GROUND, Royal Opera House
by Gary Naylor - February 05, 2020

Antony McDonald's production of Gerald Barry's hurtling dash through Wonderland and behind the Looking Glass is a delight from start to finish - or it will be for some....

BWW Review: GIANNI SCHICCHI/L'ENFANT ET LES SORTILEGES at Occidental College
by Maria Nockin - February 03, 2020

On February 2, 2020, Pacific Opera Project (POP) presented Giacomo Puccini and Giovacchino Forzano's 1918 Gianni Schicchi with Maurice Ravel and Colette's 1925 L'Enfant et les Sortilèges (The Child and the Magic Spells), a pair of lesser known operas, to a most receptive audience at Occidental...

BWW Review: DAS BARBECU Ribs Wagner's Tetralogy with Saucy Results from On Site Opera
by Richard Sasanow - February 01, 2020

There must be something in the air, with a couple of New York's small opera companies transporting 19th-century German Romantic operas by Weber and Wagner to Texas within a couple of months, in search of ways to attract new audiences. The first was Weber's DIE FREISCHUTZ from Heartbeat Opera, now On...

BWW Review: Gustavo Dudamel Leads DAS LIED with the NY Philharmonic at Geffen Hall
by Richard Sasanow - January 27, 2020

Maestro Gustavo Dudamel, who usually leads the LA Philharmonic, took a busman's holiday to NY for a brace of performances with his orchestra's East Coast counterpart, the New York Philharmonic. His reputation as a master on the podium is not overrated: I can't think of a more understated, yet fully...

BWW Reviews: Once Again, PROTOTYPE Shows What 'Opera-Theatre-Now' Means to Musical Life in New York
by Richard Sasanow - January 21, 2020

This year's edition of PROTOTYPE, which refers to itself as 'Opera-Theatre-Now,' has come and gone. You never know what to expect, for better or for worse: Try guessing what's going to be 'the next big thing' at your own peril, even if it has played somewhere else first, for they things might not be...

BWW Review: WHEN THERE ARE NINE at KC Lyric Opera
by Kelly Luck - January 20, 2020

'And Still We Dream' song cycle carries most of the weight of this rather thin production....

BWW Overview: The People, the Places, the Operas that Spelled Pleasure in 2019
by Richard Sasanow - January 13, 2020

I admit this is an absolutely personal, totally one-sided view of what gave one man opera thrills last year and what I will look back on with delight. Some are old works, some are new, some are individual performers, some are ensembles, some are complete productions, some are merely the highlight of...

BWW Review: Met Audiences Learn to Love WOZZECK in Kentridge Production, with Mattei, Led by Nezet-Seguin
by Richard Sasanow - January 04, 2020

A funny thing happened the other night at the Met when the curtain came down on William Kentridge's stunning new production of Alban Berg's cruel and devastating WOZZECK. The audience didn't rush from their seats to escape into the night. They stayed and cheered for an opera with a reputation for be...

BWW Review: A Silver Rose, Golden Voices and a Platinum Conductor Mark This Season's ROSENKAVALIER at the Met
by Richard Sasanow - December 20, 2019

For a composer so well known for his dramatic operas--SALOME and ELEKTRA the most famous of them--Richard Strauss's most popular work remains the more comic DER ROSENKAVALIER, which just made its season debut under the scintillating baton of Sir Simon Rattle, with a bevy of first-rate singers....

BWW Review: LA TRAVIATA, Royal Opera House
by Gary Naylor - December 18, 2019

Richard Eyre's production gets yet another run out 25 years on, but it's so beautiful and brilliantly sung, no further justification is required....

BWW Review: ANDREA BOCELLI at Capital One Arena
by Elliot Lanes - December 16, 2019

As a reviewer you hear lots of advance hype about a particular show or performer before having your own experience. Much of the time the hype doesn't live up to the end product. Selling over 90 million recordings opera singer Andrea Bocelli was definitely one of those performers who I had heard a lo...