Opera Theater Reviews: Best Shows & Critic Recommendations Page 23

BWW Review: WOZZECK at Des Moines Metro Opera: A Thought Provoking Work of Art
by DC Felton - July 07, 2019

Every so often, a production comes around that leaves you pondering about the show when it is done. For me, it's usually a jarring show that asks the audience to think about how we see things in the world, and if the way we see things can be adjusted or not. Des Moines Metro Opera's (DMMO) product...

BWW Review: Union Avenue Opera Gives St. Louis a Brilliant CANDIDE
by Steve Callahan - July 08, 2019

Run, don't walk, to see the brilliant CANDIDE at the Union Avenue Opera in St. Louis! This is the opening production of their twenty-fifth festival season, and it is, for my money, the most wonderful of the many lovely shows they've done....

BWW Review: THE PEARL FISHERS at Santa Fe Opera
by Maria Nockin - July 01, 2019

On June 29, Santa Fe Opera presented its second production of the 2019 season, a revival of Georges Bizet's exotic THE PEARL FISHERS. First seen in Lee Blakekely's 2012 version, the production has fared well. Current director Shawna Lucey staged a tasteful, straight forward revival of the work Bizet...

BWW Review: CANDIDE at Des Moines Metro Opera: A Beautiful Kaleidoscope That Makes the Best of all Possible Shows
by DC Felton - July 01, 2019

Some people think everything happens in life for a reason. Others choose to relish all the great parts of life while others drown in the despair of the horrible things that happen in the world. Whatever your philosophy on life is, one thing you would never expect is to see that philosophy come to ...

BWW Review: LA BOHEME Opens Santa Fe Opera's 2019 Season
by Maria Nockin - July 01, 2019

On June 28, 2019, Santa Fe Opera opened its 63rd Season with Giacomo Puccini's tale of poverty-stricken young lovers in nineteenth century Paris. Stage Director Mary Birnbaum told the tale in a straight forward manner but with with an occasional twist that fomented conversation among audience member...

BWW Review: LA BOHEME at Des Moines Metro Opera: A Breathtaking, Beautiful and Tragic Production
by DC Felton - July 01, 2019

In 2002, I was indirectly introduced to La Boheme. My introduction came when I was introduced to a musical that had come out and became a phenomenon on Broadway just 6 years earlier. The show quickly became a favorite musical of mine and showed me the impact that theatre can have on people. Since th...

BWW Review: A DINNER ENGAGEMENT/TROUBLE IN TAHITI, Royal College Of Music
by Sophia Lambton - June 29, 2019

A slick delivery of operatic satires by students of the Royal College of Music challenges contemporary, outmoded conceptions about 'amateur' vs. 'professional'....

BWW Review: MAINLY MOZART at the Balboa Theatre
by Ron Bierman - June 26, 2019

Each year Mainly Mozart brings concertmasters and principal players to San Diego from the major symphony orchestras of Cleveland, Philadelphia, New York City, Los Angeles, Toronto, Dallas and elsewhere. They come for a month-long series that includes solo recitals, chamber music performances and orc...

BWW Review: No Stonewalling the Message of the Bell-Campbell STONEWALL at City Opera Premiere
by Richard Sasanow - June 25, 2019

If there's nothing colder than yesterday's news, the Stonewall riots--that cornerstone of the gay rights movement, 50-years-old this month--should be the equivalent of a frozen Margarita. Instead, it's hot as New York in August, in Leonard Foglia's nonstop production of STONEWALL, the opera by Iain ...

BWW Review: CARMEN, Royal Opera House
by Gary Naylor - June 25, 2019

Barrie Kosky's Carmen returns to the Royal Opera House for a second revival and still chalks up as many misses as hits....

BWW Review: BORIS GODUNOV, Royal Opera House
by Gary Naylor - June 20, 2019

Illuminated by a masterful performance from Bryn Terfel, this production is a gruelling but rewarding, often stunning, revisit to the Musorgsky's original 1869 version....

BWW Review: FIRE SHUT UP IN MY BONES at Opera Theatre St. Louis Captures Your Heart!
by Steve Callahan - June 18, 2019

Fire Shut Up in My Bones has opened at Opera Theatre St. Louis. It is gorgeous! Deeply intimate and honest, the beautifully told story almost overshadows the music by the great jazz trumpeter Terrence Blanchard....

TOSCA, A Political Lighthouse Opens at Opera Queensland
by Virag Dombay - June 13, 2019

Composed by Giacomo Puccini who is heralded as one of the greatest composers of all time, Opera Queensland's Tosca provides a powerful social-commentary on the manipulative nature of power and how love, somehow, though often tragically, manages to win. The work follows the story of Tosca, a famous s...

BWW Review: Reshaping Beethoven's FIDELIO into Lang's PRISONER OF THE STATE at the Philharmonic
by Richard Sasanow - June 12, 2019

The New York Philharmonic finished up its season with a powerful performance of a new version of the FIDELIO story by composer David Lang, which he neatly titled PRISONER OF THE STATE, summing up a key part of the story. Lang's score and the staging by Elkhanah Pulitzer—and the pulsating performance...

BWW Review: THE CORONATION OF POPPEA at Opera Theatre Of St. Louis
by Steve Callahan - June 11, 2019

This baroque masterpiece is gorgeous and disturbing....

BWW Review: Forget 'Games of Thrones,' DiDonato's Got a Grip on AGRIPPINA in Barcelona, and Heading to the Met and Covent Garden
by Richard Sasanow - June 06, 2019

For those of us who couldn't wait to hear mezzo Joyce DiDonato in a fully staged performance of Handel's AGRIPPINA—heading to Covent Garden in September and the Met in February in different productions next season—she has given us a first-class preview at the Liceu in Barcelona. For a couple of w...

BWW Review: A Glorious RIGOLETTO Opens at Opera Theatre St. Louis
by Steve Callahan - June 04, 2019

The Opera Theatre of St. Louis continues its 44th festival season of world class opera with a magnificent production of Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto. OTSL presented a splendid Rigoletto fourteen years ago, but this production is, I think, even better. It's the best Rigoletto your ever likely to see....

BWW Review: DER ZWERG at THEATRE AT ACE HOTEL
by Maria Nockin - June 04, 2019

Numi Opera began its inaugural season with Alexander Zemlinsky's almost forgotten Der Zwerg (The Dwarf), a piece once condemned by the Nazi Third Reich. In Los Angeles, the dark and cavernous ground floor of the Theatre at Ace Hotel was more than half full for the matinee performance on Sunday, June...

BWW Review: Five Years and 26 Productions Later, AS ONE Makes a Splendid Return to New York at City Opera
by Richard Sasanow - June 03, 2019

The spectacularly musical, touchingly dramatic, surprisingly funny and profoundly moving chamber opera, AS ONE, by Laura Kaminsky, Kimberly Reed and Mark Campbell, made its long-overdue return to New York on Thursday, in a production by Matt Gray as part of New York City Opera's spring season....

BWW Review: THE BARTERED BRIDE, Garsington Opera
by Alexandra Coghlan - May 30, 2019

We haven't seen a lot of Smetana's The Bartered Bride in the UK recently. Bohemia's best-loved opera is rapidly becoming one of the repertoire's best-kept secrets, which is a shame because it's an enchanting comedy, whose colourful, folk-filled score might be propelled by exotic polka rhythms, but w...

BWW Review: FIGARO is Brilliantly Married in St. Louis
by Steve Callahan - May 28, 2019

Opera Theatre of St. Louis has opened its 44th festival season. This is St. Louis' prized centerpiece of opera, with a world-wide reputation. It is famous for its superb productions. The company's home is the beautiful and comfortable 763-seat Browning Theatre at Webster University. Gourmet picnic s...

BWW Review: Who Will Survive Barcelona's PECHEURS DE PERLES at the Liceu?
by Richard Sasanow - May 28, 2019

George Bizet--best known, of course, for CARMEN--wrote another opera that has become increasingly (and justifiably) popular in recent years, LES PECHEURS DE PERLES, better known in the English-speaking world as THE PEARL FISHERS. George Bizet--best known, of course, for CARMEN--wrote another opera t...

BWW Feature: New York City Opera Brings Music To Bryant Park
by George Weinhouse - May 21, 2019

When I was a child, my father took me to a series of outdoor concerts at a park near our home.  One of the programs featured excerpts from Bizet's opera CARMEN. This was one of my first exposures to opera and since then I have become a major devotee.  I have since joined the Patron Program at the Me...

BWW Review: Washington National Opera's Splendid TOSCA
by Roger Catlin - May 14, 2019

It's easy to see why 'Tosca' is one of the most popular works in opera.Its very musical style, broken free from the strict opera house rules before it, allows it to breathe. Singers are not urgently singing every moment. The supertitles person can take a break as it goes dark from time to time. Stil...

BWW Review: Nashville Opera's 'Gleefully Subversive' THE CRADLE WILL ROCK: Opera, Musical Theater or Both?
by Jeffrey Ellis - May 11, 2019

Now onstage through Mother's Day (Sunday, May 12) in a much anticipated and gleefully subversive production from Nashville Opera, The Cradle Will Rock remains hard to define: It could be described as a work of art whose meaning, its very raison d'etre, can be bent to suit any conceivable justificati...