Opera Theater Reviews: Best Shows & Critic Recommendations Page 33

BWW Review: THREE WAY Makes Sex Last Too Long at BAM
by Richard Sasanow - June 19, 2017

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, there lived a place called Broadway, where you could find still find bills of one-act plays that, more often than not, offered titillation into then-current sexual practices and innovations. Zoom forward 40 years or so and opera has finally caught up with...

BWW Review: TITUS at OTSL - Grand Opera With No Deaths, No Vengeance?
by Steve Callahan - June 13, 2017

The Opera Theater of St. Louis has opened the fourth and last production of it's forty-second festival season. It's Mozart's final opera, La clemenza di Tito, or (as it's billed for this English-language performance) simply Titus. Everything about this production - from its glorious voices and orche...

BWW Review: In Series Revives Opera OBERON
by Roger Catlin - June 12, 2017

For three decades, the In Series has been presenting intimate, small scale works - what it calls 'pocket operas' on a variety of stages in the city....

BWW Review: Toronto is Head Over Heels for HIBLA GERZMAVA
by Taylor Long - June 09, 2017

Russia seems to be everywhere these days. Conductor and violinist, Vladimir Spivakov and the Moscow Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra performed to an enthusiastic crowd at the Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto, Ontario. The evening was presented by Show One Productions, the same company that recently brought us ...

BWW Review: Two Icons Meet in OTSL's THE TRIAL
by Steve Callahan - June 15, 2017

The American premiere of The Trial has opened at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis. This is a very major event in opera. Franz Kafka's nightmare tale of Joseph K, trapped in an enigmatic trial for his life, has fascinated readers since it appeared in 1925. Composer Philip Glass read the novel as a yout...

BWW Review: There's 'GOLD in Them Thar Hills as NY Philharmonic and Gilbert Take on Wagner's Gods
by Richard Sasanow - June 05, 2017

Just after hearing the wonderfully well sung, semi-staged DAS RHEINGOLD at the NY Philharmonic, under departing Music Director Alan Gilbert, I saw the current Broadway revival of THE LITTLE FOXES. It seemed Richard Wagner's gods and Lillian Hellman's Hubbards had lots in common: The small-minded, se...

OTSL reads Steinbeck's righteous sentence with a commanding voice.
by Steve Callahan - May 31, 2017

What a show! Opera Theatre of St. Louis has opened The Grapes of Wrath, a work by Ricky Ian Gordon and Michael Korie. I have never in my life been more emotionally moved by an opera than by this glorious production....

BWW Review: NY OperaFest Shows COQ and BUTTERFLY as Works that Don't Go Away - They Get DayGlo-ed and Deconconstructed
by Richard Sasanow - May 26, 2017

There's lots going on in the world of opera in New York City, as shown by the gamut of offerings under the umbrella of the ongoing New York OperaFest, co-organized by the New York Opera Alliance and Opera America. In the last week, the New Opera NYC gave us a cockeyed look at Rimsky-Korsakov's LE CO...

BWW Review: Rent in Toronto Meets Opera in Against the Grain Theatre's LA BOHÈME
by Taylor Long - May 20, 2017

You've never seen a more boho Boheme. Against the Grain Theatre (AtG) presents Puccini's LA BOHÈME in a real Toronto dive bar, The Tranzac Club. AtG is doing something incredible in the world of opera right now - they're growing. When opera houses around the world are reporting declines in ticket sa...

BWW Review: DON GIOVANNI at Metropolitan Opera NYC
by Milette Shanon - May 16, 2017

Don Giovanni at the Metropolitan opera is divine.I had the wonderful opportunity to experience Don Giovanni at the Metropolitan Opera (Lincoln Center NYC) this week. Well, the Met did it again! With a perfect, minimalist set, great costumes, creative choreography, and the perfect cast, this is an en...

BWW Review: Mozart's GARDENER Is On Site Opera's SECRET Weapon
by Richard Sasanow - May 15, 2017

It had a great score but an unmanageable book. So the director had it reshaped, cut and done in a creative environmental production that sent the singers scampering throughout the audience. No, I'm not talking about Hal Prince's famous reinvention of Leonard Bernstein's CANDIDE, but On Site Opera's ...

BWW Review: Big Nose, Big Heart, Big Performance from Roberto Alagna as Met's CYRANO
by Richard Sasanow - May 07, 2017

I first heard tenor Roberto Alagna in the days when he was being touted as “The 4th Tenor”—chutzpah that only a record company could come up with, placing him in the hallowed company of Carreras, Domingo and Pavarotti. Fast forward more than 20 years and he's still here. As Cyrano, the soldier-poet ...

BWW Review: Joyce DiDonato and Harry Bicket's English Concert Handle Handel's ARIODANTE Quite Nicely at Carnegie Hall
by Richard Sasanow - May 05, 2017

Harry Bicket and the English Concert returned for its just-about-annual Handel-fest at Carnegie Hall with a concert performance of the well-loved ARIODANTE by Handel, starring the even better-loved mezzo Joyce DiDonato. The result was some awfully fine singing--particularly from DiDonato in fine dra...

BWW OperaView: A Look into the Kennedys, Ghosts and Holocaust Survivors at ALT Alumni Concert at the Morgan Library
by Richard Sasanow - May 04, 2017

Baritone Joseph Lattanzi and mezzo Laura Krumm didn't originate at the roles of Jack and Jackie Kennedy when JFK--the new opera by David T. Little and Royce Vavrek--premiered in Fort Worth a year ago. But they certainly owned them in the excerpts presented in the most daring of the four excellent wo...

BWW Review: Canadian Opera Company's TOSCA is a Total Triumph
by Taylor Long - May 02, 2017

From the moment the orchestra plays its first note, the production is pure magic. The Canadian Opera Company (COC) ends their 2016-2017 season with a bang, with Puccini's TOSCA. Gorgeous music, grand sets and gripping performances coexist seamlessly in Paul Curran's production of one of opera's most...

BWW Review: Wagner's HOLLANDER Flies Under Nezet-Seguin, with Volle and Wagner, at the Met
by Richard Sasanow - April 28, 2017

The audience was there to be thrilled on Tuesday, when the Met's new Music Director, Yannick Nezet-Seguin, took on Wagner's DER FLIEGENDE HOLLANDER (THE FLYING DUTCHMAN) and they weren't disappointed. It was a musically glorious performance with the Met orchestra in peak form under its new maestro, ...

BWW Review: Opera Superstar ANNA NETREBKO Dazzles in Canadian Debut
by Taylor Long - April 26, 2017

Anna Netrebko performed to an adoring sold-out audience at Toronto's Four Seasons Centre on Tuesday evening. Netrebko was joined by husband and Azerbaijani tenor, Yusif Eyvazov and renowned Russian baritone, Dmitri Hvorostovsky. Led by Maestro Jader Bignamini, the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra br...

BWW Review: So-Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Renee Fleming in Met's ROSENKAVALIER
by Richard Sasanow - April 26, 2017

For a new production that was supposed to mark a farewell for soprano Renee Fleming to a role (the Marschallin) if not to staged opera performance in general, Robert Carsen's version of Richard Strauss's DER ROSENKAVALIER at the Met seemed more of a farce and less a tale of regret about passing time...

BWW Review: THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE at Lyric Opera Of Kansas City
by Alan Portner - April 24, 2017

continues to work after 138 years...

BWW Review: The Canadian Opera Company's LOUIS RIEL - A Step in the Right Direction
by Taylor Long - April 24, 2017

Colonization is a controversial part of our heritage, and is central to the Canadian Opera Company's (COC) new production of Harry Somers' LOUIS RIEL. The production has sparked discourse on the use of Indigenous songs in opera, the portrayal of Indigenous men and women on stage and First Nations so...

BWW Review: CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA AND I PAGLIACCI at Adelaide Festival Theatre
by Barry Lenny - April 21, 2017

These magnificent operas have a shorter than usual run, so hurry to buy your tickets....

BWW Review: Netrebko and Mattei Spin Magic from Tchaikovsky's EUGENE ONEGIN at the Met
by Richard Sasanow - April 17, 2017

It's getting near the end of the season at the Met in New York and it's nice to see that they're still bringing out their “A” game, with a splendidly cast run of Tchaikovsky's EUGENE ONEGIN, with the wonderful Met orchestra under the sensitive baton of Robin Ticciati, music director at the Glyndebou...

BWW Review: LA GAZZETTA at The Israeli Opera
by Ronit Suzan - April 10, 2017

Ever since the New Israeli Opera was created in 1985 there's usually been one guest international production in each of its seasons. This year the Royal Opera of Wallonie from Liege, Belgium, brought its fun production to Tel Aviv, Gioacchino Rossini's opera buffa La Gazzetta (The Magazine) which is...

BWW Review: L'ITALIANA IN ALGERI at Sarasota Opera House
by Carolan Trbovich - March 28, 2017

Sarasota Opera House Brings Humor to the stage in Italian Girl in Algiers...

BWW Review: DIALOGUES DES CARMELITES at Sarasota Opera House
by Carolan Trbovich - March 23, 2017

Last Chance to see Dialogues des Carmelites at the Sarasota Opera House...