Opera Theater Reviews: Best Shows & Critic Recommendations Page 39

BWW Review: Spectacular Sleepwalking in Bellini's SONNAMBULA at Juilliard Opera
by Richard Sasanow - February 17, 2016

It's a shame that Bellini wasn't Donizetti--because the story of LA SONNAMBULA seems to be begging for the full comic treatment and could have been a great companion to L'ELISIR D'AMORE. (I'm not sure how Maria Callas would have felt about changes in one of her great roles.) As it stands, performing...

BWW Review: An ALT-ernative View of Opera for the 21st Century
by Richard Sasanow - February 16, 2016

Opera for the 21st century is more than setting RUSALKA in a whorehouse, populating RIGOLETTO with a cast of apes or sending MARIA STUARDA to a maximum security prison. It must start with a different vocabulary for the words and music--one that still appeals to traditional audiences while also being...

BWW Review: Washington National Opera Takes On A Bit of Broadway With LOST IN THE STARS
by Jennifer Perry - February 15, 2016

Although the production doesn't quite soar, LOST IN THE STARS is a welcome addition to the WNO season simply because it's not performed very frequently - at least in comparison to other more familiar works that transcend the opera-musical divide....

BWW Review: Chabrier's EDUCATION Makes for a Charming but 'Incomplete' Evening from Opera Lafayette
by Richard Sasanow - February 10, 2016

There's a great Scottish word that came to mind while I was watching Emmanuel Chabrier's one-act French operetta, UNE EDUCATION MANQUEE (AN INCOMPLETE EDUCATION), this past weekend by Washington, DC's Opera Lafayette at the French Institute-Alliance Francaise in New York. It's “twee,” which roughly ...

BWW Review: Radvanovsky Tears Up the Stage in MARIA STUARDA at the Met
by Richard Sasanow - February 09, 2016

With MARIA STUARDA at the Met, we're back for the second installment of Donizetti's so-called Tudor Trilogy, with ANNA BOLENA (Anne Boleyn) already off to the gallows and ROBERTO DEVEREUX (with Bette Davis and Errol Flynn, it was “Elizabeth and Essex”) still to come. It's the first time the Met is d...

BWW Review: All Puccini, All the Time at the Met with LA BOHEME and TURANDOT
by Richard Sasanow - January 25, 2016

Sometimes, the Metropolitan Opera seems like an endless Puccini festival. It's particularly apparent this season, when top dogs LA BOHEME, TOSCA and MADAMA BUTTERFLY are joined by TURANDOT and MANON LESCAUT, which are not second drawer, though certainly less popular than the first three. (Let's see ...

BWW Review: PROTOTYPE vs. CITY OPERA - The King is Not Dead. Long Live a Different King.
by Richard Sasanow - January 19, 2016

It seems ironic--to me at least--that New York's venerable City Opera would be returning to life at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater, just as the “Prototype: Opera/Theatre/Now” festival was finishing up its run at alternative venues in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Prototype “unleashed a powerful wav...

BWW Review: PERLES of Wonder from Damrau and Polenzani at the Met
by Richard Sasanow - January 13, 2016

One more BOHEME? Yet another TOSCA? How about BARBIERE redux? Sometimes the standard repertoire of opera companies seems too standard. That's why it was good to hear that the Met was mounting Bizet's LES PECHEURS DE PERLES for the first time in a century, as a showcase for one of its top divas, Dia...

BWW Review: BETTER GODS Soars at the Kennedy Center
by Keith Tittermary - January 11, 2016

The Washington National Opera has always been a champion for young artists, both on stage and off. The WNO's American Opera Initiative's premier production of Better Gods is a testimony to that. Composed with ethnical truth by Luna Pearl Woolf, Better Gods is a stirring portrait of a determined Quee...

BWW Review: New York Opera in 2015 - Gifts that Keep on Giving
by Richard Sasanow - January 04, 2016

No more carping about out-of-tune singing (for the rest of 2015). No more bemoaning opera directors who don't seem to like the art of opera (for the next five minutes). No more worrying whether traditional opera will go the way of all flesh (for the next few days, at least). It's time to give up on ...

BWW Review: Baroque Opera Gets a Modern Makeover in YOU WE US ALL
by Olga El - December 21, 2015

As the title implies You We Us All explores that which binds humanity, from the seeming ubiquity of shallow, Western pop-culture to archetypal human values and experiences embodied literally on the stage as the characters Hope, Virtue, Time, Death and Love....

BWW Review: BARITONES UNBOUND Soars to Entertaining, Lyrical Heights at the Royal George Theatre
by Rachel Weinberg - December 16, 2015

Equal parts self-congratulatory and self-deprecating--and wholly entertaining--the three-man show BARITONES UNBOUND pays homage to that elusive vocal part between the tenor and the bass: the titular baritone. Conceived by Marc Kudisch (who originated the role of Pastor Greg last spring in Broadway's...

BWW Review: Vivaldi's CATONE is a 'Hot Mess' - and a Great One from Opera Lafayette
by Richard Sasanow - December 09, 2015

On paper, Vivaldi's 1737 opera seria CATONE IN UTICA--involving a confrontation between Cato and Caesar--seems a big mess: The music from the first act is missing and musicologists can't agree what the third act should look and sound like, leaving Act II to make or break a performance of the opera. ...

BWW Review: THE MERRY WIDOW Comes Up Singing at Lyric Opera
by Rachel Weinberg - November 25, 2015

With artful direction and choreography from Susan Stroman, Lyric Opera's mounting of Franz Lehar's well-known 1905 operetta THE MERRY WIDOW sweeps audiences into a joyful waltz, complete with exquisite talent and a production with opulence to spare. This production debuted at the Metropolitan Opera ...

BWW Review: The Met's 'Ratpack' RIGOLETTO and the Art of Making Opera
by Richard Sasanow - November 23, 2015

The Met's production of Verdi's great opera RIGOLETTO, is often referred to as the 'Ratpack' version--because it is set in the Las Vegas days of Frank Sinatra and his high-living cronies. From its debut, it was a huge success for the company and with good cause. It was brilliantly conceived and sung...

BWW Review: MARTIN HALPERN CHAMBER OPERAS Dream at Shetler Studios
by Matt Hanson - November 19, 2015

The best part of living in New York is that some of our most radically creative artists are performing. Unadorned studio spaces such as Shetler Studios on West 54th Street in midtown Manhattan host exclusive gatherings, where all of the high pomp of the fine arts strips down in an air of charming mo...

BWW Review: Madison Opera's LA BOHEME Reminds Us To See the Beauty
by Amanda Finn - November 18, 2015

“How do I live? I live!” Exclaimed Mackenzie Whitney as Rodolfo in Madison Opera's fifth incarnation of Giacomo Puccini's La Bohéme. Among the stunning lyrics speaking of love, poverty, and poetry, it was this simple exclamation that stood out on its own....

BWW Review: A LULU of an Evening at the Met with Soprano Petersen in the New Kentridge Production
by Richard Sasanow - November 16, 2015

Who or what is Lulu, the eponymous character in Alban Berg's landmark opera? Is she saint or sinner? Femme fatale or victim? Put-upon or mistress of her own fate? Whatever else she might be, she is fabulous in the hands of German soprano Marlis Petersen, as the center of William Kentridge's vibrant,...

BWW Review: Richard Tucker Gala Anoints Jamie Barton 2015 Prize Winner at Geffen Hall Concert
by Richard Sasanow - November 13, 2015

The Richard Tucker Music Foundation's annual galas--celebrating each year's winner of the Tucker Award to young American singers--are known for two things. First, they are notoriously fun evenings of opera warhorses and, second, they are guessing games: Which of the singers scheduled to perform won'...

BWW Review: Lyric's WOZZECK Stirs the Brain in Cracking Production
by Patrick O'Brien - November 12, 2015

Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck is not the first to swirl with immortal themes like power play, lust, betrayal, and death (far, far from it), but thanks to the circumstances of its composition - further emphasized by Sir David McVicar's new production at the Lyric Opera - it is prominent in its search to...

BWW Review: The Diva Out-Divas the Diva in the Met's TOSCA
by Richard Sasanow - November 09, 2015

The title character in Puccini's TOSCA is the quintessential diva--a grand performer ('goddess' in Italian) who thinks the world revolves around her, particularly when it comers to her lover, painter Mario Cavaradossi. The same might be said for soprano Angela Gheorghiu, who used to be a top attract...

BWW Review: YEOMEN Shines at Winter Opera
by Steve Callahan - November 05, 2015

St. Louis' Winter Opera gives a delightful 'Yeomen of the Guard.'...

BWW Review: Live from New York - It's the 2015 Tchaikovsky Competition Winners
by Richard Sasanow - November 04, 2015

The recital at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall on October 24 by the winners of the XV International Tchaikovsky Competition was like an “amuse bouche”--a gift from the chef at the start of a meal at a fine French restaurant to tickle your tongue. It was absolutely delicious, but left you hungering for m...

BWW Review: Electrifying ELEKTRA from Goerke, Nelsons and the Boston Symphony at Carnegie Hall
by Richard Sasanow - October 26, 2015

One thing you should know about Richard Strauss's ELEKTRA: When it's done right, the audience works itself into a fever pitch and—after the orchestra has played the final notes—it stands and screams its head off. I've seen this before and it happened again the other night, with sopranos Christine Go...

BWW Review: Let's Hear It for the Boys, in TANNHAUSER at the Met
by Richard Sasanow - October 21, 2015

Almost 40 years ago, on short notice, the great tenor Jon Vickers (who died this summer at 90) caused a scandal when he pulled out of the premiere of the Met's still-current production of Wagner's 'Tannhauser' because he considered the opera anti-Christian. Well, nothing that exciting happened when...