Opera Theater Reviews: Best Shows & Critic Recommendations Page 49

BWW Reviews: Singers Brighten the Otherwise Dull NORMA
by Scott Frost - October 07, 2013

Bellini's “Norma” opened at the Metropolitan Opera last Monday night to a full audience giving resounding praise to the leading lady, soprano Sondra Radvanovsky. Ms. Radvanovsky's performance of the title role was incredibly expressive and most articulately nuanced. Her inaugural American performa...

BWW Reviews: Opera in the Height's LA TRAVIATA is Engrossing
by David Clarke - October 05, 2013

When it comes to classic opera, Giuseppe Verdi is one of the most prominent composers. LA TRAVIATA is based La dame aux Camelias, a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils, and had its world premiere on March 6, 1853. Guiseppe Verdi was displeased that the authorities at La Fenice insis...

BWW Reviews: NABUCCO Opens Opera Philadelphia Season With A La Scala Recreation
by Marakay Rogers - October 02, 2013

Opera Philadelphia stages NABUCCO with 19th Century sets, and some 19th Century Italian political intrigue...

BWW Reviews: Hail to the Chief! James Levine Leads COSI FAN TUTTE in Return to the Met
by Richard Sasanow - September 26, 2013

Not many opera performances start with a standing ovation before a single note is sung, but the season's first COSI FAN TUTTE on September 24 was one of those rare occasions. It marked the return of conductor James Levine after a two-year absence, leading the performance from a motorized chair at a ...

BWW Reviews: Skylight Revolutionizes Beethoven's 'Fidelio'
by Peggy Sue Dunigan - September 24, 2013

A magnificent revolution arrived when the curtain opened at the Skylight Music Theatre on Friday night. The first night Artistic Director Viswa Subbaraman christened his magical season as the Stage and Music Director for his premiere production in Ludwig van Beethoven's Fidelio....

BWW Reviews: ANNA NICOLE's 36DDs Gain AAA Status with New York City Opera at BAM's Next Wave Festival
by Richard Sasanow - September 19, 2013

With a story that is somehow poignant despite its scatological language, ANNA NICOLE's heroine is nicer than Berg's LULU, less lucky than TRAVIATA's Violetta and more cunning than MANON's Manon (though maybe not MANON LESCAUT's). Whatever she is, Anna Nicole Smith is definitely a full-fledged ope...

BWW Reviews Recordings: Trebs, Jonas and the Bicentennial Boys
by Richard Sasanow - August 31, 2013

Two-thirds into the bicentennial year of both Richard Wagner and Giuseppe Verdi, the recordings marking the occasions keep coming. Even in a crowded field, recent disks from two of today's major singers, Russian soprano Anna Netrebko and German tenor Jonas Kaufmann, are both treats--making strong ca...

BWW Reviews: SALOME is a Feast for the Senses
by Barry Lenny - August 27, 2013

State Opera of South Australia started their main stage programme for the year with a powerful production of Salome, with a libretto by Richard Strauss based on Hedwig Lachmann's German translation of Oscar Wilde's play. Richard Strauss, of course, also wrote the score of the opera...

BWW Reviews: Mostly Mozart Offers 'Enlightenment' on Handel
by Richard Sasanow - August 26, 2013

It's a slippery slope--when an orchestra commemorates the career of a famous singer, featuring other, less well-known artists. That's exactly what the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment did last Thursday at Mostly Mozart in Alice Tully Hall. In an all-Handel concert, the group remembered its long...

BWW Reviews: 'Bravo!' FIGARO and Ivan Fischer's Budapest Festival Orchestra at Mostly Mozart
by Richard Sasanow - August 15, 2013

From its earliest days, Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival has included opera among its offerings, although I recall no production being quite so acclaimed as Iván Fischer's DON GIOVANNI of two seasons ago. With so much to live up to, the director-conductor's vision of Mozart's LE NOZZE DI FIGA...

BWW Reviews: Lamplighters' IOLANTHE Flies in with the Best
by Harmony Wheeler - August 12, 2013

I grew up on 'The Mikado,' and in the past year or two I've begun to slowly educate myself on Gilbert and Sullivan via Lamplighters Music Theatre, which does one or two full staged Gilbert and Sullivan operettas each year. For the first time, Saturday night, the company treated me to what seemed a f...

BWW Reviews: GERTRUDE STEIN SAINTS at the Fringe Turns Avant-Garde Opera into Glee (in a Good way)
by Jonathan Mandell - August 12, 2013

Dressed all in white, singing like angels and dancing like the devil, the 13 performers of "Gertrude Stein's Saints" are young, energetic, talented, and, let's face it, hot enough to be cast in Glee. What's most remarkable about this ensemble, all of them drama students at Carnegie Mellon Universit...

BWW Reviews: Mozart and Beethoven Duke It Out at Lincoln Center's 'Mostly Mozart' Opening. Guess Who Wins?
by Richard Sasanow - August 02, 2013

Is Lincoln Center planning to change its summertime schedule from “Mostly Mozart” to “Basically Beethoven”? If so, they couldn't have picked a better concert to put the point across than the opening program of this year's Festival. Heard on Wednesday evening, July 31, the performance was led by Musi...

BWW Reviews: Met Recital in Central Park is a Tour of the High Cs (and Higher)
by Richard Sasanow - July 18, 2013

When last heard on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera, mezzo Isabel Leonard and soprano Erin Morley were a couple of nuns on their way to the guillotine in LES DIALOGUES DES CARMELITES. This time around, the two women--along with tenor Stephen Costello--kicked off the Met's Summer Recital Series at...

BWW Reviews: A French Kiss for Verdi with LES VEPRES SICILIENNES at The Caramoor Festival
by Richard Sasanow - July 09, 2013

The Caramoor Festival in Katonah, NY said “Bon anniversaire, Joseph Vert”--that's “Happy Birthday, Giuseppe Verdi” in French--on Saturday night, with a performance of LES VEPRES SICILIENNES, celebrating the composer's bicentenary. It offered a fine opportunity to hear an opera that followed the comp...

BWW Reviews: Russian Opera Workshop Programs Begin With RUSSIAN ROMANCES
by Marakay Rogers - June 30, 2013

Ghenady Meirson's annual young vocalists program begins with a recital of Rachmaninov art songs and more...

BWW Reviews: Gilbert and Sullivan's PATIENCE at Camp Hill Light Opera Experience
by Marakay Rogers - June 28, 2013

Operetta composer Libby Moyer brings Gilbert and Sullivan to Central Pennsylvania in the classic tale of Aesthetic poets and their crazed fans...

Video: First Look at Antonio Pappano, Kevin O'Hare and More in Royal Opera House's Season Preview Event
by Christina Mancuso - June 18, 2013

Some extra special guests dropped into an event for Premium and Supporting Friends of the Royal Opera House. The Season Preview was hosted by Antonio Pappano, Kevin O'Hare, who presented the 13/14 Ballet Season, and Kasper Holten, who talked about the 13/14 Opera Season. Check it out below!...

BWW Reviews: PRINCESS IDA Produced by Gilbert and Sullivan Society of Austin is Hysterical and Current
by Jeff Davis - June 16, 2013

There's certainly a reason why the works of Gilbert and Sullivan have remained a fixture in popular culture for nearly 150 years. Their operas are fun, frivolous, and tinted with social and political satire. Though Princess Ida, their eighth operatic collaboration, may not be as well-known as some...

BWW Reviews: POWDER HER FACE Stuns At Opera Philadelphia
by Marakay Rogers - June 12, 2013

Soprano Patricia Schuman leads Opera Philadelphia in a visually and vocally marvelous production of the modern chamber orchestra classic...

BWW Reviews: IL PRIGIONIERO Holds Audience Captive at New York Philharmonic
by Richard Sasanow - June 08, 2013

It's a rare occasion when a concerto--even one as brilliantly played as violinist Lisa Batiashvili's performance of Prokofiev's First--takes a back seat to the second half of the program. But the New York Philharmonic's concert performance of Luigi Dallapiccola's IL PRIGIONIERO, conducted authorita...

BWW Reviews: 'And the Winners Were...' A Report Card for the Metropolitan Opera's 2012-2013 Season
by Richard Sasanow - May 17, 2013

The regular season just ended for the Metropolitan Opera--all that's left is a series of HD rebroadcasts on Lincoln Center Plaza and a couple of low profile concerts in New York City parks--and it's time for a look back at what kind of season it was. With seven new productions and 21 other operas in...

BWW Reviews: GOTTERDAMMERUNG Brings Another Twilight to the Met's RING
by Richard Sasanow - May 09, 2013

Katarina Dalayman is one of a handful of top Wagnerian sopranos in the world, but for the first act of the Met's GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG, the climax of the Met's second 'Ring' cycle of the season, she didn't seem very heroic. Neither, for that matter, did tenor Jay Hunter Morris, who caused quite a stir whe...