Lyric Opera Unveils Details for Cherubini's MEDEA
by Chloe Rabinowitz - Aug 21, 2025
Lyric Opera of Chicago’s 2025/26 Season will kick off with a searing tale of vengeance and betrayal: Cherubini’s Medea. Learn more and see how to purchase tickets here!
Review: DALIBOR is Smashing Smetana at Bard’s SummerScape under Botstein
by Richard Sasanow - Aug 2, 2025
Though Bedrich Smetana’s DALIBOR—seen this week at Bard SummmerStage in a wonderful production by Jean-Romain Vesperini, with an ingenious set design by Bruno de Lavenere, a fine cast and the American Symphony Orchestra in impeccable form under Leon Botstein—was reputedly the composer’s favorite among his eight operas, it was a failure at its opening in Prague in 1868. There was never a fully staged production in this country until this current one. (I saw the July 30 matinee.)
Review: Exciting Bullock and Finley Take on Met Debut of Adams’s ANTONY & CLEOPATRA
by Richard Sasanow - May 13, 2025
There’s an old expression, “A lawyer who defends himself has a fool for a client.” While John Adams didn’t decide to take on the libretto for his latest opera, Monday night’s Met premiere, ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, all on his own, I wonder whether he might have bypassed the one resource that might have been most useful: Arrigo Boito.
Casts Set for ROMÉO ET JULIETTE & More at Palm Beach Opera
by Chloe Rabinowitz - Nov 19, 2024
Palm Beach Opera has revealed the casts for its 2025 season with Gounod's ROMÉO ET JULIETTE, and more featuring acclaimed artists and debuts at the Kravis Center. See full programming and learn how to purchase tickets.
Bard Music Festival Presents BERLIOZ & HIS WORLD In August
by A.A. Cristi - May 2, 2024
This August, the Bard Music Festival returns for its 34th season with an intensive two-week exploration of “Berlioz and His World.” In eleven themed concert programs, the festival examines the life and times of visionary French composer Hector Berlioz, whose grand-scale works, startling sonorities, and advanced literary leanings helped redefine musical Romanticism.
Meyerbeer's LE PROPHETE Comes to SummerScape
by Stephi Wild - Apr 18, 2024
As a highlight of the 2024 Bard SummerScapefestival, the Fisher Center at Bard presents the first new American production in almost five decades of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s Le prophète, an all-too-topical grand opera in which religion, politics, and power collide.
Review: Fine Singing Makes RONDINE Easy to Swallow under Scappucci
by Richard Sasanow - Mar 30, 2024
The first night of the Met’s revival of Puccini’s LA RONDINE (THE SWALLOW) was filled with surprises of one sort or another, under the baton of that smart conductor, Speranza Scappucci. She knows her way around Puccini and deserves to be heard more frequently at the house. The production had glamour through Art Deco-ish scenic design by Ezio Frigerio, with lighting by Duana Schuler and costumes by Franca Squarciapino.
Review: Sierra, Bernheim Soar in the Met's ROMEO ET JULIETTE
by Richard Sasanow - Mar 10, 2024
While I’ve admired soprano Nadine Sierra’s before, she seemed to reach a whole new level with her glorious turn as Juliette in the season’s first performance of Gounod’s ROMEO ET JULIETTE at the Met the other night. She was vivid and a delight to watch as she inhabited the teenaged heroine of the piece. Perhaps it was her stage partner, French tenor Benjamin Bernheim, who egged her on to such heights, with his nuanced singing and boyish demeanor.