John Yohalem
John Yohalem's critical writings have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, American Theater, Opera News, the Seattle Weekly, Christopher Street, Opera Today, Musical America and Enchanté: The Journal for the Urbane Pagan, among other publications. He claims to have attended 628 different operatic works (not to mention forty operettas), but others who were present are not sure they spotted him. What fascinates him, besides the links between operatic event and contemporary history, is how the operatic machine works: How voice and music and the ritual experience of theater interact to produce something beyond itself. He is writing a book on Shamanic Opera-Going.
What is opera for if not to commemorate a national epic tragedy and triumph?
By John Yohalem
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MILA comes to New York and San Francisco
Sung in English, Cantonese and Tagalog, Mila explores the cultural diversity of Hong Kong at New York’s Angel Orensanz Center (Dec. 7) and San Francisco’s Wilsey Center for Opera (Dec. 12). The hour-long opera is the creation of Eli Marshall, Candace Chong and Chu Hei Chan, with music director Neal Goren.
Come ye addicts of melody! After long eclipse, Bel Canto shines again!
By John Yohalem
A conversation with maestro Gil Rose of Odyssey Opera.
By John Yohalem
At the Park Avenue Armory, Barbara Hannigan chose to sing works that tested her metal in odd corners of vocalism.
By John Yohalem
In El Barbero de Sevilla, as given through the weekend by the New Camerata Opera, there is far too much comic dialogue, all of it in English and none of it sparkling.
By John Yohalem
Dell’ Arte Opera Ensemble’s “Scenes from the Tower” evening is devoted to three operas composed by women, and the metaphorical tower is women’s sequestration from the opera stage.
By John Yohalem
Whitney George’s music falls pleasingly upon the ear and is wittily scored for a small ensemble conducted by herself.
By John Yohalem
Dell’ Arte Opera Ensemble theme this summer is women composers, which is timely, and the more to be applauded as likely to turn up unusual works.
By John Yohalem
A hefty thunderclap shook Tanglewood’s Koussevitzky Shed just as Andris Nelsons raised his baton for the third act of the weekend’s concert Die Walküre.
By John Yohalem
The Mac-Haydn Theatre are giving Ragtime, a musical about turn-of-the-century race relations, unwelcome immigrants, labor revolts against brute force and the collapse of the traditional family.
By John Yohalem
The four leading roles in La Straniera were all attractively cast by Teatro Nuovo with fresh, promising young voices that did not seem quite ready for the big time.
By John Yohalem
Promenade is a powder keg but the powder may not be as explosive as it hints.
By John Yohalem
The singers and the orchestra carry the show, but where do they carry it?
By John Yohalem
Everett Quinton’s Galas is a star at the end of her tether, and she goes nova with the best.
By John Yohalem
In the triumphant American premiere of Orlando Generoso at the Boston Early Music Festival last week, the hippogriff was among the many stars of the show.
By John Yohalem
We convoke for Dido and Aeneas in an arched tunnel a city block long, lit by candles in the many recesses.
By John Yohalem
Amore Opera, an old-fashioned, adventurous little company that performs ambitious and sometimes delectably obscure but worthy repertory at the Riverside Theatre, is now (through Sunday) presenting Un ballo in maschera.
By John Yohalem
The New York premiere of Kopernikus, an opera by the Canadian mystic Claude Vivier, who was murdered in Paris in 1983, three years after its completion.
By John Yohalem
New Amsterdam Opera specializes in American singers whose abilities are as yet little known.
By John Yohalem
Britten’s penultimate opera, the anti-war ghost story Owen Wingrave, was composed for television performance in 1971.
By John Yohalem
The story shows what may happen when corrupt individuals occupy positions of trust.
By John Yohalem
Zelmira, a work of 1822, was the last of the eight operas Rossini composed for the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, then the largest opera house in Italy—perhaps in Europe.
By John Yohalem
A return to Amore Opera’s production of Meyerbeer’s Dinorah to hear the second cast underlined two conclusions.
By John Yohalem
Amore Opera, one of New York’s smaller opera companies, is presenting the first local run of Dinorah, ou le Pardon de Ploërmel since before the war.
By John Yohalem
