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.
John Yohalem
Stephanie Houtzeel “made the heart ache and the ears tingle.”
Niccolò Jommelli, forgotten now, was quite well known in Italy and southern Germany in his day. There are two reasons to revive one of his operas, as Opera Lafayette has just done, in Washington and in New York, Cerere Placata, a “festa teatrali” of 1771… Read more »
It’s a lucky thing the Tudors are long extinct; there’s no one to protest the High Victorian cultural appropriation of The Yeomen of the Guard. Read more »
This riotous opera transports the Oedipus tale to an apocalyptic 1980s London, plagued by police violence, racism, and socioeconomic decay. Intrepid composer Mark-Anthony Turnage’s (Anna Nicole) 1988 breakthrough brilliantly combines cockney-accented profanity and irreverent drama with an audacious score and outstanding four-person cast. Eddy (tenor Alex Otterburn), our modern-day Oedipus, dreams of a better life. After hearing a fortune teller’s disturbing prediction, he resolves at all costs to avoid shagging his own mum (soprano Susan Bullock) and inadvertently killing his father (tenor Andrew Shore). But he is unable to outrun fate, landing in the prophetically maternal arms of an East End café manager (mezzo soprano Allison Cook). Thirty years later, Greek still resonates, offering an incisive, brash contemporary statement on accountability and family. Read more »
“Genuinely lovely singing of slight but attractive tunes” – Kerri Marcinko’s Gloria
Studying the synopsis of the brief three-act opera Gloria, a friend asked me, “Are we Team Guelf or Team Ghibelline?” Read more »
I braved the alarming and majestically colorful wall-graffiti-art of Bushwick to attend Bullfight Boylesque, which runs to October 28.
Odyssey Opera in Boston, which loves to open its season with a concert performance of some forgotten work, gave La Reine de Saba in Jordan Hall Saturday night.
This Sony Classical set of live performances covers a golden quarter century in the singing and staging of Wagner. Birgit Nilsson shared it with many other legends, and many of them appear on these discs.
In Hatuey, composer Frank London and librettist Elise Thoron have created something that crosses boundaries from cabaret romance to flashback historical pageant to revolutionary thriller.
Salieri’s La Cifra (“The Cipher”) played all over Europe for 20 years, in several translations (German, Spanish). Then, like many a worthy work, it was forgotten.
Cher Public