John Yohalem
When Winston Churchill was First Sea Lord, the story goes, an indignant admiral accused him of violating British naval tradition, to which Churchill replied that the only traditions of the British Navy were rum, sodomy and the lash.
Marc-Antoine Charpentier came along at the wrong time for a composer of French opera.
Eight hundred years ago, the “youth of Beauvais” in the north of France created a sacred festival “play,” Ludus Danieli (ludus—meaning a sacred event? a performance? a game? a joke?) for the annual Fool’s Night on January 1 at the cathedral.
Each year, Leon Botstein leads the American Symphony Orchestra in a concert opera or two.
Ambiguity. That’s the theme of the operas of Benjamin Britten (ennobled as Baron Britten of Aldeburgh).
What we go to Grattacielo for is fresh young voices singing their guts out.
The simple fable at the heart of Die Frau ohne Schatten shouldn’t be difficult to parse, but Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s libretto juggles its vaguely Jungian, vaguely Arabian Nights symbolitry as if with intent to mystify and bewilder.
Whenever I encounter Eric Owens, he’s plotting to conquer the universe.
Baden-Baden 1927 is the title Gotham Chamber Opera has given to its evening of four brief operas that premiered together at a festival in, yes, Baden-Baden on July 17, 1927.
An impresario with a hit on his hands—Emanuel Schikaneder, for instance, after the initial run of Die Zauberflöte—will crave nothing so much as an opportunity to hit the same bell.
Last night, the Met opened the 2013-14 season with a handsome, fairly conservative new production of Eugene Onegin by Deborah Warner that replaces the handsome, fairly conservative one by Robert Carsen. (The trend is clear.)
In the program for Opera Omnia’s production of Monteverdi’s Il ritorno di Ulisse, Crystal Manich, the company’s stage director, speaks of producing “baroque works in non-traditional ways.”
There is a mighty appetite among both old Wagnerians and new ones to see a Ring that follows—if not too slavishly—the scenic requests of the libretto.
Is Der Ring des Nibelungen responsible for the transformation of Seattle from a gray, damp, low-rise Boeing company town where half the jokes had punchlines in Norwegian (and were about lutefisk in any case) into today's booming cultural metropolis? I like to think so.
Leslie Uyeda’s When the Sun Comes Out is being premiered by Vancouver’s Queer Arts Festival as “Canada’s first Lesbian opera” at the Roundhouse Community Center in Yaletown. I caught the second performance; there is one more tomorrow night.