Out of sheer morbid curiosity last evening I pulled up the “orders” page of my Amazon account and searched Otello to discover that over the past 11 years. I’ve ordered 15 items with that title (one as recently as last night!)

For anyone who thought that Downton Abbey, with its plot lines divided between the gentry and their faithful (or not-so) servants was somehow unique, that particular tale, and lo its many variations, has been told in one form or another since Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais put quill to paper in 1778 with La Folle Journée, ou Le Mariage de Figaro.

The audience greeted the opening night of Omar with more genuine enthusiasm than I have ever seen at Los Angeles Opera. 

LA Opera sent out an email warning that the production “contains depictions of blood, violence, and drug use, as well as strobe lights and a gunshot effect in Act III.”

Los Angeles Opera’s St. Matthew Passion was by equal parts challenging and hypnotic to watch.

In spite of the fact that Rossini and his librettist Jacopo Ferretti removed all the magical elements from the story, therefore making it far easier to produce, there was more than enough enchantment in the singing, and intermittently in the production to enjoy.

You’d think after nearly 40 years of opera going I’d have seen almost everything.. .twice. Yet I found myself at LA Opera Tuesday night for a special presentation of George Frideric Handel’s Alcina which was my first live experience with one of his operas.

Remember that time you went to the opera and the whole evening was like magic? Saturday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion probably ranks among my greatest nights in the theater and I’m finding the superlatives in my thesaurus inadequate to the task.

Let’s all cast our minds back to March of 2020. Or, better, let’s not.

When LA Opera finally decided to put a toe in the water and mount its first production since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, it was Igor Stravinsky‘s opera/oratorio Oedipus Rex.