Lombarding along
In Handel’s Rodelinda, a usurped monarch, believed dead, returns to avenge his deposition and reclaim the woman he loves.
Reviews
You’re better off without me, mein Hair
I hate to say I nearly cringe at the thought of Gioachino Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia.
Cuck and ball torture
On October 20th, a wet but warmish Friday night, the Metropolitan Opera opened this season’s revival of Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera in David Alden’s 2012 production.
Unfit to print
You might wonder how this slimly plotted show, which had a brief Off-Broadway run in 2007 before fading into relative obscurity, ended up occupying a piece of prime Main Stem real estate nearly two decades later. To that end, I have four words: Josh Gad. Andrew Rannells.
Swan’s weh
All in all, this was truly a superb achievement for San Francisco Opera and an auspicious first chapter in the Wagner opera journey with Eun Sun Kim.
Georgia on my mind
Suddenly, here it was, and I wondered if it was a dream or an illusion.
Unicorn tapestry
The Hunt’s strongest argument for the possibility of growth, connection, and agency even under adverse and restrictive circumstances lay, of course, in its music, in which three individual voices were able to combine and transform into something infinitely rich and strange.
Dreamers with empty hands
It’s autumn in New York, baby.
Aging of aquarius
Wanna feel old? Hair, “The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical,” as it styled itself, has its 56th birthday this month.
They’re projecting
I love it, truly, just not that much.
Son can you play me a memory?
It’s a warning that could strike fear in even the heartiest theatergoer.
Turn and face the strange
How appropriate that the Met should present this supposedly “Jewish” opera after many in the audience had just spent twelve days immersed in the genuine article over the High Holy Days.
Ohne Ziel, ohne Rast
Instead of following the story, we in the audience spend most of the evening thinking “What?? Why is that happening?”
Tremens factus sum ego
One got a sense that the Met and the maestro directed most of the rehearsal and preparation toward the opening night premiere of the Heggie opus
Nun of a kind
“None of that sentimental crap, okay?”
Think different
Bay Area composer Mason Bates’s and librettist Mark Campbell’s contemporary opera about the life of the tech mogul Steve Jobs came home “to the place where it all began” in spectacular fashion
Some unholy war
Rather than focusing on a narrative, Unholy Wars explores a series of timeless yet current themes: war, destruction, alienation, and what it means to be perceived as outsider—particularly from the Middle East—in the context of a violent world.
Double take
German opera-director Claus Guth has reimagined Schwanengesang as a series of scarred soldier’s visions in Doppelgänger, showing this week in at the Park Avenue Armory.
Dogecoin
In sum: not a perfect Simon Boccanegra—is there such a thing?—but a grand and often great one.
A madhouse is not a home
David Devan may be leaving the company, but there can be no better living tribute to him than this extraordinary work, which in 90 minutes gives us everything we could want from a new opera
Float like a butterfly
Phil Chan described his point of departure for reimagining Orientalist works as the question, “what else could this be?”
Got to get you into my strife
Power struggles, prejudice, feuds and revenge abound in San Francisco at the moment.
White hot
The great archetypal image of an opera singer is a towering Wagnerian soprano who shatters entire panes of glass the moment she opens her mouth.
Tosca, two ways
When our friends at Naxos and C Major announced near-dueling releases of Puccini’s “shabby little shocker,” I was ready with my critic’s pen dipped in bile.
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).