Hell’s kitchen Hell’s kitchen

Teatro Nuovo pays tribute to a historic New York production of Don Giovanni with a talented ensemble.

Sparkle, Lisette, sparkle! Sparkle, Lisette, sparkle!

Opera Philadelphia Channel invites viewers to revisit a 2015 production of La Traviata, captured on the Academy of Music stage, that’s notable for Lisette Oropesa’s debut as Violetta Valéry.

Death becomes him Death becomes him

Tancredi, given on February 10th, was a credit to Opera Philadelphia, who offered a well-considered and compelling production.

Something extramarital Something extramarital

Saturday evening conductor Will Crutchfield revived Donizetti’s La Favorite—unheard in New York for fifteen years.

Do Tell

Trying to suggest erstwhile world-renown of Guillaume Tell to a 23-year-old who had never heard of it, a friend of mine mentioned The Lone Ranger. “What’s The Lone Ranger?” replied the youth. And the sun rises and the sun sets and all things must pass. But surely he knew Bambi Meets Godzilla, which also uses…

Sail, away

Sir Arthur Sullivan, the son of an Irish father and an Italian mother, studied Mendelssohn’s composition style in Leipzig. He was therefore, inevitably, the supreme English theater composer of his day, and his often Mozartean style of melody is not out of place in a bel canto festival. After all, in the fourteen operettas he…

babylon when it drizzles

What impressed La Cieca at the Caramoor concert of Semiramide on Friday was not so much the quality of the performance (though that was on a solidly high level) but the magnificence of the work itself.  This magnificence stands out now in even greater relief after the comparison with Les Huguenots later in the weekend.