Wolf Trap Opera presented a lovely Eugene Onegin with particularly noteworthy performances by Magdalena Kuźma and Daniel O’Hearn.
The nail-biting adventures of Voltaire’s titular hero Candide are hardly more circuitous than those faced by Leonard Bernstein’s 1956 Broadway musical adaptation.
This Traviata remained firmly Beltway-bound and by the time I had gotten home, the 45-minute traffic jam to leave the parking lot was eminently fresher in my mind than the evening’s performance.
For the weeks between the announcement that the return of Wolf Trap Opera would, in part, take the form of a concert performance of Sweeney Todd and its opening at the Filene Center on Friday evening, I racked my brain: why Sweeney now?
Ultimately, the unrelenting grimness of the subject matter allied to the sameness of the vocal writing made for a wearying evening.
Oh, that slippery Don Giovanni—so elusive, so chaotic, so open to no end of interpretation!
Curtis Opera ventured Sweeney Todd.
Kurt Weill & Bertolt Brecht’s Mahagonny Singspiel, and Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Medium—are not only combined, but configured to overlap in sometimes revealing, occasionally confounding ways.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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