“Once upon a time / Lived a foolish king. / Mocking Death, his crime, / Pure chaos he bring.”
I still remember, and some of it quite vividly, what it was like to experience Achim Freyer‘s intense and groundbreaking Ring production all these years later.
Trove Thursday completes its Prévost–trifecta with Puccini’s Manon Lescaut starring Sondra Radvanovsky and (pre-Met) Aleksandrs Antonenko conducted by Riccardo Chailly plus an added Radvanovsky-Puccini bonus: Suor Angelica.
We’ve had a mini-fest of director Barrie Kosky’s work this year at LA Opera.
I’m certain I wasn’t the only one thrilled to bits to see LA Opera’s production of La Bohème finally retired after 26 years and seven mountings.
La Traviata offered a cast of fresh debutantes and an uncommonly strong musical performance that could hardly be bettered.
Russell Thomas’s opening aria, “Del piu sublime soglio” displayed an intense attention to the text and some surprisingly beautiful piano phrasing that I’ve never heard risked before and it brought wonder and gooseflesh.
Saturday night I navigated the Music Center concourse, or what’s left of it with it’s seemingly eternal construction to the main plaza, wending my way to the Dorothy Chandler for the opening night of LA Opera’s Hansel and Gretel.
For opening night of the new LA Opera season Placido Domingo decided to return to one of his best Verdi showcases, Don Carlo, only this time as the baritone, Rodrigo the Marquis di Posa, instead of the title character.
Ah, finalmente!
Neumeier adapted the story close to home, making Orpheus a choreographer and his wife a star ballerina.
What if you could time travel back to the first run of Giuseppe Verdi’s first great success Nabucco?
When you attend a performance of Georges Bizet’s Carmen you can never be quite certain which one you’re in for.
Not a few eyebrows arched on social media when L.A. Opera appropriated the hashtag “Fight like a girl” on street level poster adverts all over town for the revival of their 2013 production of Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca.
I entered the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Saturday night for LA Opera’s 30 year old revival of their production of Salome with a combination of enthusiasm and apprehension.
Friday night Music Director James Conlon sold Die Entfürhung aus dem Serial to a tony crowd of Angelenos.
The characters get right down to work immediately with their foul deeds.
Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, and a slew of their members of court are hanging out in the afterlife…
Los Angeles first saw Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly presented at the Mason Opera House downtown in 1908 by the English Grand Opera Company. Rumors that LA Opera Artistic Director Placido Domingo portrayed Cio-Cio San’s little boy in that production remain unsubstantiated.
The revival of Mozart’s The Magic Flute at the Music Center downtown, last seen at LA Opera in 2013, is reason for jubilation for everyone except perhaps the singers engaged.
Remember that time you went to the opera and the entire evening was perfection?
Hopefully the assignment of Herman Melville’s endless whaling opus Moby-Dick as compulsory reading for High School students is a thing of the past.
As I leaned forward the woman in front of me turned to her seatmate and very quietly, in a voice thick with emotion and not a few tears, said, “it’s so beautiful.”
James Conlon, Music Director for the LA Opera, often does the pre-game lecture in the huge open space on the second floor lobby of the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion and it’s almost always a standing room only crowd.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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