Dashed hopes
Joyce DiDonato makes the most of Kevin Puts‘s trite new Emily Dickinson monodrama.
Kevin Puts
13 pieces since 2015 — at 1 company, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
13
pieces
1
company
12
years
By company
To our glorious dead
The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra offered a rending reading of Britten‘s massive War Requiem with an eclectic trio of soloists.
Character assassination
Austin Opera’s 2024 production of The Manchurian Candidate proved to be a daring and timely commentary on political power in America, shortly after the 2024 election, just as it had been before the 2016 election.
The eras tour
She can’t put her foot on the gas the way she used to but there’s still plenty of fuel in that tank.
Women of the Hours
In its first go-around in November 2022, Kevin Puts’s The Hours (libretto by Greg Pierce based on the novel by Michael Cunningham and the screenplay for the Stephen Daldry’s 2002 film was a box office bullseye for the Metropolitan Opera.
Let’s get serious
Renée Fleming arrived at Carnegie Hall on May 31 with something to prove.
Slow simmer
This was by far my most satisfying experience with Pelléas et Mélisande for a multitude of reasons and I encourage anyone who’s even mildly curious to find their way to the Music Center for a very rich experience.
Unhappy ‘Hours’
The film of The Hours failed to effectively weave together the novel’s trio of threads of interiority about suicide and secondarily literary creation. I wondered if an opera would stand a better chance at achieving that? Based on Tuesday’s diva-encrusted stage premiere of Kevin Puts and Greg Pierce’s The Hours, its creators didn’t pull it off either.
Shining ‘Hours’
Dramaturgically, The Hours is a mixed bag: I wouldn’t discard it, but I would want to fix it. But simply as an evening of gorgeous music and singing, it’s cordon bleu.
Christmas past imperfect
Give the creators credit for producing an emotional response.
All right on the western front
Silent Night is in a sense a giant middle finger raised against the conventional wisdom that musical sophistication requires inscrutability.
Commie dearest
The Manchurian Candidate is indeed operatic: outsized characters, a doomed love story and a narrative fraught with suspense.