Joyce DiDonato makes the most of Kevin Puts‘s trite new Emily Dickinson monodrama.
The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra offered a rending reading of Britten‘s massive War Requiem with an eclectic trio of soloists.
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.
She can’t put her foot on the gas the way she used to but there’s still plenty of fuel in that tank.
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.
Renée Fleming arrived at Carnegie Hall on May 31 with something to prove.
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.
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.
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.
Give the creators credit for producing an emotional response.
Silent Night is in a sense a giant middle finger raised against the conventional wisdom that musical sophistication requires inscrutability.
The Manchurian Candidate is indeed operatic: outsized characters, a doomed love story and a narrative fraught with suspense.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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