The best thing I saw in 2025 was Breaking the Waves
Houston Grand Opera’s 2025 Breaking the Waves was absolutely my highlight of the year!
Patrick Summers
23 pieces since 2010 — at 8 companies, most often at Houston Grand Opera.
23
pieces
8
companies
17
years
8 pieces as Houston Grand Opera — stats above show all coverage for Patrick Summers.
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Sex power god
Breaking the Waves and Tannhaüser at Houston Grand Opera are a can’t-miss doubleheader of sex and miracles.
We’re the kids in America
Needing a Mozart palate-cleanser after the recent misbegotten Marriage of Figaro, I went back more than two decades for a Houston Così fan Tutte featuring then-rising Americans Christine Goerke, Joyce Di Donato, Richard Croft, and Nathan Gunn as the confused lovers.
“The work by which I stand or fall”
Dame Ethel Smyth’s third opera, The Wreckers, opened at Houston Grand Opera on October 28 and runs through November 11.
“The richest food that money can buy”
All about the life of Lorenzo Da Ponte, but depicted as an opera performed as a dress rehearsal for an opera.
Stormy weather
Looking at the Houston Grand Opera’s 2018/19 season, I think Hurricane Harvey subconsciously must have had an impact on the choice of operas.
Notes on camp
Zofia Posmysz spent two years as a prisoner in Auschwitz—and she’s still alive and standing pretty tall, in New York for the Lincoln Center Festival God bless her.
All things Brit and beautiful
“Time and tide wait for no one” pontificates Myrtle the barmaid, setting the tone for André Previn’s opera about fleeting romance but enduring love: Brief Encounter. Loosely based on the play Still Life by Noël Coward and the screenplay for the film Brief Encounter by Coward and David Lean, this opera (now on CD) tells […]
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).