Breaking the Waves and Tannhaüser at Houston Grand Opera are a can’t-miss doubleheader of sex and miracles.
Back to Brussels last Sunday for my third new opera of the season (after The Time of our Singing, also at La Monnaie, and Picture a day like this, at the Opéra Comique): Mikael Karlsson’s Fanny and Alexander, with a libretto by Royce Vavrek.
“[W]omen are interesting and important in real life. They are not an afterthought of nature, they are not secondary players in human destiny, and every society has always known that.” — Margaret Atwood, February 2017
Bay Area audiences starved for vocal fare during its opera’s winter/spring hiatus recently experienced two exceptional concerts with distinguished singing at the Davies Symphony Hall.
Bay Area composer Mason Bates’s and librettist Mark Campbell’s contemporary opera about the life of the tech mogul Steve Jobs came home “to the place where it all began” in spectacular fashion
This was a wonderful concert because MIchael Tilson Thomas approached every moment of it with an air of expansiveness and gratitude.
Now the opera world can have a taste of what an immersive opera looks like, as Opera Parallèle opened their spectacular world premiere of Everest: An Immersive Experience .
Dame Ethel Smyth’s third opera, The Wreckers, opened at Houston Grand Opera on October 28 and runs through November 11.
Saturday’s performance of Le nozze di Figaro at the Met mined the humor from Mozart’s divine setting of Beaumarchais’s play about a crazy day in the Almaviva household.
While it must be admitted that Elza van den Heever doesn’t have an ideally warm and agile Handel voice, she evidenced fierce control over her instrument and skillfully built a powerful portrait of the courageous Rodelida fighting for her survival.
Like many composers of his generation, Ernest Chausson was enthralled by Wagner and he too turned to legend for his only opera, one that would consume him for final decade of his brief life.
Despite the ongoing pandemic and the political upheaval, the Prototype Festival is back, and it is bigger and more accessible than ever before.
Over the past two decades, the understatedly beguiling Sasha Cooke has inched chronologically inwards in her subtle conquest of swathes of mezzo concert repertoire.
Bring your family: This show is special! Such perfect opera is hard to find!
Once again we got a very frustrating performance of Orlando; this time a beautiful and completely coherent production marred by some sub-optimal singing.
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.
Like most directors of this opera this century, David Alden is keen to outline the helplessness of women in the face of 19th century patriarchy.
“Trove Thursday” offers a broadcast from last year’s London world premiere of Nico Muhly’s Marnie.
Iestyn Davies’s theatrical blandness combined with his vocal unsuitability for the role left a hole at the center of Rinaldo.
Nico Muhly has set himself the task of presenting Winston Graham’s elusive heroine Marnie on the operatic stage.
Sunday afternoon at Carnegie Hall two remarkable slices of soprano-heaven were served up, first by Carolyn Sampson and then by Erin Morley, during the second act of Handel’s Orlando.
A 1984 performance of Handel’s Orlando with Marilyn Horne, Valerie Masterson, Marvis Martin, Jeffery Gall and Robert Lloyd, conducted by Charles Mackerras.
As I mentioned in a previous post, one of my two favorite operas is Les Troyens,
It is easy to become overly identified with opera—as a cleverer friend of mine once noted: being a sports fan is an interest, but if you like opera, everyone thinks of it as a crippling obsession.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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