A parade of young singers delight in an intimate Madama Butterfly at Amore Opera
Traditional Christianity has always used the threat of dying unabsolved and going to Hell as a tool to get us not only to accept Jesus but also obey the dictates of the Church. Last week in New York, two classical works touched on the theme of repentance and absolution.
It was thrilling to see and hear Will Crutchfield’s insights come to life onstage in performance when Teatro Nuovo performed Poliuto at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center Wednesday July 19.
Nathan Hull was an operatic Quixote who did not go it alone, but inspired bands of optimists, giving proper employment to the many worthy New Yorkers mad enough to study voice and pleasure rare elsewhere to those of us thrilled to take it in.
Mozart and Donizetti could humanize characters in a farce—Mercadante in I due FIgaro cannot get a handle on them.
Amore Opera, an old-fashioned, adventurous little company that performs ambitious and sometimes delectably obscure but worthy repertory at the Riverside Theatre, is now (through Sunday) presenting Un ballo in maschera.
A return to Amore Opera’s production of Meyerbeer’s Dinorah to hear the second cast underlined two conclusions.
Amore Opera, one of New York’s smaller opera companies, is presenting the first local run of Dinorah, ou le Pardon de Ploërmel since before the war.
In the same season that Manhattan School of Music revived The Gypsy Baron, Riverside Theater around the corner is the site of Amore Opera’s “Season of Gypsy Operas.”
The New Amsterdam Opera Company presented a concert Forza (orchestra and chorus, yes; sets and costumes, no) at $35 a ticket.
Just when you thought it was safe to return to Rossini and Verdi—blam!
These days a cadre of voluble opera-goers regularly issues dire warnings that anyone about to attend this or that production at the Met should close her eyes and just listen rather than witness yet another Peter Gelb regie “atrocity.”
An impresario with a hit on his hands—Emanuel Schikaneder, for instance, after the initial run of Die Zauberflöte—will crave nothing so much as an opportunity to hit the same bell.
At the age of thirty, Donizetti was already the experienced composer of about eighteen operas, both serious and farcical, but as Olivo e Pasquale (currently undergoing its American premiere run at Amore Opera) makes clear, the comic works were no slight matter.
One week after my visit to Amore Opera, it was time to turn my attention to Bleecker Street Opera — another heir presumptive to the throne of the defunct Amato Opera.
My latest assignment from our doyenne has been to explore two of the many small opera companies pullulating around New York City. Some of these ensembles last l’espace d’un matin, while others have been enjoying a longer, healthier life.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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