Burden of gilt
Happily, this Rheingold, which returned to the Kennedy Center Saturday night to open the first of three complete cycles, has been shorn of its clumsier gestures.
Washington, DC
Play well
Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson’s 1949 musicalization of Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country has found a tentative home on the opera stage.
Blackberry winner
Washingtonians enjoyed a happy reunion this past Sunday with David Daniels.
Throne away
WNO premiered Better Gods, an hour-long work by composer Luna Pearl Woolf and librettist Caitlin Vincent on Friday evening.
Slice of life
Washington National Opera presented the fourth annual installment of its “American Opera Initiative” series in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater Wednesday evening.
Consider the subtleness of the sea
Hopefully the assignment of Herman Melville’s endless whaling opus Moby-Dick as compulsory reading for High School students is a thing of the past.
Glass warfare
Saturday’s Washington National Opera premiere of a new version of Philip Glass and Christopher Hampton’s Appomattox had everything going for it but the opera.
Cherchez la femme (fatale)
Lilith. Pandora. Circe. Salome. “La Belle Dame sans Merci.” Carmen. Brigid O’Shaughnessy: the eternal “femme fatale” still fascinates us.
Thank you for smoking
Along with Don Giovanni, Carmen is an odd bird on the list of the most beloved and frequently performed works.
Rolling along
You might be surprised, though, when that title turns out to be Show Boat.
The year in Corwin
New York City isn’t a bad place to live, operatically-speaking.
Pick your poison
I think we’re all aware by now of the wicked libel that the French dramatist Victor Hugo concocted about the fair Lucrezia Borgia with his depiction of her as a murderous virago.
lucrezia, gorgeous
A new spy debuts in La Cieca’s service, reporting from the first night of WNO’s Lucrezia Borgia: Overall, I thought the opera was worth the price of attendance. The costumes of the main characters looked like something from Star Trek. Renée Fleming‘s hair looked like Tina Turner circa 1984. Fleming was impressive, especially in many […]
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).