Così fan tutte presents a considerable challenge to the modern director.
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Opera Lafayette presents John Blow’s Venus and Adonis
Renowned French lutenist Thomas Dunford returns as musical director of Venus and Adonis, a work which prefigured Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. Mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre and bass-baritone Douglas Williams return to Opera Lafayette’s stage in the title roles, and soprano Sarah Shafer makes her company debut as Cupid.
The San Francisco Opera, perhaps incidentally, continued their exploration of operas based on literary works by mounting the revival of Giacomo Puccini’s first success, Manon Lescaut.
Since 1934, Philadelphia’s Academy of Vocal Arts has been preparing emerging artists for operatic careers.
By David Fox
What is opera for if not to commemorate a national epic tragedy and triumph?
By John Yohalem
Sunday’s matinee at Lyric Opera of Chicago was my first experience of Heggie and McNally’s 2000 opera Dead Man Walking. It certainly won’t be my last.
By Henson Keys
While Russell Thomas admirably goes toe to toe with Otello (and Otello) in a thoughtful and self-aware way, the assumption feels like a work in progress if not an outright mismatch with his vocal gifts.
By Harry Rose
In recent weeks local and visiting groups performed refreshing rarities by Zelenka, Domenico Scarlatti and Telemann so engagingly that one didn’t miss the old standbys at all.
Come ye addicts of melody! After long eclipse, Bel Canto shines again!
By John Yohalem
Zauberland: An Encounter with Schumann’s Dichterliebe touched on themes of forced migration, loss, exile, and dehumanization.
Sunday’s Richard Tucker Gala at Carnegie Hall was unusually satisfying despite a less than usually superstarry line-up.
“Tony could only sing one note and the note he sang was this…”
By La Cieca
On Site Opera’s Turn of the Screw, an immersive production set in the Bronx’s Wave Hill Gardens, featured mostly good singing and a few directorial and technological missteps.
At Friday night’s performance of La Bohème at the Met, the cast seemed to lean into (and gamble upon) the production’s enduring popularity.
Like any good gay theatergoers, we seek out Tennessee Williams revivals with the fervor of truffle-sniffing pigs.
Opéra Royal revives Grétry’s Richard Cœur-de-lion, one of the finest examples of the opéra comique genre.
Sunday evening Los Angeles Opera presented tenor Javier Camarena in recital to a wildly enthusiastic audience from the stage of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
By Patrick Mack
How does one make a performance of standard opera repertoire like Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro feel “fresh?”
My first-ever Met Sunday opera brought the welcome return of Gluck’s sublime Orfeo ed Euridice in an enchanting afternoon that combined elegant conducting, joyous dancing and Jamie Barton’s extraordinary hero.
Gluck’s sublime Orfeo ed Euridice makes a welcome return to the Met.
Christian Gerhaher delivers a Kindertotenlieder of such conciliatory tact that it erases all others.
By Harry Rose
I find it difficult to experience Madama Butterfly without also experiencing an odd fracturing of the self.
At the Park Avenue Armory, Barbara Hannigan chose to sing works that tested her metal in odd corners of vocalism.
By John Yohalem
In El Barbero de Sevilla, as given through the weekend by the New Camerata Opera, there is far too much comic dialogue, all of it in English and none of it sparkling.
By John Yohalem
Hannah Lash’s latest opera, which premiered at the Miller Theater on Wednesday night, was a musical and dramatic misfire.
