How appropriate that the Met should present this supposedly “Jewish” opera after many in the audience had just spent twelve days immersed in the genuine article over the High Holy Days.
By Emma Hoffman
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Instead of following the story, we in the audience spend most of the evening thinking “What?? Why is that happening?”
By Henson Keys
One got a sense that the Met and the maestro directed most of the rehearsal and preparation toward the opening night premiere of the Heggie opus
By Eli Jacobson
“None of that sentimental crap, okay?”
By Kevin Ng
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
Rather than focusing on a narrative, Unholy Wars explores a series of timeless yet current themes: war, destruction, alienation, and what it means to be perceived as outsider—particularly from the Middle East—in the context of a violent world.
By David Fox
German opera-director Claus Guth has reimagined Schwanengesang as a series of scarred soldier’s visions in Doppelgänger, showing this week in at the Park Avenue Armory.
In sum: not a perfect Simon Boccanegra—is there such a thing?—but a grand and often great one.
By David Fox
David Devan may be leaving the company, but there can be no better living tribute to him than this extraordinary work, which in 90 minutes gives us everything we could want from a new opera
By David Fox
Phil Chan described his point of departure for reimagining Orientalist works as the question, “what else could this be?”
By Harry Rose
Power struggles, prejudice, feuds and revenge abound in San Francisco at the moment.
The great archetypal image of an opera singer is a towering Wagnerian soprano who shatters entire panes of glass the moment she opens her mouth.
When our friends at Naxos and C Major announced near-dueling releases of Puccini’s “shabby little shocker,” I was ready with my critic’s pen dipped in bile.
By Patrick Mack
At the northern tip of Seneca, longest and deepest of New York State’s Finger Lakes, sits the pretty little town of Geneva.
By John Yohalem
In the case of this summer’s resuscitation project at the Bard Summerscape Festival, Camille Saint-Saëns’ Henri VIII , it was quite evident that this is a dramatically sound work with consistently well-crafted, theatrically vital and attractive music that provides at least three roles for gifted singing actors.
By Eli Jacobson
Teatro Nuovo took a spirited journey of rediscovery into the valley of forgotten operas and resurrected Federico and Luigi Ricci’s 1850 opera buffa Crispino e la Comare last Thursday at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center.
By Eli Jacobson
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.
By Eli Jacobson
If sex sells, then the 40 years of success for Evita show that the strawman construction and vicious takedown of an unsexy, supremely unlikable woman in just under two-and-a-half hours is just as viable a quantity.
By Harry Rose
June is long gone. It was truly a month of excellence and exuberance here in San Francisco, coupled with cozy and inviting weather, as if to make up for the extended winter.
It’s been eight decades since darling Aix-en-Provence was under attack—its last formal invasion, at least by non-operagoers, was in 1942 during the German occupation of southern France. But on Friday, the town was besieged once again by its annual festival, with two dazzling premieres that examined the cruel and constructive dimensions of war and revolution.
By Joel Rozen
The Aix festival organized two back-to-back evening concerts dedicated to the Russian masters. One was an embarrassment of Slavic riches, the other… well, just an embarrassment.
By Joel Rozen
With unrest and looting nearby as France learned collectively that minority lives should matter, Marseille-adjacent Aix-en-Provence could be forgiven for the heavy-handedness of launching its 75th anniversary summer Festival with a new French translation of the ultimate carnival of social tension, The Threepenny Opera.
By Joel Rozen
The ailing and grief-stricken Pinkerton was shown to give his son a diary about his time in Nagasaki, and as Trouble read it, he (and the audience) was taken back in time as the story came to life, similar to the use of Pensieve in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Book 4).
This showcase concert gave notice that countertenor Hugh Cutting is among the most promising artists of his generation.
